5 Time Lords, 13 Companions, Can Anything Else Go Wrong?
by CaitlinJ1021
Summary: The third and final instalment in the trilogy of 3D9C and 4D12C / Adventures through spacetime are balanced with the domestic lives of the usual cast of mismatched characters while they thwart intergalactic, cross-temporal, supernatural adversaries; everything ranging from killer space-squids to cults to parasitic toilet worms to invisible aliens and much more.
1. If I Didn't Care

**Author's Note: This is the third part of the trilogy _3 Doctors, 9 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?_ and _4 Doctors, 12 Companions, What Could Possibly Go Wrong?_ and if you try to pick up and read this now it will be the most ridiculous thing you've ever seen in your life because you've missed out on 2.3 million words and over three whole years of lore and backstory.**

 **DAY 138**

 _If I Didn't Care_

 _Jenny_

"Anchovies!?" Sally Sparrow exclaimed, even though she was under strict orders to be quiet because Clara was downstairs sleeping, " _Anchovies_!?" She made a beeline for the bin in the corner of the kitchen and spat out a whole lot of fish-flavoured crumbs, absolutely repulsed, "In _cookies_!? And you have _two-hundred_ of them!? Are you a lunatic!?"

"Shh, shh! Clara's asleep, come on," Jenny whispered pleadingly. It was ten o'clock in the morning, and they were both incredibly lucky that Clara hadn't already been awoken by Sally's exploits in her house that day so far. Jenny's fault, she supposed, she _had_ been the one to invite Sally over in the first place, earlier that day before Esther was awake, in an attempt to find somebody willing to take two-hundred anchovy cookies off her hands. That somebody, however, was most definitely _not_ Sally Sparrow. "I don't think they taste that bad."

"Yeah, well, _you_ come from space, don't you?" Sally remarked. Jenny couldn't really argue with that, she supposed she did come from space, but she didn't see why Sally Sparrow was generalising everybody who came from space as also liking anchovy cookies.

"Do you think Esther will eat them?" Jenny wondered, casting a glance at the stacks upon stacks of cookies along the work surfaces of Clara's kitchen. Clara, just like Sally, had downright refused to eat them last night. Then she'd started to go on about how she was getting worried about Jenny, or something, for not yet returning to the TARDIS. Well, she kept saying, she wouldn't go back until her father came to get her, and if he didn't, then she supposed there wasn't a place for her on that ship anymore. She supposed there might not have ever been a place for her on it.

"No, she won't eat them, because she's not mental," Sally said. Jenny scowled, "I thought you were supposed to be a master chef?"

"I am. I just have a very wide palette. For somebody who likes anchovies in cookies, _that's_ a delicacy."

"And I'm sure the foxes who go through my wheelie bins think the same thing about the leftovers they scrounge."

"How dare you compare my food to leftovers!" Jenny exclaimed, a little annoyed.

"No, it's worse than leftovers, at least something being left over implies it was actually edible in the first place," Sally quipped.

"You can be so obnoxious sometimes," Jenny shook her head, "I have no idea what my girlfriend sees in you."

"It's the dimples," Sally assured her, smiling. If it had been, say, Esther Drummond who had criticised her food like that, she would have been horribly upset, but this was Sally Sparrow. All Sally cared about was trying to be funny and maintain her air of perpetual, unrealistic levity all the time. Jenny was, by this point, quite used to it. It was oddly endearing. "Seriously, though, do you have anything to eat?"

Begrudgingly, Jenny said, "There are strawberries in the fridge. Leftovers from dinner two nights ago, in fact. Suppose you're just as bad as those foxes." Jenny didn't have to go get the strawberries herself, because Sally was in her natural habitat when she was mooching off of people. She hadn't just come for the cookies, she'd also come in a desperate bid to borrow some teabags from Clara, because she didn't have any money to buy her own.

Jenny went about trying to fill re-sealable plastic bags with anchovy cookies so that they would keep long enough for her to find someone willing to eat them (she would eat some of them, of course, but not two-hundred of them) while Sally stood in the corner, lingering, eating strawberries out of a box.

"Where did you get these from?"

"Those? I picked them in France, in July, can't remember the year," Jenny said.

"You know, Jenny, there's these things called shops, and you can go to them and buy stuff, so that you don't have to go to all this trouble," Sally said knowingly.

"Going by what Esther tells me, you don't do an awful lot of buying stuff as it is, Sally," Jenny remarked, sticking cookies in a bag.

"Touché."

Somebody knocked on the door.

"Oh, get that, would you?" Jenny asked, "It'll only be Esther anyway, or Dylan, or something." Sally shrugged and said she would, disappearing out of the kitchen, Jenny calling after her that her keys were just in a bowl by the door.

There was only the one set of keys in the bowl, and Sally recognised, with a pang of nostalgia, a TARDIS key hanging off them. She briefly wondered if that was maybe the same key she had stolen from the Weeping Angels nearly ten years ago as she opened the door to a man she'd never seen before in her life, nor had she seen around Hollowmire. There he was, some guy, wearing a tweed suit, of all things, even though he could hardly be thirty yet. And he looked at her funny, like he recognised her.

"This is Ravenwood's house? Clara's house, I mean?" he asked her. Sounded like he was from London.

"If you like," Sally answered, eating another strawberry (they were _very_ nice strawberries.)

"Excellent – is Jenny here?"

"No, she's dead. I'm Clara's new girlfriend. I won her hand in a jousting competition, on motorbikes," Sally informed monotonously, and he narrowed his eyes. She just carried on eating strawberries with her best innocent expression.

"Sally Sparrow, isn't it? Thought I recognised you, yes, it's been a while, though. Three-hundred years, or something," he smiled, holding his hand out for her to shake. She shook it with the hand covered in strawberry juice, not that he minded, "My wife's a big fan, which I'm sure you're aware of, being as she's not a particularly subtle woman…" he trailed off, thinking, still shaking her hand. Then he brightened up again, "The Doctor, by the way, if you don't recognise the new face. Is my daughter in there?" He was still shaking her hand.

"You can let go now," she said. He had apparently not realised what he was doing. He let go immediately.

"Right, yes, sorry. Jenny, though? I'm looking for her."

Jenny was still putting cookies into bags when Sally stuck her head back into the room. She hadn't been listening to whoever was at the door, assuming it wasn't anything to do with her. Sally cleared her throat, and Jenny glanced up and frowned.

"…What…?"

"Uh… your dad's here," Sally told her, and she dropped the bag she had been holding onto the wooden table top.

"No he isn't," Jenny said, "If this is one of your jokes, Sally, it's not very amuse…" The Eleventh Doctor stepped into the living room from the hallway, behind Sally, looking very out of place and awkward in Clara's house.

"…Lots of candles in here, aren't there?" he commented, "Quite dark."

"It's usually darker," Sally said when Jenny didn't say a word, "When the kitchen curtains aren't open. Lucky Clara's asleep or she'd be moaning."

"She _is_ a vampire," Jenny pointed out, coming back to herself a little, though she was still stunned to see him there.

Sally rolled her eyes and ate another strawberry, "Excuses, excuses." Jenny scowled at her.

"Enjoying those?"

"Yes, thanks," she smiled, "I think I'll just go see if your girlfriend has anything decent recorded on the telly."

"Well don't delete anything," Jenny called after her, trying to ignore the presence of her father, like he was a blind spot. Jenny really wished that Clara's living room and kitchen weren't open plan at that moment. She left the cookies on the table and crossed her arms. "What do you want?" she asked the Doctor, quite sharply.

"I was just… how's your hand?" he asked, glancing at the blue, fibreglass cast on her arm. He didn't appear like he knew what to say.

"Quite painful, no thanks to you, of course." It was itchy, as well, and sweaty.

"I don't really think that it was my…" he decided, halfway through that sentence, that it wouldn't be a good idea to argue with her about that. Truthfully, the only reason she wasn't yelling at him was because Clara was asleep. "You're right. You're completely right, of course you are, if I'd listened to you about putting the Immeo onto the TARDIS in the first place, you never would have broken your thumb. And it was my fault he even thought of using you for leverage, and-"

"Sorry, hold on – Sally, do you think you could leave?" Jenny cut him off. Sally was flicking through channels and the volume was quite loud, still eating strawberries.

"Why?" she asked. Jenny glared at her, and she rolled her eyes, " _Fine_."

"Leave the strawberries," Jenny ordered her. Sally grimaced. She turned off the television and skulked back into the kitchen, putting the box of strawberries down on the kitchen table.

"I'll leave them, but I'm taking the teabags I came for to begin with," Sally said, snatching a whole box of Yorkshire Tea from the side. Jenny just raised her eyebrows, didn't even argue.

"Go on, go back to your wife now," Jenny fake-smiled, and Sally made a face at her over her shoulder before finally leaving. She'd been there for an hour already at least – it really _was_ a miracle Clara hadn't woken up. Jenny was surprised Sally didn't slam the door on her way out, she had braced herself for the loud noise, and everything.

"Shouldn't you have stopped her from taking those?" the Doctor asked.

"No, it's not worth it, she always nicks things. I'll just text Esther and tell her to bring them back later," Jenny sighed, going to put the strawberries back in the fridge. There were hardly any left now that Sally Sparrow had got her dirty mitts on them. "What was it you were saying, then?"

"I was apologising, I believe, for… well, it was going to be everything, eventually, but everything will take a while. Possibly best not to do it here?" he said, "It's just, Clara is asleep, isn't she? And Clara – my Clara – said that if I run into _your_ Clara, she'll probably kill me, for upsetting you. I'd rather not get killed by a vampire, to be entirely honest."

"She won't wake up," Jenny said stiffly, "If she didn't wake up with Sally here, she won't wake up with _you_ here. _You_ don't smell edible."

"I have other things to… I thought, I mean… I didn't realise that I was supposed to have followed you to talk to you, and I didn't realise you were so upset because of Thirteen, and I thought eventually you would just come back to the TARDIS. But you won't, will you?" She didn't answer. She didn't really want to say she hadn't been planning on coming back to the TARDIS, because if she wasn't there, she didn't really know what she ought to be doing. Clara wouldn't let her move in. She didn't really _want_ to move in. It was starting to grate on the pair of them, a little, Jenny being there all the time. "I brought something! I forgot. Yes. Brought you something. Or Clara, more, I suppose…" He pulled something out of his pocket that was much too large to fit in them if they weren't transdimensional, and then he held it out to her.

"A mirror…?" Jenny asked incredulously, taking it. Funny present to get a vampire. It was quite cruel, considering.

"Yes. Sort of. It's actually used to identify alien species, originally, but I modified it, so it doesn't really work anymore. But it _does_ reflect vampires," he explained, "At least, I hope it does. Otherwise I've broken it, and it was a gift, you know, from my godmother, though I've only used it once, when I met Van Gogh, and… it's a story for another time, it doesn't matter now."

"This is, um… surprisingly thoughtful," Jenny said, looking at herself in it. She didn't really know what to do with it, though. She wasn't going to wake up Clara. She supposed she'd best hide it and show it to Clara later. "If this works she'll stop getting me to do her makeup for her… what do you mean about, um, going elsewhere?"

"Well… don't think that this an excuse for me to come and see you, because it isn't, I promise, just ask Clara because I was talking to her about this last night-"

"But?" she prompted.

" _But_ , the TARDIS was docked in a Venusian colony this morning while Oswin's brother moved everything over there from Horizon, and she picked up a very odd distress signal that appears to be your name."

"Which name?" she asked, not sure if she believed him entirely about a mysterious distress signal not being an excuse. For all she knew, he had made it up for some strange reason. But he seemed… genuine. Though she hated to think it. "An alias?"

"No. Just 'Jenny.'"

"Coming from where?"

"A dangerous area of the Myoki Galaxy, with a stagnant black hole-"

"The Fowl Pocket," she realised.

"Yes," he confirmed, though it hadn't really been a question, "So it _is_ for you?" The Fowl Pocket was an infamously inescapable area of space, completely full of shipwrecks that had been pulled in by the black hole. It was a very weak and odd black hole in that it didn't consume anything, but it pulled ships in, kept them there, drifting around through space until they collapsed in on themselves and decayed.

"Oh, yeah. It's for me. And it's not good. What was the year?"

"4221," he answered.

"Oh, fantastic," she grumbled.

"I don't understand, what is it?"

"A long story. Still. You didn't want to stick around here, did you?" she said.

"You mean you'll come?" he asked, surprised.

"I have responsibilities. Sort of. I might do. It's hard to explain, but I don't want to shirk them, I've been building up a pretty big I-told-you-so for the last eight months," Jenny said, thinking, running a hand through her hair.

"And you mean…?"

"Mean what?"

"That I'll come? Can come? As well?" he asked. She frowned. "That reminds me, I had another question for you."

"Which is?"

"Do you remember what you were doing on the 16th of October? In 1941?"

"Uh… I haven't been in 1941 for a hundred and eighty years," she said, "Quite hard to remember specifically. I think I was in Plymouth? Why?"

"No reason… no reason…" he said quietly, "What are all these cookies for?"

"I baked two-hundred of them but nobody wants to eat them because they have anchovies."

" _Anchovies_? Sounds delicious."

"That's what _I_ said! Have them if you want. God knows, no one else will. I have to go get dressed and leave Clara a note." She also needed to get one of her guns, and would prefer if he didn't know she had one on her, so she disappeared towards the cellar and down the stairs so that she could go put some clothes on and have a bit of a think.

She hadn't expected the Doctor to actually come and see her, she thought, casting a glance at Clara Ravenwood, still remarkably fast asleep _and_ remarkably gorgeous. But he had. And he actually seemed like he was trying. Then again, perhaps he had been trying the other day, and she just hadn't been able to tell because she'd been practically blind with rage. And, like Clara had said she would, she had rested for a few days, and she _did_ feel better. And he'd brought that mirror, too, he'd been legitimately thoughtful, and he'd _apologised_ for what happened to her hand…

So, Jenny Harkness resolved, she was going to give the Doctor a chance.

 **AN: Like I said in the author's note of Chapter 1000 (what a disgustingly huge number), it would be cool if you would follow properly and stuff. And also review, always appreciate the reviews.**


	2. Dead on Arrival

_Dead on Arrival_

 _Eleven_

On the outskirts of the Fowl Pocket, a hollow, metal husk floated, silent, through space. It was one of maybe a hundred similar wrecks, ships of all different shapes and sizes; some enormous expeditionary fleets which hadn't been able to escape the gravity belt, tiny escape pods sucked in by accident, vessels catapulted into the Fowl Pocket's oblivion by stray asteroids. From the outside, the _Comet_ looked skeletal. Long body, huge rear thrusters, atmospheric generators protruding along the chassis like steel ribs. They were still generating a translucent, amber-coloured forcefield. Within, it was empty and dark, metallic noises echoing through the deserted, cold cavities, all the lights off save for the bright, holographic door locks.

When the TARDIS materialised, it was like an orchestra, flooding the halls with a distorted cacophony of noise. It thrummed and appeared out of nowhere in a cramped maintenance access shaft, three figures stepping out into the dark interior. Until they switched on the torches attached to their spacesuits, the only source of light was a dim orange in the centre of the mechanical door declaring it to be locked tight.

More than anything in the world at that moment, the Doctor appreciated his daughter actually allowing him to have her company. It was funny, because a week ago he hardly would have cared (which he was ashamed of to no end, truthfully, and it was a damn good thing she'd given him that wake-up call on Messaline.) The thing he _didn't_ appreciate was Amelia Pond inviting herself to tag along. That left him disgruntled. Oh, and the spacesuits. He didn't appreciate the spacesuits*.

"Is this definitely mine? Are we sure?" he asked. He wasn't liking his minimal range of movement in the thing, which reminded him of a morph suit. It wasn't really the type of attire he was used to. It was a fancy-looking, white and silver creation that stuck to his skin with some thick, airtight fabric, synthesised in Oswin's laboratory, no doubt. It wasn't that he wasn't a fan of his sister-in-law's engineering, it was just that… well, no. It was exactly that. He wasn't a fan of his sister-in-law's engineering. Especially when it felt like he was in an all-in-one made of cellophane.

"Oh, get over it," Amy said, her voice fuzzy and playing right in his ears through a speaker in the base of the helmet, a bit of the suit that reminded him unnervingly of a shock collar. They needed the audio links because they had the helmets on. Alright, the helmets he liked. Admittedly, they looked like fishbowls, a bit like the whole design scheme had been plucked out of _The Jetsons_. Or, worse, _Mars Attacks_ , that ghastly piece of cinema his wife had made him watched so that she could laugh at his reactions. They did offer the full range of peripheral vision, though. If he could attach the helmets onto the old suits, he would be happy. But they didn't work like that, the glass separated and retreated into those metal collars the same way some Sontaran helmets did.

"I just mean, it's awfully… tight," he said.

"That's the point," Jenny said. When she spoke to him, she spoke monotonously and dryly. He knew that she was judging him, and that she was trying to keep her opinions of him out of her tone of voice. Perhaps that would change, though – for the better, of course. If it changed because she started shouting at him again, he would not be happy. "It's a second layer of skin, for greater mobility."

"And it's not in a stupid colour," Amy said, "Like those orange ones."

"I _hate_ the orange ones," Jenny agreed with Amy. Those damned collars were the most complicated part of the whole suit, he knew, looking at the duplicates on his two companions that day. They had compressed air tanks on the back in case of a sudden vacuum, they had torches built into the front for handless, convenient light, speakers and radios and probably a dozen more complicated interfaces Oswin had buried inside of them. And there, on the back, were names. _AMELIA_ and _JENNY_ in emblazoned white paint on the silver; on the back of his all he had was the number _11_.

"I can't help but feel vulnerable though," he complained, "As though somebody behind me might be… you know, _watching_."

"Out of your married best friend and your own daughter?" Amy asked.

"It's mostly my married best friend I'm worried about," he said, seeing Amy roll her eyes in the illuminated, spherical helmet. Still, though, it was better to be safe than sorry. A wrecked spaceship could have all sorts of problems – namely the oxygen recyclers breaking down. Lucky they had their own oxygen recyclers – ingenious, he hated to admit – built into the suits, giving them a constant supply of clean air from filtered carbon dioxide. A very complicated process that usually required machines much, _much_ larger devices to carry it out. Of course, though, the people who designed those machines were not Oswin Oswald.

"Whatever. Where are we?" Amy asked Jenny, who was already over at the door in the tiny room, the TARDIS sitting there and humming. Jenny had her pink-lighted, sonic screwdriver out and was scanning the door with it, examining it rather than merely unlocking it. He ought to have brought that device from yesterday out with him, he thought, that new tracker he had kept, see if it could detect life signs. It was in pieces on his coffee table, though, because he'd been modifying it during the night.

"It's just an access duct for maintenance," Jenny answered, "There's a ladder behind the TARDIS that goes down to the auxiliary engines, but there's no point going down there. The engines will have been switched off as soon as they got into the Fowl Pocket. There's a secondary system lockdown in effect. Everything except life support and gravity. Someone's done a number on these door controls."

"What do you mean?" Amy asked.

"Well, they've broken them, linked them all to the command terminal in the captain's quarters and then… deleted _all_ the programming, it looks like. Impossible to open," she said, and then the orange, hologramatic circle shining in the centre of the door span around and turned blue. "Unless you have a sonic screwdriver, of course." Jenny touched the blue circle floating just a centimetre above the surface of the door and it separated, then the door hummed and opened jerkily.

Jenny had a gun slung over her back, an enormous, rusty thing, the barrel of which was over a foot long just on its own. She had dragged that thing out from Ravenwood's cellar earlier that morning, and before he could make any kind of comment she said that Ten had already had an argument with her about 'Emmett,' as she called it, and had lost. He didn't think trying his luck would work. Besides, he had decided to trust in Jenny that she wouldn't go around unnecessarily shooting people, even if he _did_ disapprove of her gun. Along with that, she had some fancy sidearm from a distant future holstered around her waist. Armed to the teeth.

They stepped out into an empty, low-ceilinged corridor, _almost_ too short for he and Amy to walk in. Jenny, of course, was plenty comfortable. It was all empty, though. Not a soul or a light in sight, just bleak shadows and one another.

"Are you back on the TARDIS, then?" Amy asked Jenny, who faltered.

"I'm uh… well, I haven't… if I were coming back to the TARDIS, I'd have to tell Clara, so I don't really want to say anything before I… talk to her…" she lied. It wasn't anything to do with Clara, the Doctor was sure. Jenny started to lead them off in one direction, towards more doors, but the one they approached was lit up blue rather than orange.

"I thought you said all the doors were locked?" he questioned.

"They _were_ all locked. I couldn't unlock one without unlocking all of them, which… might be bad. Might not be," Jenny said.

"How might the ship going into complete lockdown _not_ be bad?" Amy asked incredulously, "And what _is_ this ship? What kind of distress call are we answering?"

" _Her_ name," Eleven said, nodding at Jenny, who was in front of he and Amy, "Just 'Jenny' over and over."

"How do you know it's for you? You don't really have an uncommon name," Amy said.

"Because it is," Jenny answered shortly.

"Right... but we're all on this possibly-dangerous spaceship, so maybe you shouldn't hold out on us? Tell us how this lockdown might be a good thing?"

"I didn't say it would be a _good_ thing," Jenny said, checking around the corner they came up to carefully. It was very cold, and it gave the Doctor dreadful goosebumps when coupled with the skin-tight bodysuit he was stuck wearing. "I just said it might _not_ be a _bad_ thing. More of a… neutral thing."

"Not really doing too well on that 'don't-hold-out-on-us' front, to be honest…" Amy said uneasily, looking around, as though she were scared something might jump out. Jenny really _was_ incredibly evasive about her past. Did she or did she not want to be asked about it? He thought she ought to make up her mind. "At least tell us why the distress call is for you."

"It's my name. That's why."

Amy nudged Eleven.

"What?" he asked.

"She gets that from you."

" _What_?" both he and Jenny said.

"All the secrets. You people really need to learn to share. By which I mean Time Lords."

"What a charming analysis of an entire species based on two individuals," Eleven said dryly. He couldn't tell if Jenny was pleased or displeased at being likened to him. He supposed, though, Amy would know. Clara would know, as well, but were it Clara there at that moment, she wouldn't point it out. She would just boil in the awkwardness. "What sort of ship is this?"

"It's a, uh… frigate…" she said, pausing for a long while between her words. Such a long time, he was convinced she was lying.

"So, if this ship might _not_ be in that bad of a way, why have you got a massive gun?" Amy questioned.

"As a precaution."

"A precaution? You have that _huge_ gun, _and_ a blaster, for a _precaution_?"

A noise interrupted them. Not the sort of noise they wanted to hear. It came from above, sounded like something clattering around in the ceiling, and the three of them looked up and paused, all silent. The noises paused, too, for a second, then they banged away quickly down the corridor in the same direction they were headed, like something was scuttling around. Jenny's hand (the left one, of course, the right one was still bunged up in that enormous cast, and she'd had quite a time of it trying to force the glove to fit over the top earlier) went instinctively to her gun. The sounds faded away.

"Okay. What was _that_?" Amy looked between Eleven and Jenny. Jenny glanced at the Doctor though, like _he_ might know, betraying the fact that she didn't know, either.

"Probably the sort of thing my precautions are against," Jenny answered finally.

"It sounded like a thing. Where are you going? Don't go that way – that's the way whatever it is went," Amy said, staying rigidly still when Jenny started walking again.

"It could have been a person," the Doctor suggested, meeting Jenny's eyes.

"Yeah," Jenny backed him up, "Just a person. Maybe whoever called for help." It was clear, though, that Jenny, like the Doctor, didn't believe it was 'just a person.' People didn't move so quickly through what he presumed were maintenance vents running above them. "Or even a nice friendly alien who really likes ventilation systems."

"Nothing good has ever hidden in a ventilation system," Amy said firmly, " _Nothing_."

"Well, in the probably highly unlikely and ridiculous case that that creepy noise was made by something _hostile_ ," Jenny began, "I have this massive gun. And I never miss."

"I see, and do you never miss with or without a broken thumb?" Amy asked her sarcastically.

"I'm not sure the pessimism is entirely helpful," Eleven said.

"Exactly. Now hurry up."

"I should've stayed on the TARDIS…" Amy grumbled. Yes, the Doctor thought, perhaps you should have. Let him have some quality time _alone_ with his daughter. Even if that quality time _did_ consist of wandering around a dark, spooky spaceship following mysterious, scurrying ceiling-dwellers.

Every narrow, tight corridor of the ship looked the same in the darkness, with only the doors to go by. Whatever ship it was, though, Jenny was obviously incredibly familiar with it for her to be leading them around the way she was. She might as well be blindfolded. She led them right up to another door which, thankfully, opened into a proper room. A well-lit room. Even if the light did come from a large, viewing window built into one wall rather than the interior of the ship itself. But it didn't illuminate anything good. No, contrary to what Jenny kept saying, that it 'might not be anything bad,' it was _definitely_ bad. It was blood and bodies, some in pieces, torn apart, all over the enormous room.

Jenny went to cover her mouth with her hand, and her glove bumped against the helmet. The three of them had wide eyes, staring out at a massacre – it was impossible to tell how many peoples' remains they were looking at.

"I knew these people," she said, "And now I can't… I can't even recognise who…" Eleven wanted to comfort her, but he didn't know how.

"Won't you tell us what's going on _now_?" Amy asked her.

"Look at that," Jenny pointed at a piece of paper stuck to the wall, blood spatters on it now, "I made that. It's a chore rota." Amy and Eleven were at a loss. "This is, um… the ship is called the _Comet_. I named it that. When I stole it. It's… a pirate ship. These people are pirates."

" _Pirates_!?" Eleven exclaimed.

"Yes, pirates, and you reacting like that is exactly why I didn't want to mention it was a pirate ship," she said pointedly. Amy walked over to the paper on the wall and squinted at it. Whatever had killed all these people wasn't there anymore, at least. Not in the room. " _My_ pirate ship. Until eight months ago, when they all mutinied."

"Do you think the reason they mutinied is because you devised a chore rota?" she asked incredulously. It bothered Eleven how unperturbed by the bodies Amy was. They were all like that on the TARDIS, though. That was, after all, the reason Esther Drummond had left. Such a shame, because he liked Esther.

"No, they mutinied because I wasn't violent enough," she explained, "I was more Robin Hood than Blackbeard."

"Funny, _Robin Hood_ is one of Clara's favourite books," Eleven commented. Amy and Jenny both gave him looks at that, and he realised that was a terrible thing to have pointed out, and resolved to shut up. Resolved to just stay away from all mention of Clara, of both Claras, for definite.

"Anyway," Jenny said, eyes wandering to the view outside. There was blood on the window as well, though, "This used to be the canteen… god, this is worse than I thought…" Outside the sky was a mint green sort of colour. The whole Fowl Pocket was burned green. He could see silhouettes of other ghost ships, too, out there in space. He wondered if anybody was alive on the others. Maybe this, whatever 'this' was, was the real reason nobody ever left. The view, though – it was almost pretty.

"They mutinied? Eight months ago?" Eleven asked her.

"Yes. They dumped me on Trancha II with that piece of junk shuttle from Messaline I left behind on Tungtrun for nearly a hundred and fifty years, thinking the Vashta Nerada would finish a Time Lord off properly. Then you came along. Finally," she remarked. "They wanted to go on a wild goose chase for some kind of cursed-"

A barely human scream tore the air apart and they turned their gazes and their lights towards the corner of the grisly canteen. A maintenance duct on the wall was ripped right through and some _creature_ threw itself onto the floor. It moved quickly, and he could hardly make it out. All he saw was it had shreds of clothes hanging off it, was flesh-coloured, and had bone-like appendages sticking out of its body like blades.

"This would be a really big time for you to use that massive gun you keep talking about!" Amy shouted at Jenny, the gruesome biped wailing and coming straight towards them. By shouting, she attracted its attention. And whatever it was, he was sure, was going to tear them apart just like everyone else had been torn apart. Jenny got out of its way, pulling the gun off her shoulder, and the Doctor dragged Amy right out of its path at the last minute, in time for his daughter – who was fumbling a little with her damaged thumb – to cock her gun and fire at the monster. Was he prepared for seeing the thing get pinned by its head against the wall? No. He didn't know what he thought Jenny's gun, _Emmett_ , fired, but he hadn't been expecting it to be six-inch spikes.

"What the hell is that!?" Amy demanded. The thing was still only for a second, then it started twitching and trying to pull itself free, making strangled, hissing noises and flailing. Nothing could survive getting shot through the head like that, which just led him to believe it was already dead _before_ getting its brain impaled. Jenny shot it again, this time in its abdomen, making sure it was fixed to the wall. Only then did it seem to stop for good. There was steam pouring out of Jenny's gun.

"Is it alien?" Jenny asked the Doctor.

"I don't know," he said, taking his own sonic screwdriver out. He didn't really want to go near it. He held the sonic up from where he was standing and tried to scan from a distance.

"I think you pinned it to your chore rota," Amy joked. She didn't sound like she found it very funny, though. She sounded harrowed.

"Odd," Eleven said, listening to the sonic, "Apparently, it's human."

"It's _human_? Look at it – what could do this to a human?" Jenny asked, "I shot it in the head and it was still moving. It could still be alive now."

"I don't know. But I think we've found the reason for your distress call…"

* _chapter 764_


	3. Sole Survivor

_Sole Survivor_

 _Eleven_

"I thought you said all the doors were unlocked now. So why is _that_ one still orange?" Amy asked Jenny in a whisper, following her closely as they crept through the darkened corridors. Every now and then they heard a distant noise, or the torches flickered over another smear of blood along the walls.

"That's the captain's cabin," Jenny said, "It's on a separate system. If there's anyone here alive, they'll be in there. The whole thing is an escape pod."

"The captain's quarters? What, so the captain can escape and everyone else can die?"

"Essentially. But I disabled it. For morale. Didn't want people thinking I'd cut and run. Not that using the escape pod would do you any good getting out of the Fowl Pocket, might as well just stay attached. But nothing can get through the private airlock," Jenny was explaining, taking out her screwdriver again. The Doctor was hoping and praying that they didn't run into another of those _things_ , whatever they were. Those post-human nightmares. Jenny was trying so hard to remain an emotional void, the Doctor hadn't a clue how much shooting that thing had affected her, _if_ it had affected her. He wasn't going to argue and say she didn't need to do it, though. If it had once been a human, it was long gone, past the point of no return, and if Jenny hadn't have had that spike-gun, all three of them could be dead.

"That's the opposite of going down with the ship. Cowardly," the Doctor said.

"Hence why I disabled it," Jenny said, frosty, trying to unlock this door now as well.

"I didn't mean _you_!" he exclaimed, mortified at his implication, "You're not… you could never be…" The light on the door changed from orange to blue, leaving Jenny to touch the hologram-circle and open this one just like all the others. They stepped through into a tiny little room, the private airlock she had mentioned, and had to wait there for a minute or so while the air was pulled out and then pumped back in again. For a few seconds, those miniature O2 filters of Oswin's actually came into play. They worked aptly, even though it was a very short field test. Like she would give them anything she hadn't checked a thousand times over, though. She was meticulous.

And there they were, the captain's quarters, faced with another view of the sea-coloured space outside, shadowy shipwrecks in the graveyard vacuum. It was a very opulent room, with rather a large, ornate dining table covered in bits and bobs. Guns, knives, oxygen canisters, a great deal of very valuable looking cutlery, huge quantities of food, an empty spacesuit slumped over in one of the chairs. Whoever was living there had been building up supplies, clearly, perhaps sneaking out and braving those monsters to gather rations.

"What _have_ you gotten yourselves into…" Jenny whispered to herself, looking around. If it wasn't for the speakers in the helmets, Eleven and Amy wouldn't have been able to hear. He supposed she was just speaking in general terms about her formerly-living, now-dead crew. Ex-crew.

"How close to them were you, exactly?" Eleven asked, watching her.

She began to speak, but was interrupted by an unknown female voice coming from behind them, up on the second floor of the cabin, a set of stairs on the right leading up to a balcony. A balcony which a woman, after smarmily declaring, "Oh, I'd say she was _very_ close to some of them," jumped down from lightly. Quite a high jump, too, over two metres. Miraculously, given the situation, this woman was _smiling_. And when Jenny pulled her blaster on her, she continued to smile, even though Jenny marched right up and put the gun against her head.

"What are you doing!?" Amy exclaimed.

"Nice to see you again," the mystery woman said, like she was amused. She wasn't in a suit.

"Is it really?" Jenny asked, angrily, pushing the gun against her skin. But the last time Eleven had seen Jenny threaten to shoot someone, her gun hadn't been loaded, it had been all been an act; scare tactics. The spike gun, he knew, _was_ loaded, and _definitely_ lethal, so why was she using the blaster? "Tell me why I shouldn't just shoot you for getting all these people killed."

"Maybe you _should_ shoot me?" the woman enticed.

"Do something!" Amy hissed at Eleven, "She'll kill her!"

"I hope she will," the stranger said, "I don't think she has it in her. Go on, Raxis. Finish it." She grinned and then stepped away and lifted her head high enough to bite down on the muzzle of the blaster, the barrel pointing right into her mouth. She raised her eyebrows in challenge. Amy was frantic. Jenny pulled the trigger, and the gun just clicked uselessly. The woman laughed as Jenny lowered it, looking annoyed. "You've never been one to pull a loaded gun on anybody. Can't threaten people who know your tricks."

"Why didn't you do anything?" Amy demanded of the Doctor.

"I knew what she was doing," he answered. He hadn't known. He'd _hoped_ he knew, hoped his trust in his daughter was well-placed. And look at that, it was.

"Yeah, well, don't test me, Iveanne, because I have the ammo on me and I could load it in seconds and blow your head off."

"You're all talk. You'd never do that." Jenny scowled. "Besides, you're using your left hand to shoot. Probably means something's happened to the other one."

"I'm ambidextrous."

"You go both ways, I know. _Everyone_ knows. Doesn't mean you don't have a preference," the stranger, Iveanne, remarked, winking at Jenny. Jenny looked appalled. "Don't look like that – if you're so ashamed, maybe you shouldn't have done me in the first place." Jenny's shoulders slumped and she looked, uselessly, at the Doctor, who didn't know what he was supposed to think at that moment.

"…Sorry…" she mumbled, then added to Iveanne, "And my hand is fine."

"Prove it."

"Shut up. You're a murderer."

"I am not," Iveanne said, then shrugged, "Well, not in this case."

"Right," Amy said, tittering coldly, "Does somebody want to explain what the bloody hell is going on here? On this nightmare ship? And who _this_ is?"

"She's, um… a sort of… ex. A bit," Jenny said, "Not a proper ex."

"What's a 'proper' ex?" Iveanne questioned.

"How about somebody I actually _liked_?"

"Liked me enough to-"

"If you say one more thing, I will break your jaw, because my father is _right there_ and I don't think he wants to hear _any_ of this," Jenny interrupted. Iveanne frowned.

"Your _father_? Not-"

"Yes."

"The one you've been trying to find for-"

" _Yes_ , alright? Yes, that's him, right there, the Doctor," Jenny said, "Now do yourself a favour and shut up. This is Iveanne," she turned to Eleven and Amy, "She used to be the first mate on the _Comet_ , and then she led the mutiny against me eight months so that she could chase after a made-up story. And left me to die."

"I never thought you'd really _die_ ," Iveanne said. She was coming across as very sociopathic. And his daughter had been… doing _things_? With _her_? And then Jack after that? At that moment he was pretty much _glad_ she was dating Ravenwood now. At least Clara was a decent person. More than decent, in fact, wonderful – but that was neither here nor there. "That's why I sent out the distress signal. How did you get here, by the way? Did you risk getting stuck in the Fowl Pocket, all to come and rescue little old me?"

"Not a chance," Jenny snapped, "Wouldn't have come at all if I didn't have a way out."

"What do you mean made-up story? And why can't anybody leave this place?" Amy asked. She wasn't enjoying being kept in the dark. Then again, neither was the Doctor. All they had learnt so far was that Jenny used to be a pirate captain, until she had been kicked off, and the woman who had been her second-in-command was some sort of sex-starved lunatic with no basic human empathy.

"It's not made up," Iveanne said.

"Oh, not this again. It's a load of-"

"We found it. _I_ found it. You were holding us back," Iveanne told her, and she frowned.

"Holding you back? That's rich."

"Found what?" Amy interrupted.

"The Anobine Cartax," Iveanne declared.

"What's an Anobine Cartax…?" Eleven asked.

"It doesn't exist," Jenny said.

"It does exist, and the thing about the curse? It's true. That's what you're seeing on here, a curse," Iveanne 'explained,' talking in an eerie way, like she was still enamoured with whatever this alleged relic the Doctor had never heard of was.

"You don't know what it is?" Amy asked him.

"No. I don't know _everything_ , Amelia," he said, "Certainly not when it comes to dangerous folklore."

"He sounds just like you, calling it 'dangerous folklore,'" Iveanne said, doing inverted commas, smirking.

"Allegedly, the Anobine Cartax is the device that creates the gravity belt in the Fowl Pocket. The reason the Fowl Pocket even _exists_ in the Myoki Galaxy," Jenny began to explain to Amy and the Doctor, "Nobody knows what it is, or who built it, or what it does, or what it looks like – they don't know _anything_. It's just something people made up because they haven't thought of a way to scientifically explain the gravity belt."

"What's the gravity belt, then?" Amy questioned.

"Uh… it's like Saturn, you know, and its rings, but imagine the rings are actually the invisible gravity belt and the planet is actually the whole Fowl Pocket. It sucks everything towards it, but then when the whatever-it-is gets halfway through, the magnetism reverses. So instead of pulling things _towards_ it, it pushes things _away_ , but the thrust of whatever asteroid or ship is coming in means instead of pushing it _out_ again, it gets pushed _in_ ," Jenny said.

"Can't they just, you know, go to warp speed, or something?"

"No, because of Newton's laws," Eleven explained to her, "For every action is an equal and opposite reaction. No matter how fast something goes towards it, the polarity will respond with exactly the same force and push it back."

"Like throwing a bouncy ball at a wall. The harder you throw the ball-" Jenny began.

"-the further it travels on the rebound," Eleven finished. Amy glanced between he and Jenny with an expression on her face bordering on amusement. The Doctor cleared his throat. "Anyway. Doesn't affect the TARDIS, of course. TARDIS goes anywhere."

"So if you found the Anobine Cartax, what is it? What does it do? Is it the thing making the gravity belt?" Jenny asked Iveanne.

"Curses anyone who tries to remove it," she said.

"Did you have a plan on how to get out of the Fowl Pocket when you came in? It's suicide."

"Yes," Iveanne said, "And it worked."

"I don't see it working right now." Iveanne looked at her. "What?" Iveanne continued to stare, and then Jenny's eyes widened and her jaw dropped, " _I_ was your plan? All along?" she scoffed, "You leave me to die, and then expect me to just come back and rescue you!?"

"You _have_ come back to rescue us. Well, me. Everyone else is dead," she shrugged, "Me, and the Anobine Cartax."

"If this thing is cursed, why didn't the curse affect you?" Amy questioned.

"Yes, good question, Pond," Eleven agreed, "Why haven't _you_ turned into one of those creatures?"

"Because I was in the cabin when they retrieved it," she answered, "I have an independent oxygen supply."

"There's your coward, father," Jenny said to the Doctor, nodding towards Iveanne. It took him a moment to realise she was talking about his earlier remark about it being cowardly to have the cabin be an escape pod, because he was briefly hung up on her calling him 'father.' She usually called him 'Doctor,' like everyone else, which didn't bother him until he heard her call Thirteen 'mum.' _Now_ it bothered him. But 'father?' Perhaps it was a step in the right direction.

"Funny kind of curse that can't get through an airlock," Amy said, looking at Iveanne shiftily, like she was trying to decide if she was trustworthy, which she most definitely wasn't.

"Sounds more like a virus, some kind of infection," the Doctor said.

"That's what they thought in medical, too. I wouldn't know, I wasn't there."

"You locked yourself up right away, then?" Jenny asked coldly.

"I don't want to get cursed."

"You're pathetic."

"It doesn't affect anything that isn't human," Iveanne said, "Humans only. It's in the air."

"Humans only? How does that work?"

"The species who found it, I assume. We ran tests."

"Ridiculous," Jenny said.

"The air should be fine for you Time Lords to breathe. I haven't rerouted the O2 supply, or anything. Is she a Time Lord as well?" Iveanne indicated Amy.

"No. But I wish I was. The last thing I want is to be part of the same species as _you_. This is why humanity has a really bad name, because of people like you."

"Say what you like, I survived."

"Fine," Jenny said, "I'll go find this… _thing_ you picked up, Iveanne. But I'm destroying it. So where is it now?"


	4. What Lies Below

**AN: Updates are sparse right now because a) daily updates get really tiring and it's one of the reasons I decided to end this thing as fun as it can be, and b) because I've been trying to write the next** ** _Spook Watch_** **chapter in the background. I'm not doing a Halloween storyline in 5TC this year because I did** ** _Dying to Live_** **(** ** _chapter 785_** **) last year and it was huge and took me all of October, but I am gonna try and get a** ** _Spook Watch_** **storyline out across October.**

 _What Lies Below_

 _Eleven_

"So, like, hypothetically, if a girl were to text you saying, 'I'm effing Cordelia, King Lur can suck it,' except she doesn't put 'effing', she puts the actual word, and she spells it with two Js instead of a U, what would that mean?" Jenny asked somewhat uneasily, holding her mobile phone right up to her eyes and squinting at it. She turned it sideways for a second and cocked her head, as though that may give her more insight, "And then she sends emojis of a heart and a crown." She was supposed to be leading them through the _Comet_ 's creepy, blood-soaked corridors, and now she was distracted. A little bitterly, he thought to himself, _so your phone IS working?_ But he didn't say that to her. She'd probably had her phone turned off for the very obvious reason of avoiding him and everybody else on the TARDIS. This 'Anobine Cartax' thing he had never heard of was, allegedly, on the exterior deck. The most inconvenient place for it to possibly be. According to Iveanne, that was where the crew had put it after bringing it on board, and that was where it had stayed. Not that he trusted Iveanne, she seemed to have a few screws loose, and rather an odd obsession with his daughter.

"She said what?" Amy, perplexed, asked Jenny, stooping down and squinting over her shoulder at her phone. No doubt Eleven wasn't allowed to pry and ask about what Ravenwood was texting. He was quite sure it wasn't his place to be doing that. He still eavesdropped, though, even though eavesdropping was a little trickier with his helmet off. Upon hearing the air was safe for Time Lords to breathe, he and Jenny had both taken off their helmets. Amy wasn't so lucky, but she didn't seem all that fussed, considering she was being prevented from turning into one of those zombified beasts. "Well what that means is she's very drunk and talking about Shakespeare. Can vampires get drunk?"

"If she's under the impression she's a Shakespearian character, I daresay they can," Eleven commented, and the pair of them looked at him like he was imposing, "What? The two of you are right there – am I supposed to be wearing earmuffs now? Headphones? Perhaps one of those things will kill me from behind." Amy rolled her eyes, but Jenny didn't say anything. The Doctor kept a careful eye out. Jenny said they had to cut through the crew quarters to get to the top deck – lucky for them that the forcefields were still intact. _Not_ lucky for them that the crew had turned into monsters, and that they were going to the place where the crew used to live. It seemed like exactly the sort of place the monsters would be.

Jenny's phone went again, and Amy read the message out, frowning, "'I'm in a mermaid.' What does that mean?" Jenny didn't have an answer. It went _again_ , and this message apparently said (when Amy read it), "'Hanging out with Sal.'"

" _Oh_ ," Jenny realised what was going on, "She's gone to the pub with Sally Sparrow. Well. That's not going to end well. I hope she doesn't kill anybody…" Jenny proceeded to put her phone completely on do not disturb mode.

"Shouldn't you do something?" Amy asked her, "If she's liable to start killing people?"

"She might _not_. I'll text Esther. She's the only sensible one. The other two are an absolute nightmare," Jenny said, getting her phone back out of one of the handy compartments attached to the belts of the spacesuits so that she could tell Esther Drummond not to let Ravenwood murder anybody. He thought it rather odd that Ravenwood and Sally were going out somewhere together, in light of the things he heard of his own wife when she was around Sally Sparrow.

"What _is_ it like to go out with a vampire?" Amy asked her.

"Uh…" Jenny didn't seem like she wanted to answer. Eleven didn't seem like he wanted to exist. Not there, in that hallway, having to listen to this, at any rate.

"Oh, come on, tell me _something_. Take my mind off how astonishingly creepy this whole spaceship of yours is – I'm already having to pretend somebody tried to do a very bad scarlet paintjob in the corridors and that it _isn't_ blood everywhere." A fair point, there _was_ a great deal of blood. And spooky noises; rattling in the walls, under the floor, distant, animalistic, grunting sounds. It was far more unpleasant than yesterday's luxury ocean liner, even if there _had_ been a war on.

"I mean, she… it gets a bit weird sleeping in a cellar…" Jenny said awkwardly.

"A cellar? Like, a crypt?"

"She really hates when people call it a crypt. It's not like she can be in direct sunlight, and it's the only room in the house that doesn't have any windows."

"What happens when she goes in direct sunlight?"

"She gets migraines."

"Is that it?"

"Can we have enough of the questions now? I'm not big into sharing the most intimate details of my personal life just because you think my girlfriend has a very interesting gimmick about her, Amy," Jenny snapped.

"Alright, calm down."

"I'm perfectly calm," she muttered. There was a clanging noise at the end of the corridor they were going down, and the trio froze. It was _very_ cold – the Doctor wondered if the heating was perhaps broken. He could see his breath in front of his eyes. In the light of their mounted torches they saw something roll along the floor, a metal canister, most likely a fire extinguisher. But the ship hadn't rocked, so what had knocked it over? Glancing up and sideways, he saw nothing on the ceilings or the walls that gave any indication.

"Creepy," Amy breathed.

"If you hadn't pointed out how creepy that was, we could have all just forgotten it ever happened and pretended it wasn't creepy at all," Jenny whispered back, "Maybe the wind blew it over?"

"There isn't any wind! We're on a spaceship!"

"Oh, alright, Amelia, I didn't know optimism was a crime," she snapped.

" _Don't_ call me Amelia, _Jen_ ," Amy retaliated.

The Doctor cleared his throat, "Is it at all, perhaps, possible that there aren't any more of those things? How many people are there supposed to be on this ship?"

"Twenty?" Jenny said uncertainly, after she cast one final glare in Amy's direction, "That was when I was here. So there's still a possible seventeen when you take away me, Iveanne, and the one I already shot. But it's probably less because of all the, uh, body parts…"

"So there's anywhere between zero and seventeen of them?" Amy asked.

" _Yes_ , but the good news is, I have more than seventeen spikes to shoot them with," Jenny assured her.

"But one shot doesn't kill them."

"Yeah. Try not to think about that part. This way, then," Jenny said, nodding ahead, down the corridor where that canister had just mysteriously fallen over.

"What do you mean, 'that way?' We can't go that way," Amy hissed, "I don't understand why we can't just, you know, leave. We could just take crazy ex-girlfriend back there onto the TARDIS and leave this ship and the cursed artefact out here."

"And what? Make it somebody else's problem? We can't do that," Jenny said.

"But these idiots refused to take your advice to begin with and came looking for it."

"What are you saying, they deserved it? Of course they don't deserve it, nobody deserves this. And anyway, I put this crew together, and _I_ lost control of it, and they were my responsibility. I don't like people dying on my watch, and this? This is worse than dying. At the very least they should all be put out of their misery," she said, "This Cartax, or whatever it is, needs to be destroyed."

"I'm sure that _you_ could go back to the TARDIS?" Eleven suggested to her, sounding more hopeful than he intended. There were a few reasons he hadn't told Amy she couldn't come out earlier that morning. Firstly, because she was saying she had to get away from Rory, because she was sick of Rory going on and on and on and on about all the things he overheard – namely, the Doctor's own late-night conversations and 'intimate moments' with his wife. Secondly, because Jenny hadn't told her she couldn't come, and he supposed if Jenny didn't mind, or if Jenny wanted some sort of buffer, he would need to respect that. Thirdly because of even more guilt on the Doctor's part; Amy had made some callous remark about how he 'doesn't have time for his friends anymore,' and 'only cares about his wife.' Emotionally blackmailing him. Never mind the fact that it was his daughter he was spending time with, _not_ his wife, and that caring about his wife wasn't a crime in the remotest sense. Again, no doubt it all went back to Rory giving a running commentary of Eleven's sex life, and her being sick of it. Eleven was sick of it, too. Rory, that was. Not his sex life. Wasn't sick of _that_.

"No thanks," Amy said coolly, "Somebody has to stop you two from tearing each other's throats out. After all, I'm not _that_ eager to see Thirteen again." _Now you've done it_ , Eleven thought.

"If you could not talk about Thirteen, that would be really great," she said to Amy, "Because, you know, she's kind of my mum, and I kind of really miss her? A lot? So it would be nice if you didn't make her a punchline in your latest sarcastic comment. Amelia."

"What's say we forget all about the fire extinguisher and head on through?" the Doctor suggested, taking point as the pair of them glared at one another (and Amy was worried about Jenny and _him_ tearing each other's throats out?) It looked very odd given the drastic height difference. "The two of you are being ghastly – and, for the record, I agree with Jenny, and you should too. We can't very well leave this what-do-you-call-it here so that all of this happens again."

He proceeded to just walk on ahead and stick his own hand through the hologramatic door lock, rather than Jenny being the one to do it. He was inclined to agree with Amy, however, when he saw what awaited them in the crew quarters. It was just a thin corridor with doors on either side, but it was _covered_ in blood and mess, more so than they had seen anywhere on the _Comet_ so far. That wasn't all, though, there was another of those things, those flesh-coloured atrocities, but this one was lying, motionless, on the floor.

"Do you think it's dead?" Amy whispered. Then she nudged Eleven in the back, "Scan it?"

"No. What if it _isn't_ dead? And it wakes up because of the noise?" he turned to address Jenny, "Maybe you should shoot it?"

"I can't shoot it, I need to conserve ammunition. If that thing _is_ dead, it'd be a waste," she said.

"Maybe it's worth the risk," Amy said.

"Hold on, I have an idea," Eleven told them, backing away, out into the hallway again, where he went and retrieved that canister from where it had been knocked over. He picked it up and carried it into the crew quarters (it was quite heavy, whatever it was supposed to contain), and then he lobbed it right at that thing lying on the floor. The canister hit the creature right in the back, but it didn't move at all, and the canister clattered and rolled away. "I suppose maybe it _is_ safe to-"

There was an enormous crash as a whole panel of the ceiling was forced to the floor, landing right on top of the creature they had been studying and giving way for _another_ creature to drop down from above. It made a strangled, roaring noise and came right at them with its blade-like bone-arms, and Amy audibly _screamed_ and grabbed the Doctor's arm. He didn't have a clue what to do. Lucky for them, Jenny _did_. She swung that huge gun around and it impacted right with the side of the creature's head, the force sending it into the wall on their right. Then, with impossible reflexes, she shot the thing twice in both of its elbows, leaving it still alive, but pinned to the wall. It still flailed and hissed at them.

"Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?" Amy asked Jenny.

"I didn't," she said, "I just can. I mean, I _am_ a genetically engineered, alien supersoldier. I never miss. Anyway, it takes a lot to frighten a girl who used to wrestle alligators in Louisiana."

"You used to _what_?" Eleven asked.

"Well it wasn't for sport, it was for food," she told him. Hadn't she mentioned something about living in a swamp the other day? When she had yelled? "I actually – I had a pet one, called Fluffy." Jenny smiled to herself a little with nostalgia for this pet alligator of hers, which looked very out of place given the spitting monster stuck to the wall right next to them. Her expression saddened, "Then Viola told me I couldn't bring it in the house." He wondered who Viola was – not another old girlfriend?

"Doctor," Amy said, "What's that on the doors?" He followed Amy's gaze and saw what she saw. It hadn't been blood on the walls – well, no, there was still a lot of blood on the walls as well, but what they were looking at was red paint. A large, red X. Almost all of the doors had Xs on them. "Didn't they do that during the plague?"

"Yes, for people who were infected," the Doctor said, then he turned to speak to Jenny, "If Iveanne hasn't caught this 'curse,' that means she's been locked up in her cabin for weeks, at least, so she can't really have had a clue what was going on out here. I doubt the crew would be all that fond of her given her cowardice."

"Meaning what?" she asked.

"Meaning that the crew must have realised this isn't a curse, it's definitely some sort of virus, or disease," he said, "And for them to be painting Xs on doors means they knew it was a virus, they knew it was contagious, and they _didn't_ know how to cure it…"

Jenny thought about this for a second, then said, "Kolway's room is around here, I think it's at the end of the hall." Amy had her eyes fixed on the beast hanging off the wall. She then added, "Kolway's the ship's doctor. Was the doctor. Probably dead now. He might have notes on his terminal."

"Isn't there another way around?" Amy asked.

"Yes," Jenny answered her, "Probably full of more of those things that aren't quite as dead-looking as that one on the floor." In this instance, Jenny was fearless. She didn't have a clue what was going on, and one of her hands didn't work, and the was faced with the grief for about twenty people, but she was still soldiering on through all of this. The Doctor admired her.

Jenny was the first one to pass the still creature on the floor, and it didn't move at all when she did, which led Amy and Eleven to believe it was safe. He tiptoed, Amy still holding onto his other arm, over its bony limbs, and it didn't move a muscle. He hoped they weren't going to get anymore 'surprises' from above…

Jenny went to open the last door on the left of the long corridor, the room belonging to this Kolway, and it wasn't a pretty sight.

"Oh, no…" she breathed upon seeing a body on the bed. And not a virus-ridden body, a human one. A dead, human one.

"Is that Kolway?" Eleven asked her, and she nodded. Kolway's body had a gun in one hand – presumably it was a suicide to avoid turning into one of those things. "Maybe it's for the best. Better than being a monster."

"What would be for the best would be if they had all listened to me to begin with," she muttered, "Then this wouldn't have happened." Seemingly annoyed – possibly to disguise her upset – Jenny walked over to a computer terminal in the corner, the door sliding closed behind them. She sonicked it and the screen lit up.

"Do you remember when we met those pirates?" Amy asked him.

"Oh, yes, with the mermaid and the secret spaceship," he reminisced a little, "And Rory died, didn't he? Again. Always dying, that one. Dies more than my wife. This is far worse than that, though, at least the supposed-mermaid turned out to be benign in the end. I doubt these things are anything but malevolent."

"He does have notes," Jenny interrupted, "About this virus." She was scrolling and reading _very_ quickly. "Apparently it spread through contact, starting with… the people who retrieved the Anobine Cartax. If it _is_ the Anobine Cartax. So this really is all Iveanne's fault. Kolway started calling it the 'Anobine Infection.'"

"That'd be catchy if it wasn't so bloody terrifying," Amy grumbled. There was a rattling noise in the hallway outside, the door now shut and leaving them in the late Kolway's dark bedroom. They all glanced at each other and Jenny, finding out what they needed to, left the terminal alone in order to open the door again, lifting that gun up and looking down the sights.

The creature that had been a crumpled mess on the floor was gone – the sound had been it pushing the ceiling panel off of itself. He assumed it had gone back into the hole where the other one had come from, the other one which was now hanging limply on the wall.

Amy commented, "So these things really like to play dead, then… they're just as bad as you two."

 **AN: Like I said, superheroes next, then more Future Clarteen after that, the latter of which will be** ** _incredibly_** **light and funny, in contrasted to how bleak this one's become.**


	5. Into the Void

_Into the Void_

 _Eleven_

"Well. That really puts a bit of a dampener on things."

"And I think that sentence puts a bit of an _understatement_ on things," the Doctor grumbled in response to Amy's comment.

The exterior deck of the _Comet_ was gargantuan. Towering up on either side of them were huge, rib-like attachments which all worked together to generate an amber-coloured forcefield around the ship, keeping all of the atmosphere (and the Anobine Infection) sealed up within, pumping diseased air around and around with no escape. The Cartax, or whatever it was, was right in front of them, the thing a relatively large sphere with a thin, blue glow around it. Unfortunately, it was also around thirty feet above them, floating in what looked to the Doctor like a crow's nest.

"Is that a crow's nest?" he decided to ask his daughter about it, who stood with her gun slung over her back and her hands on her hips, squinting and looking up at it. The two of them still didn't have their helmets on, only Amy did. Nice to see the forcefield holding up well.

"Yeah," she answered.

"Why is there a crow's nest on a spaceship?"

"For the same reason there's a crow's nest on a normal ship, to see stuff. And it's a nice view from up there." He thought it was odd, and wondered if she had maybe installed it herself _because_ of the 'nice view.'

"And how would one go about getting _up there_?" Amy questioned.

"There's a teleport relay," Jenny explained, "Except, everything's off on the ship except life support, to preserve power. If the lights are off, the teleports are off."

"Can't you switch it back on?"

"Usually, yeah."

"But why not now?"

"Because _that's_ the teleport relay," Jenny said, pointing at something at the base of the crow's nest, a circular archway. Well, once it had been circular, it was now bashed to pieces, the control panel smashed apart. No sonic screwdriver would fix _that_. Nothing would fix it, the only thing that would do any good would be a full replacement.

"Okay, so, we can't get whatever it is? Can't you switch off the atmosphere and let it get sucked out?" Amy asked.

" _No_ , haven't you been listening? It needs to be destroyed. Letting it fly out into space is just as bad as leaving it here," the Doctor said.

"This is obviously a test," Jenny said.

"A test?" he asked, "A test of what?"

"Character, probably… Obviously Iveanne stuck that stupid thing up there. There was a spacesuit in the cabin, didn't you see? And tons of rations. Meaning that for all her cowardly behaviour, after this plague broke out, she kept leaving to gather supplies. Meaning she probably broke the teleport relay, left it there, and started broadcasting that distress signal," she said. He had noticed most of those things, as well. Jenny sighed, and added, mostly to herself, "Why is it that _all_ the women I meet turn out to be sociopaths… except Clara." He wondered if she meant this 'Viola,' the person she had mentioned earlier when talking about her hobby of alligator wrestling.

"So she got you to come here, why? Just to rescue her?"

"No… she knows me… she'd know I'd come to destroy it when I found out what it did…"

"So she put it where you can't get it," Amy said, talking as though she had solved a problem. Jenny said nothing, she was thinking. "Jenny?"

"Maybe," she told Amy absently. It was clear she didn't think Amy was quite right, but she herself didn't know what _was_ right to correct her. Jenny looked the opposite direction from the Cartax and the crow's nest, at the enormous, rear thrusters of the _Comet_. They towered up, a huge block of metal, about the same height off the deck as the crow's nest itself.

"What are you thinking?" Eleven asked her.

"That there's a ladder on the side of the thruster shell so that people can climb in and do maintenance from above," she answered.

"But how will climbing up there get you up _there_?" he motioned at the crow's nest.

"Because all the power's off…" she said. She wasn't really talking to him, she was more talking to herself, and she walked over to the teleport relay at the base of the crow's nest and peered at the panel on the base. "If the power's off, that means all the cables in here I ran about a year and a half ago don't have any electricity going through them, so they're safe to touch, and they're sturdy." Then she turned to him, "Would you help me with this?"

"Of course," he said immediately, walking over.

"I can't really pull the cables out with my thumb the way it is," she told him, and he felt a pang of guilt. She said she couldn't pull the cables, but she _could_ wrench the remainder of the panel off the side of it and throw it onto the floor. Then it was just electronics, and she picked a wire and pulled it, and he began to help, a few times having to tug quite hard and presumably breaking something deep within the _Comet_ itself. Not that it really mattered. Even if they somehow shut off life support, Iveanne would be fine, and he and Jenny could just put their helmets back on.

There was a great amount of electrical cable buried inside the ship, and it just kept coming and coming and coming, piling up on the floor around them. Pulling it out was quite exhaustive work, too.

"Why is there so much of that stuff?" Amy asked.

"I had to run it through the walls all the way to the backup generator, because nobody wanted me using the main generators for a fancy, arguably pointless teleport. And the backup generator is quite far away," Jenny explained. Eleven gave one last tug and the cable flew out, nearly sending him falling backwards.

"What are you going to do with it?" Eleven asked, watching her pick it up and wrap it around her bad hand to make a neat coil.

"Improvise," she answered. When _he_ told someone he was going to improvise, it usually meant he was going to do something potentially dangerous with an ambiguous outcome he hadn't entirely thought through, and he didn't want anybody to question how watertight his most likely _very_ leaky plan really was. Maybe Jenny was more sensible than he was, though, and 'improvise' didn't mean quite the same thing.

With the power cable wrapped around her bad arm and pushed up to her shoulder and her gun across her back, she toddled away towards the enormous thrusters, the sort of things that could send a ship to warp speed in a few seconds flat.

"Are you sure you know what you're doing?" Amy called up to her when she began her ascent of the ladder, the other two merely watching. When Jenny said nothing, Amy turned and asked him, "Do you think she knows what she's doing?"

"That depends," Eleven began, "If she's really as much like me as people keep saying… then she probably hasn't got a clue. Doesn't mean it won't go well, though." He smiled at Amy, when really he was just as nervous as she was, he was just trying to be a bit more optimistic about it. He didn't want Jenny to fall at that height and die – another thing that would be his fault. But again, he reminded himself, she'd survived quite well for two-hundred years, he _had_ to have more faith in her abilities. Though he did wish she would say what she was doing.

Jenny was a tiny, blonde-haired blip when she perched herself on the edge of the thruster, sitting down with her legs over the edge, doing something with her gun and the cable. It was impossible to tell from where they were.

" _Is_ she like me?" Eleven asked Amy, now that Jenny couldn't hear either of them, the close-range comms switched off ever since the Time Lords had removed their helmets.

"You _are_ going out with the same girl," Amy pointed out, "Maybe the two of you should bond over that instead of thinking about how weird it is all the time. All it really means is you like her new flame, which is more than can be said for the last one. And running and hiding when things get emotional? Like she's been doing all week? That's you all over."

"That's not exactly a positive trait," the Doctor pointed out.

"Stubborn?" Amy suggested, "Headstrong? You both have blue eyes? I don't really know her all that well."

"Yes, well, I suppose-"

There was a loud noise from above and they both jumped and saw a length of electrical cable whooshing through the air from Jenny's direction, then a clanging noise as one of those huge spikes wedged itself into the edge of the crow's nest, all the way from the thrusters. Jenny still had hold of the other end, it looked like, and she shot another metal spike into the top of the thrusters' hull at her feet. Then she appeared to pull the rest of the electrical cable as taught as she could, and tied it around the spike in front of her, making a line from the crow's nest to the thrusters.

"Are you going to walk on that!?" Amy yelled up.

"What!?" Jenny shouted back.

"ARE YOU GOING TO WALK ON THAT!?" Amy shouted again. The Doctor just gawked. With her good hand, she gave Amy a thumbs up. "You have to stop her! That's dangerous!" Jenny, tentatively, took a step out onto the line, holding her arms out at either side. It wasn't her ability to balance that he was questioning – she _had_ told him the other day that she had once been the star acrobat in a circus - it was the ability of those rusty spikes and that electrical cable to hold her up, and his own ability to catch her if they didn't. "What if she falls!?"

"She won't fall," Eleven told Amy, then he called up, "You won't fall, will you, Jenny?" and, though she was so far above them, he thought he saw her smile. And then the unthinkable happened. She wobbled, and toppled sideways. Both of his hearts stopped for the split second in which he was sure Jenny was going to plummet to another messy end, and then she stopped falling and just hung there, having caught herself on the cable with her good hand. He could have sworn he heard her laugh.

With her other hand she reached up and fumbled with the collar of the spacesuit for a moment, and then her voice crackled through the speakers clearly, "You two are funny."

"You almost gave me a heart attack! Two heart attacks, in fact, at the same time!" he protested after switching his own comms back on. Jenny laughed again.

"That was my whole gimmick," she told him, pulling herself back up, and then pushing herself up even more so that she was balancing upside-down on one hand on the wire. Amy was amazed. "The wire I used to use was like fishing line and over sixty feet high, and all the trapezes were made of glass. So I would fall, and everyone would think I was going to die, and then I'd grab the trapeze out of nowhere. All part of the thrill of the performance, but the wire used to cut into my feet a lot." She righted herself, landing back on her feet perfectly on the cable, and continued to walk easily towards the crow's nest. "I'd do a cartwheel up here if my thumb wasn't broken, or a somersault."

"Have you ever had a normal job?" Amy asked her, "One that wasn't being a soldier or a pirate captain or an acrobat?"

"Not really," Jenny said. Showing off had clearly put her in a better mood than usual – she was sharing things. Actually _sharing_ things. The Doctor was quite excited. But she didn't say anything after that, and Amy just stared, marvelling at how easy she was finding it. Until she got to the very end, that was, and she wobbled again and froze.

"Don't jump again," Amy told her sharply, "It freaks me out."

"It's coming loose," Jenny answered, "At the other end."

"Get off it, then," the Doctor said quickly, "Jump to the crow's nest!" Jenny tried to tentatively take another step forwards on the cable, and then it gave way. The spike stuck into the thrusters pulled free, and Jenny was forced to jump for the crow's nest while the Doctor and Amy were trying to leap out of the way of a very sharp spike flying straight for them on the end of the cable. It went right between them like a bullet, swung up until it was nearly horizontal, then came back again. Jenny hung off the edge of the crow's nest by one hand, but doing that probably wasn't putting any strain on her at all. "Jenny! Are you okay!?" he shouted.

"I'm fine," she answered, hauling herself up and squeezing between the railings around the thing, right with the Anobine Cartax, which continued to float. "It's alright, it'll give me an easier way back down." The spike-on-a-string swung through the air, slowing. Neither he nor Amy wanted to risk trying to stop it – he didn't want his palm to be impaled by that thing. Oswin would hate him _even more_ if he ruptured her spacesuit.

"What is it, then? That thing?" Amy asked.

"Yes, good question," the Doctor added, both of them unable to do anything other than watch. Jenny plucked the floating sphere out of the air and held it up in front of her eyes, looking at it.

"It's got a hole in it," she said, "I have no idea what it is. Catch." He could have done with a bit more warning when she dropped it over the edge, and as it happened he only _just_ caught it. It was big and metal and it _did_ have a hole in it, like someone had punched it, and had stopped glowing now that Jenny had taken it from where it had been.

"What's this Anobine Cartax supposed to be?" he inquired, examining it, "There must be stories."

"They're like Chinese whispers," Jenny explained. She crawled back through the crow's nest railings and grabbed hold of the cable where it now hung limply, the spike suspended in the air between the Doctor and Amy. Giving it a wide berth, Amy walked around to be back at the Doctor's side looking at the Cartax as well. Lucky these suits were of such a good quality; anything less and even the tiniest rupture could see Amy catching the infection and turning into one of those horrors hiding out below deck. "No one really knows, that's why I thought it didn't exist. Some people say it's the thing that creates the gravity belt, some people say it's all the secrets of a lost civilisation whose name is conveniently omitted from the myths. Some just think they'll get rich with it. The usual stuff. But there aren't any descriptions of what it looks like." While she talked, she was climbing down the cable, doing a very good job of it considering her thumb.

"Well I daresay that you're probably right, and this 'Anobine Cartax' doesn't exist," he said, "I hardly think that _this_ is what the legends are talking about."

"Why?" she asked, dropping down lightly onto their level again, returned from her elevated journey, "What is it?"

"It's an advanced containment device," he told her.

"Containing what?" Amy asked.

"This plague. It's a very clever piece of engineering, actually, it doesn't kill the plague, it mimics a biological organism to trick the microbes. In a nutshell, it more or less sucks the diseases out of people, and they all get stored within. Haven't a clue where it comes from, _or_ this infection, but whoever built it must have pulled the contagion out of the air. Maybe it didn't turn this species into monsters like it does humans and it was curable. Then, what better place to dump it than the Fowl Pocket? The part of space nothing can ever leave?"

"And someone broke it?" Amy said.

"Probably to see if there was something valuable inside. Wouldn't be surprised if it was Iveanne who ordered it cracked open," Jenny sighed.

"Well what do we do with it? We can't take it onto the TARDIS," Amy said.

Eleven was about to say something else – not anything useful, because he was wondering if perhaps throwing it into the Eye of Harmony might rid them of it, and that involved doing the very thing Amy said they couldn't do (which he agreed with.) He didn't get the chance to, though, because they were interrupted by someone emerging, in a blue, baggy spacesuit, from the open hatch in the floor that hid the staircase back down to the interior. The same spacesuit he'd seen slumped on an empty chair in the captain's cabin earlier.

"You still haven't quite figured it out," said Iveanne's smarmy, familiar voice. She was carrying weapons, too. Not the weapons he expected to see on a spaceship, though; two swords. Cutlasses, in fact. "For my love," she said, tossing one of the lethal swords right at Jenny, who hastened to catch it by its hilt. "Using your left hand again?"

"What do you want?" Jenny questioned her, glancing, confused, at the sword.

"You to die. I was lying. I don't have a clue if that plague affects Time Lords or not. And there you two are, no helmets on, breathing in the air," Iveanne said. Though he doubted that it would do much good anymore, the Doctor quickly fumbled with the collar of his suit, the glass segments of the helmet rising up around his head to seal him away from the outside world. Jenny did the same thing. Iveanne laughed. "Doesn't look like the Cartax is going to kill you anytime soon, though, so I suppose I'll have to do it myself."

"She really _is_ crazy," Amy said.

"It's kill or be killed, Captain Raxis," Iveanne said to Jenny, holding out the sword. She must have pressed a button on it, because it immediately started to glow a bright red, the metal becoming almost molten and burning hot. As if a sword needed to be made doubly lethal like that.

"I don't want to fight you, or kill you," Jenny said to her. Iveanne merely shrugged. Yes, he thought, Amy was right, she was definitely crazy. Iveanne swung the cutlass, bright red and fiery, right at Jenny, who switched on her own sword just in time to block it.

"You do know how to sword fight, don't you!?" Amy asked, the Doctor dropping the Cartax on the floor and dragging Amy away from the swords.

"Of course I do!" Jenny shouted back, ducking a swing Iveanne aimed at her head. At that temperature, the blade would melt clean through the glass helmet and take split Jenny's head apart.

"Why don't you use your good hand, then?" Iveanne questioned, clearly knowing that she had an advantage over Jenny that day. The Doctor stood and watched, seeing blurs of orange light in the air as his daughter blocked every single one of Iveanne's attacks, listening the sounds of the metal clashing over and over.

"Why would you call me back here to kill me? How did you know I wasn't dead?" Jenny demanded, really having to try hard to block Iveanne's attacks with one hand.

"I'm not the sort of person to leave someone to die and not check the job got done," Iveanne said, trying to stab Jenny right in her gut, but Jenny side stepped out of her way and hit Iveanne's cutlass to the side, "Don't you remember Fehl and Kayn? Those two Tranchans that were saved from the shadows as well? They told me everything when I tracked them down, about blue boxes and space travel." Jenny slashed at Iveanne and Iveanne blocked, leaving them locked together, swords pressing against each other. "They thought if they gave you up I'd let them live."

"You _killed_ them!?" Jenny exclaimed, her grip slipping, Iveanne pushing Jenny's cutlass away and taking a swipe for her ribcage, which Jenny managed to block.

"One way or another, Raxis, you're going to die today."

" _You know_ ," Jenny shouted in the Doctor's direction, he and Amy just watching, "She's right about my hand!? I can't actually keep this up forever!? Considering I can't rupture her suit at all or she'll get the plague and _die_ , and I don't want to kill her, it would be nice if you two would do something to help out!?"

"Right! Yes! Sorry!" Eleven spluttered. But he didn't know what to do to help out. Iveanne laughed and kept swinging for Jenny, who blocked her at every turn, the pair of them duelling in a haze of red light and heat. "Keep her busy!"

"For the record, I did lose the last sword fight I was in!" Jenny shouted, "Fatally!"

"I'm working on it!" Eleven said, staring around at the things on the ship. At present the only idea he had was just lobbing the faux-Cartax right at Iveanne's head, but that would shatter her faceplate and turn her into another of those things. He couldn't think of any way to incapacitate her that wouldn't lead to her becoming one of them, a fate worse than death. That led him to believe that he was going to have to do something drastic, something that Jenny would not. "Just try not to die!"

"Oh, thanks for brilliant advice, dad! Because I wasn't doing that already!" she shouted back at him, but he hardly listened. Amy following him, he was running over to the nearest of those enormous rib-like attachments generating the artificial atmosphere and keeping the whole _Comet_ pressurised.

"What are you doing?" Amy asked him, and he didn't answer. "Doctor!?"

"Something she won't," he said. With the sonic screwdriver he pulled off a large, metal panel from near the base of the forcefield generator, revealing a whole bunch of wiring.

"What?"

"I have to break the forcefield," he answered.

" _What_? You can't do that! We'll all get sucked out into space!" Amy protested.

"No, _she_ will. _We_ won't, _we_ have magno-boots, for zero-gravity," he explained, "But those spacesuits in this century don't, they still use tethers for spacewalks right now."

"And what happens to her?"

"Best case scenario, Jenny manages to get the sword away from her in the zero gravity while she floats and we drag her back to the TARDIS. Worst case scenario, she gets pulled into space and suffocates."

"You're going to kill her!?"

"What else am I supposed to do!?" he demanded of her, "Have you got a better idea, Pond!? Jenny can't just block her forever, she has a broken thumb, she'll lose, and that would be _my_ fault. I'm not letting my daughter die again. Every time that happens there's a risk she might not come back. So, yes, I'm going to kill the homicidal maniac over there who's trying to destroy the only semblance of a family I have left." Then he pointed the sonic screwdriver at the inner-workings of the generator definitively, Amy no longer trying to talk him out of it, one-handed Jenny beginning to struggle quite severely to keep up with two-handed Iveanne.

The soft, amber glow of the forcefields flickered. Taking out one generator took out all of them, and the entire system failed within seconds. He felt the force of pressure leaving the _Comet_ try and pull him away, while bright lights around the soles of his boots lit up to indicate they were magnetised. It was like wind rushing around them, random bits of debris being picked up from around them and flung into space. Iveanne had quick reflexes, though. She dropped the cutlass but grabbed hold of Jenny's right arm as she was getting dragged away, clawing at her. Eleven heard Jenny make a noise of pain as Iveanne scrabbled at the hand with the broken thumb, trying to cling on for dear life. Then Jenny did something he didn't expect. She took her own burning hot cutlass and slashed Iveanne's O2 tube on her back, slicing the thing clean apart. With a sudden loss of air, Iveanne couldn't hold on, and found herself pulled right out into space, the three of them watching her silhouette disappear into the Fowl Pocket's green clouds.

 **AN: Pretty sure that this chapter is written terribly and proofreading it was like hitting my face against a wall, so, sorry about that.**


	6. New Perspective

_New Perspective_

 _Eleven_

If the Anobine Cartax of legend existed, the containment device they had found was not it. It would not be sought after with the same obsessive tenacities. People would still come looking for _something_ , they would still lose themselves in the Fowl Pocket, but with the right precautions, the device could stay hidden aboard the _Comet_ and would never harm anybody again. Destroying the atmospheric generators on the exterior had sucked all the air out of the entire ship, which was quite the rust bucket and not correctly sealed. It had also killed, like Iveanne, all the foul creatures hiding like rats in the ship's crevices and cracks. In the zero gravity, bits of them floated around in the dark, knocking against the Doctor's arms and legs in a slowed down barrage of unpleasantness and gore.

They passed, again, through the airlock into the captain's cabin, carrying the fake Cartax with them, infecting the only air left on the ship. They were going to leave it there, lock it in, leave a warning behind, if the corpses drifting around weren't enough of one. They would all be safe, though. This plague wasn't affecting the Time Lords yet, and Amy had been sealed away in her suit for hours already without a sign of infection. At least, in the captain's cabin, they could switch off the mango-boots and walk freely. It was a tiny microcosm of atmosphere in there, full life support, electricity, zero gravity, the works. No doubt it was all plumbed in, too. He wouldn't be surprised to find a gas stove hidden away in a corner. _He_ carried the Cartax, leaving Jenny alone to her thoughts, and went and dumped it on the table covered in the late Iveanne's refuse.

"We should leave a message," Jenny declared, standing in front of it, crossing her arms, still armed with both of her guns, head sealed away in a fishbowl that now had flecks of muck and blood across its front.

"On the outside of the room, though. Otherwise it'll be useless," he said. He would have suggested evacuating this room of air, too, but that thing had been floating around in space for millennia already. Just sucking out the air wouldn't kill the bacteria before they found a host. He doubted that anything would kill them at this stage.

"Oi, Time Lords, come and look at this," Amy called, voice buzzing in the suits' speakers. Eleven glanced over his shoulder, but saw nothing. "There's a whole room back here full of junk."

"Junk?" Jenny asked, following Amy's vague directions and her own memory. She did used to live in this cabin, after all, very recently. Only eight months' back. Eleven, curious, trailed after the pair of them as well, and marvelled at the room which Amy had discovered. It _was_ full of junk, and Jenny gasped with pleasure and smiled when she saw it all. It was ram-packed, it looked like the houses of hoarders he saw when he allowed his wife to talk him into watching reality television with her in the evenings. "This is my stuff!" Jenny exclaimed, "I thought this all got burned! She must have been obsessed with me…"

"Maybe she was going to sell it," Amy suggested.

"Sell it?" Jenny frowned, picking something wooden up from on top of a stack of old boxes that didn't look like they fit the century at all, "This stuff?" What she was holding was a battered fiddle, beaming at it like it was an old friend. "Viola used to make me play this in her speakeasy back in the Thirties to draw in the crowds." Jenny only drew the bow across its neck once, realising it was far from being in tune, and winced when it sounded horrible.

"That's the second time you've mentioned somebody called Viola," the Doctor pointed out. Jenny was too excited by the sight of all this stuff, putting the fiddle back down and searching around for more, to lie to him and hide things. In her happiness, she was no longer so enigmatic, so intent on keeping everything buried, "She's not another ex-girlfriend?"

" _Viola_? God, no," Jenny was appalled at the thought, "She was horrible. _Is_ horrible. I met her when she was nineteen, I think. Ten years later she was the head of a crime family in New Orleans, took advantage of prohibition. She was definitely a sociopath."

"But you were friends with her?"

"She let me live in her house in exchange for brewing moonshine and protecting her from the imaginary assassins she dreamt up in her paranoia," Jenny explained.

"You brewed moonshine? For the mafia?" he asked.

"Yeah. Why? Do you want me to make some?"

"Yes," said Amy.

"No," said the Doctor. Amy glared at him, and he tried to ignore her, staring around at everything else that was stuffed into the comparably tiny bedroom in the opulent captain's quarters. "God forbid anybody on the TARDIS gets drunk. It never goes well." Amy was distracted, though, picking something else up from within a box, looking at it with borderline disgust and holding it arm's length. Eleven couldn't quite distinguish what it was in the shadowy room.

"Jenny…" she began, "Is this an urn…?" Jenny glanced over.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed, "Emmett!" she walked over and took the urn – for it most definitely _was_ an urn – right out of Amy's hands.

"I thought Emmett was the gun…?" the Doctor said slowly.

"The gun is named after him, he died, a long time ago. He was a time agent, rescued me from Tungtrun and told me about Time Lords, then… he got shot… I had to save his body from a crocodile, built the pyre myself…" she said, "The time agency said he didn't have any family for his remains to go to, so I… kept them. I thought he would want to see the universe with me, or something…" It was odd, he supposed, but it was sweet of her. But how long ago was 'a long time,' he wondered? "I need to take this all back onto the TARDIS."

"Well, yes, of course, if you like. I could build you a whole, huge room to keep your things in, if you want. You could have your own mansion, or… a castle, even, on board, if you like," he told her, and she looked at him, a little confused.

"I think you're trying too hard, father. I don't need a castle. There's not that much. It's mostly guns," she said, placing Emmett's ashes down carefully. Amy still poked around and found all manner of funny gizmos she couldn't determine the uses of, and Jenny continued to search. As for him? He didn't touch a single thing. Didn't think it was his place to go rooting around through her personals. He wanted to know more about her time on Tungtrun, that desolate arctic wasteland, when she picked up a metal tin and rattled it. He watched her open it and lift something out.

"What's that?" he asked, and she held it out to him between the fingers of her encased hand.

"It's a medal of valour for First Lieutenant Young, that's what led me to be promoted to Major in the Homeworld Alliance. There's a whole bunch of them. I have a badge of outstanding service to the RAF, too, I think. All sorts of decorations," she said, holding out the tin to him. It really was full to the brim with medals, medals for dedicated service, bravery, she even had a Victoria Cross and he thought he was dying to know what she did to get that. Very much he would like her to sit down and talk him through every last one of those awards for heroism and morale boosting, tell him what some of the funny tokens buried at the bottom were. This room and everything in it was Jenny's life, everything that had happened to her that wasn't recorded on her physiology like wrinkles were on humans. "Oh, here's Viola." Jenny was holding a leather-bound volume in her hand.

"Is that a photo album?"

"Yeah," she pulled something aged and yellow out of it, a frankly ancient photograph of her standing outside of a very fancy mansion with a woman who looked very young but _very_ stern. If he had to, he would say she didn't know what a sense of humour was. He turned it over and read the writing on the back: _J. DeLacey & V. O'Hara, July 24_ _th_ _, 1934_.

"July 24th? Isn't that your birthday?"

"Yeah, that's why she made me get the picture taken. I turned eleven," she said. "I can't believe you remember my birthday."

" _Eleven_? You were brewing moonshine when you were just eleven?" Amy questioned. Jenny nodded and took the picture back off the Doctor. "God, you weren't even old enough to legally _drink_ the moonshine…"

"Of course I remember it," he said, not telling her that he had had spent a few hours sifting through eons of the TARDIS's records to discover the date of his initial visit to Messaline. That wasn't important. He definitely wasn't going to forget it again. "Why does it say 'J. DeLacey' on the back?"

"That was the name I was using at the time, the first surname I ever had, that I stole from Emmett when he died," she explained, "I had to call myself _something_. It's not like _you_ ever gave me a surname."

He pulled a funny-looking medallion out of Jenny's medal tin with some sort of sigil on it, squinting to try and deduce what it was. It was black and slightly translucent.

"What's this?" he asked her, showing her it.

"Uh, it's a… membership… loyalty… thingy… for the Blacklight Society," she said.

"What's that?"

"A thieves' guild," she answered, "They give you one of those when you pass the initiation."

"Stealing must run in the family," Amy commented. The Doctor giving anybody a lecture on the immorality of stealing would render him the universe's most abominable hypocrite for sure. The very ship he lived in had been stolen, and the clothes on his back. "You even steal people."

"I do not," he argued.

"You stole _me_ on my wedding night."

"I didn't steal you, Amelia, you came very willingly _and_ tried to cheat on Rory with me, so _I_ am hardly in the wrong," he grumbled. Amy was amusing herself trying to irritate him. "So you've done a lot of work that isn't strictly legal?"

"Thievery and smuggling are my bread and butter, father," she said, then she pulled another photo out if the album she was flicking through, "This one's good, do you know who that is?" It was a black and white picture of her and a tall man standing in front of a Spitfire, smiling. He turned it over and read: _Captain J. Harkness & J. DeLacey, 1940_. In the background he could see the White Cliffs of Dover.

"Harkness?" he questioned.

"Yeah, that's the original Captain Jack Harkness, the real one, the one who _our_ Captain Jack Harkness stole the name from," she said, "He died a few months after that, in January, 1941. It was supposed to be a routine training exercise until the Messerschmitts showed up." Hearing that, Amy came over and snatched the ancient picture out of Jenny's hand.

"He's hot," she declared.

"And dead and gay. I can't wait to show some of these to Clara…" she added the last part to herself, "All these memories… I'd love to salvage the _Comet_ , it was my dream for ages to be a pirate queen." The Doctor glanced around and spied something paper sticking out of a nearby box. Opening the cardboard flaps he saw that the entire box was full of ration cards, German ration cards, with various dates through the 1960s printed on them. They were for such luxuries as cigarettes and alcohol.

"Why do you have these?"

"I've told you before, I was a smuggler in Berlin. I was called Kitzler. Used to go through tunnels underneath the wall and take contraband into the East," she explained. He wondered why she had kept them, instead of perhaps being charitable and dishing them out to people when she left.

"…I'll go get the TARDIS," the Doctor declared after thinking, "Bring it through here. Plague won't get through the doors. For you to bring your stuff on board. If you want."

"Well I can't really put it anywhere else," she said, "Clara would kill me if I took at this stuff to her house."

"Then I'll go fetch it. I'll be right back, in just a few seconds."

* * *

"First it seems like you've been fretting for days about the state of my thumb, but when I come back to the TARDIS you come at me with a saw blade?" Jenny questioned Martha Jones, who had just forcibly dragged her all the way from the console room to the medibay by her elbow, the Doctor feeling out of place but still trailing along after them. They had been spending the best part of two hours lugging boxes and trinkets back and forth, Amy giving up halfway through because she fancied a coffee and a shower, and had just finished when Martha got word of Jenny's 'return.' Whether she was returning for good or not, the Doctor didn't know, but Martha was just about dying to get a look at her hand.

"And you've been out – what? Sword fighting? Tightrope walking?" Martha challenged, looking at Jenny sternly so that she would put her hand down on the table flat.

"I didn't use this hand for any of those! I've been good!" Jenny protested.

"Really? You haven't suffered _any_ more injuries? At all?" Jenny faltered and briefly glanced at the Doctor for some reason. "Jenny…" Martha warned.

"I mean, Clara rolled on it once while she was asleep, by accident," Jenny finally said, "But that's it. I've barely done a thing for five days."

"It had better be," Martha said, switching the saw on. Jenny pouted and looked at the saw like she was frightened of it. Perhaps she was. The Doctor would certainly be scared if someone was brandishing a saw at _him_ , even if it _was_ Martha and she was removing a fibreglass cast. He should be the one with the cast and the broken thumb. It had been his fault they got captured in Chernobyl, not hers. Maybe he should break his _own_ thumb? As a show of solidarity? Of fatherly support? He was sure that if he asked Ravenwood nicely she would indulge him.

"Why were you asking me about where I was in October in 1941?" Jenny asked him, surprising him.

"Oh, I was just… I was there, you see, yesterday. On an ocean liner. And after what you said about the war, World War Two, I remembered you were there, at the same time, and I wondered what you were doing."

"I was definitely in Plymouth, I'm sure. I was eighteen."

"I could have gone and got you," he said, listening to the saw crunch down on the cast to cut Jenny's hand free, "I said so to Oswin. She said you would hate me if I did that, though, and I told her you hate me already so it would hardly make a jot of difference."

"I don't hate you," Jenny said, meeting his eyes in between her worrisome glances at Martha and her electric saw, "You're trying."

"…And then I ran into the Shadow, and it mentioned you," he remembered.

"I think the Shadow goes by 'he.'"

"Yes, well… _he_ mentioned you."

"What did he say? Did he say anything about Cargill? He's not getting the diamond until I get that… _fiend_ arrested," she said coldly.

"Diamond? Cargill? Which Cargill? Both of them?"

"Austin."

"What did he do to you?"

Jenny sighed. "Did you ever hear of the Polaris Death Charge?"

"On Deftan?"

"Yeah. That. Cargill ordered that. _Major_ Cargill, at the time," she said his name like she was spitting it, "Except a certain _other_ Major disagreed, and a certain _other_ Major commandeered an Alliance shuttle and flew right into the Nomatee Base and rescued a few thousand soldiers and then defected, and said certain _other_ Major was then promptly used as a convenient scapegoat," she said.

"You mean _you_? Cargill framed _you_ for the massacre of a million people?"

"Yeah. According to the Alliance, I'm a war criminal." Martha was still sawing. "I was looking into it the other week and coincidentally ran into the Shadow while he was trying to hunt down and arrest some ex-partner of Jack's on Zeniph Nega, and we accidentally got involved in a bar shootout and acquired an Arcadian diamond off one of the bodies. _I_ didn't kill anybody. The Shadow is finding Cargill for me, in exchange for the diamond."

"But… but why did he frame you to begin with?"

"The exact same reason he sent someone who fought on Deftan that day to Hollowmire to stake Clara," she said, but she did not elaborate.

"What reason?"

"I can't tell you," she said, "Can't tell you a single thing about why the Cargills hate the both of us."

"Why not?"

"It's in your future, and my past, my very recent past, just before mum left." Again with her being so… _colloquial_ about Thirteen. ' _Mum_.' Was it immature of him to be irked by such a casual name?

"Oh."

"Yeah. Sorry. You know how it is."

"Yes…"

"All done," Martha declared. The saw switched off and the Doctor walked over to get a look at Jenny's thumb as Martha pulled the cast apart, but he wished he hadn't. It was very foul-looking, terribly bruised with stitches running down the knuckle. He was even _more_ guilty seeing that mangled mess than he had been before. It twitched a little, too, like the tendons weren't working properly.

"What's the prognosis, Dr Jones?" Jenny asked Martha jokingly, "Is it broken?" Martha clearly wasn't in a mood for jokes, though, going by the glare she gave Jenny. Jenny just smiled. "Are you gonna put another cast on it? Because if you are I want to take a photo first to show to Clara."

"It needs a wash. It smells." Jenny leant down and sniffed her hand, then flinched.

"Eurgh," she said, then she glanced at her father, "Do you want to smell it? It's gross." She held her hand towards him.

"Don't smell it," Martha ordered him when he was about to say yes.

"Of course I won't smell it. What do you take me for?"

"Can the stitches come out yet?" Jenny inquired.

"I think so," Martha answered, "You do heal _very_ quickly. I'll take the stitches out and… cobble together a brace out of… something."

"The TARDIS will make a brace," the Doctor said.

"Well, go get one, then," Martha told him, then she added pointedly to Jenny, "You're still not allowed to go exerting yourself. If you want my medical advice, you'll go back to the village and stay there for a few more days so that Clara keeps you out of trouble."

"Clara's in the pub right now getting drunk with Sally Sparrow, so I doubt she'll do all that good of a job, to be honest," Jenny shrugged.

"No adventures through time and space for you, alright? Just look at what happened today."

" _Fine_ ," Jenny, irritated, agreed, rolling her eyes, "For the record, I was actually at Clara's house the last time I regenerated, so who knows how safe it is?"

"Just be sensible," Martha said, then she turned her gaze on the Doctor, "And _you_? Don't go dragging her out to dangerous places. I don't care how much you want to bond, or whatever."

"Yes, yes," he waved her away.

"Honestly, I'm wasting my breath on both of you…" she grumbled.

Eleven didn't think it was possible for Martha to become _more_ annoyed with the pair of them, but when Jenny beamed and asked, "Can I keep the dirty cast?" that was the last straw.

"You aliens are so bloody weird…"


	7. Intensive Care

_Intensive Care_

 _Jenny_

The air was damp and there was a slightly, chilling breeze in Hollowmire that winter evening when the TARDIS materialised at the edge of Clara Ravenwood's garden wall, just outside the boundaries of her lonely house on the moors. Jenny was always asking if she was going to do anything with the front garden, and all Clara said was that she might plant some roses for her mother in there in the spring. Jenny thought that would be nice, if she got around to it.

It was four in the morning when she stepped out into the night, brand-new splint on her hand to protect her thumb from the world's wears and tears.

"Are you sure you don't want to stay on the TARDIS?" the Doctor asked her, following along behind. All day he had looked like he didn't know what to say to her, or what to do, or even like he was unsure if he belonged anywhere near her. But he was trying, he was trying very hard, she knew.

"I can't, really, not right now, Martha said I should stay here. And Clara's drunk, she'll be a mess," Jenny said, "I ought to make sure she's alright."

"Yes, I suppose you'd better…" he sighed. He knew she was right. This was Clara they were talking about; the woman was an idiot. Especially when she was drunk. She _had_ married the Doctor in Las Vegas, after all, and then there was the whole business when she had tried to fight Rose months ago, and the thing with the mango tattoo. Granted, that was all Alpha Clara, but they were as bad as each other when intoxicants were involved. Jenny was just glad that Ravenwood hadn't picked up smoking again.

"You could always come in?" she suggested.

"While Clara's drunk? She'll murder me."

"I'm sure she won't," Jenny said, "She might not even be _that_ drunk, or she could be asleep. You could always show her that mirror you brought this morning?"

"No, I think that's a job best left to you," he said, smiling a little. He really did seem genuinely scared of Ravenwood, which she thought was funny. Ravenwood wouldn't hurt a fly. If she could still repress her urges to feast on human blood when she was drunk and in the vicinity of Sally Sparrow, she could manage not to attack Eleven on sight. Especially if Jenny had invited him there. Then again, it wasn't her house to go inviting people into. "Do you know, you called me 'dad' today?"

"Did I?" she asked, surprised. He was blatantly trying to hide a smile.

"Yes."

"I didn't know you were all that bothered about what I call you."

"Of course I am! Especially when you call _Thirteen_ 'mum.'"

"Shall I call you mum too?" she asked. He made a face. "Why don't you like her? Are you jealous? You'll be her one day. It'll all come full circle."

"I suppose."

"Alright, father, I'll… think about it. About calling you dad," she assured him, which he seemed pleased by for a few seconds, until his demeanour switched to a more sombre one.

"I should probably tell you something…"

"What?" she asked.

"Why I left you. Your body." Jenny was stunned.

"Oh. Yeah. Maybe you should." She had nearly forgotten about that. And now he had brought it up himself. After two-hundred years… did she really want to know? It was too late to say otherwise.

"Because I failed my whole race," he said finally, talking without looking at her, "All of them died, all the Time Lords. And then, hundreds of years later, there was you, and then _you_ were the rest of the Time Lords, just you, and then when you died so soon... it was like losing them all over again. I didn't want to accept that _I'd_ been the cause of my entire species dying _twice_. So, yes, I justified it to myself, and told myself you weren't..." he sighed, thought about what he was going to say next, then met her eyes, "I didn't leave you because you weren't enough of a Time Lord, I left you because you were too much of one, and I couldn't cope with that. It was wrong of me, very wrong. And I'm sorry. I'm sorry for everything, Jenny." When she hugged him, he was so shocked it took him a few seconds to realise he probably ought to hug her back.

"Jenny!" somebody shouted nearby, and the Doctor let go of her so that they could see what it was. Contrary to what she had believed, Clara was not in the house, had not returned home, because now she was stumbling up the thin path on the hill that led towards the distant shadows of the village. How was she only just getting back? It was four o'clock in the morning, and there weren't exactly any nightclubs in Hollowmire. There weren't even any bars. Just the one, solitary pub, The Mermaid, which she had never been to herself. It got worse when she began to half-sing, half-slur: " _Jenny, Jenny, who can I turn to?_ " she practically wailed.

"Oh, lord…" Jenny muttered. It was a bit of a relief to see, in the pale light of the moon, that Clara's face wasn't covered with blood and human gristle. No, she was thankfully clean. No massacre. It was still a wonder that vampires could get drunk, but, clearly, she was. Incredibly so.

" _You give me something… something, something, something_!" Whatever the song was – not one she recognised – Clara had clearly forgotten the words. She staggered over to the gate and fumbled trying to open it. Jenny, irritated, walked over to help her. " _Jeeeeenny I got your number! Jeeeeenny don't change your number! Eight-six-seven-five…_ uh… something… _niiiiine_ …" Confusing herself trying to remember the words to whatever anthem she was crooning, Clara frowned, then she managed to trip on nothing and Jenny caught her. "Let's get married," Clara tried to stroke her face.

"That's a terrible idea," Jenny told her, "Listen, Clara-"

"I'm gonna write a book, baby," Clara told her, trying to walk and not doing a very good job of it. All the while the Doctor still stood there, in front of the ship, not knowing what to do. It was a lucky thing he was married to the Other One, she now thought. Imagine, she was just starting to reconcile with her father, and _this_ was the introduction he got to her new girlfriend. This abominable, mindless, wreck of a woman.

"Okay, well, you can do that tomorrow, can't you?"

"I was thinking," Clara told her, grabbing her face and looking into her eyes, "I'm going to write the next _Orlando_. Wait. Maybe I'll write the first _Orlando_. Maybe _I_ wrote it, Jenny! You could be _my_ Orlando." Jenny didn't have a clue what she was talking about. "Jenny. I _am_ Virginia Woolf."

"No you're not," the Doctor said, "I've met Virginia Woolf, I'm sure I'd have recognised her if she was you." Clara only noticed him after he said that, and she squinted at him like she was staring into the sun. Then she stumbled again and Jenny grabbed her around her middle to keep her upright.

"Who are you?"

"My dad, Clara," Jenny said, "My dad's here. I kept trying to tell you."

"When we get married he'll be _my_ dad," Clara said, in awe of this crude realisation. Jenny found that quite an unpleasant thing to think about.

"That's nice. I don't know where you're getting this 'when' business from… how's Sally? Did she get home alright?"

"Sally!" Clara shouted, then laughed, then began to whisper, "She's been telling me these things… about these… _wooooo_! _Ghostssss_!"

"I'm sure she has… do you maybe want to go inside now? I'll make you a coffee."

"Have sex with me."

"Definitely not," Jenny said, seeing in Clara a visible representation of all the reasons she no longer drank alcohol. Not after everything that happened at the Dalton Lodge.

"I should go," the Doctor said finally, succumbing to the awkwardness of the situation.

"Uh, yeah, maybe," Jenny said, a little annoyed now that Clara's drunken behaviour had caused her time with her father to be cut short. But she really did have to make sure Clara didn't do something stupid, like try to cook something and burn the house down. She was liable to do that even when she was sober, she might obliterate half of Yorkshire if she tried to cook while she was this out of her mind. He turned back to the TARDIS, "I'll be in touch though," she assured him, having to hold Clara steady and also hit her hands away at intervals so that she didn't get groped while she spoke to her father. Clara was irritatingly deft when it came to fondling, though, and it was a real battle trying to stop her doing something inappropriate.

"Yes, do," he said, "Please. Just call Clara's phone."

" _I'm_ Clara's phone," Clara slurred, and Jenny ignored her. It was like having a child, albeit a very randy child whose thoughts were the definition of _filth_. Then the Doctor vanished into the TARDIS and the blue box thrummed away, and Jenny was left staring at the place where it had been. "Jenny," Clara mumbled, "I'm tired."

"I'm not surprised," Jenny said, "Come on. I'll get you some blood."

* * *

At ten o'clock in the morning, Clara Ravenwood woke up from a very restless sleep. Perhaps alcohol induced night terrors in vampires. Or day-terrors, Jenny supposed, observing from where she was, sitting with her legs crossed on top of the sheets on the empty side of the bed. The left side. The side that was hers when she slept there, which was most nights lately. Clara stirred and groaned and struggled to pull the sheets up over her head, hiding from the dim glow of the bedside lamp on Jenny's other side.

"Hey," Jenny said softly, touching the distinguishable shape of Clara's shoulder with her good hand.

"Am I dead?" she asked, muffled.

"In what sense? You're only as dead as you usually are."

"Good. I was afraid I'd be gone for good and I'd never see you again."

"Were you?"

"Yeah, for a moment, until I smelled you."

"Smelled me?"

"Listen," Clara said, pulling the sheets back down from her face, revealing messy hair and dark eyes, a gaunt look which Jenny found undeniably attractive, as odd as that was, "I'm getting really reliant on my sense of smell. It's really cool. I always thought about what the world's like to dogs. And my sense of sight is batshit now –pun intended. I can smell coffee, too."

"I made a flask," Jenny said, "I thought you'd want some whenever you regained consciousness."

"Really?" Clara, haggard, asked, actually sitting up she was that enticed by the coffee. Jenny had, so she told her so, and Clara leant over to kiss her cheek with her boozy mouth. Jenny let her, though she wasn't very happy with Clara, in all honesty. She picked the flask off the bedside table and poured Clara a steaming cup of coffee in the lid. "Oh my stars, I love you."

"It's just coffee."

"You're thoughtful, though." Jenny didn't say anything, she pulled her knees up and slumped, arms around her legs, closing herself off from her hungover, undead girlfriend. "…Didn't you leave? You left me a note, right…? Because… oh my god, your dad was here… I can't believe I forgot."

"Yes, he was here, and he was here when I came back six hours ago, when you were drunk."

"Right. Did I say anything bad…?"

"You didn't _say_ anything, per se, but you did sing."

"Fantastic," she muttered, "It's alright, though. He _is_ married to Other Me. I'm sure he's used to it."

"Yeah, I know, it's not that."

"Then what? What's the matter? Did it go badly? Are you still not going back to the TARDIS?" Clara asked her.

"I thought about it, but then you showed up in your state. Plus, Martha told me to stay here to make sure I don't get my hand into anymore bother. And I told her I didn't know how happy you'd be with me hanging around for much longer – I mean, I don't want _my_ stubbornness to put unnecessary strain on our relationship," Jenny said.

"It's fine, I'll just kick you out to your spaceship if I get sick of you, or send you to Sally and Esther's. Which is a joke, by the way, I'm not getting sick of you, or anything." Clara smiled, she smiled so warmly, and Jenny gazed at her and slumped back against the headboard. "What?"

"I'm supposed to be annoyed at you, but you're so cute sometimes…" she muttered.

"Annoyed at me? What for? For going to the pub?"

"No. Yes. A bit. It's nothing. I just wanted to talk to you as soon as I got back, but I couldn't, because you kept going on about Virginia Woolf," Jenny said. Clara frowned. Obviously she didn't remember the thing. "And you asked me to marry you."

"I tend to do that. I probably asked Sally, too, and the bartender," Clara sighed, "You can talk to me now. I won't be going back to sleep. And it's Sunday, anyway."

"It's Friday."

"Is it? Shit… I have to go to work…"

"You mean you have to sit in a dark shop that never has any customers and read books for a living? Sitting in the dark reading books is exactly what you'd do if you stayed at home," Jenny pointed out, knowing full-well that she was completely right.

"But you're not there. I missed you today. Still, I'll stay awake for you, anything for more of your sterling company," Clara told her, "Come on, tell me about your day. How's things?" She nudged Jenny lightly in the ribs with her elbow, sipping more coffee.

"Doctor-wise, things are… okay, I guess. Good, even."

"That's great," Clara smiled.

"But Jenny-wise…" she trailed off.

"Are you saying _you're_ not okay? What happened?" Clara asked softly, taking her hand. Then she realised it felt different and glanced down at the bandage and the brace, "Is your thumb alright?"

"Oh, I'll tell you about that later, my thumb's fine. You remember just the other day? When I said all my stuff got burned?"

"Yeah?"

"It didn't. Don't get me wrong, I thought it did at the time, I wasn't lying or anything, but the Doctor, he picked up this distress call…" and so Jenny related to Clara the day's events; the fake Cartax, her crazy ex, the tightrope, the sword fight, Iveanne's death, the monsters (the middle two of which impressed Clara a great deal.) Everything. But she lingered on Iveanne's death. "I didn't want to kill her."

"You didn't," Clara said, Clara who had been listening so carefully, making Jenny remember why she had been so desperate to talk to Clara about all this to begin with, _why_ they were together, and why she loved her.

"I cut her oxygen tube."

"She would have suffocated eventually anyway," Clara said.

"That's what I keep telling myself… but she's dead."

"And it was her fault."

"It was my dad. He killed her. But he never killed Cobb."

"Who's Cobb?"

"The man who shot me, the first time I regenerated. I wasn't avenged. Donna told me he refused," Jenny said.

"Wasn't that Ten, though? And you were out with Eleven? They're different. And it sounds like someone was going to have to kill her, or she would have killed _you_. If you died again… even if you regenerate… it's a hard thing to go through. You know that from me, from when I got bitten. He had to do what he did, and whatever you think, it was still his actions and _his_ burden to bear, not yours. You haven't done a single thing wrong, Jenny, I promise. And as for this Iveanne, as insane as she sounds, she was still someone you knew. And liked, at some point, I assume? It's alright to be sad about her death just _because_ she's dead, you don't have to force away grief because she lost her mind and did some terrible things. You can be sad." After that Jenny shifted so that she could lean on Clara's shoulder. "Do you want some coffee?"

"No, that's your coffee, it's disgusting, I can't even drink it," she said, "Tastes like bleach." Clara laughed, and Jenny nuzzled close enough that Clara took the hint and put one arm around her, "Do you remember the other day? When I said you were good at being a girlfriend?"

"Yeah?" Clara said. Jenny said nothing. "Jen?"

"What?"

"What were you going to say?"

"I wasn't going to say anything, I was just reminding you that I think you're a great girlfriend."

"Well you're certainly in the minority there."

"How come?" Jenny asked, sitting up again, Clara's arm still snaking around her waist. She laughed, but a little sadly.

"You really think I'd be single if everyone I'd ever been out with shared that philosophy of me being a great girlfriend?" Clara questioned.

"But you're not single," Jenny said, leaning in, "You're _all mine_."

"And I love it," Clara whispered back, and Jenny kissed her lightly. Not for long, because the taste of alcohol was very pungent on Clara's lips, but for long enough that when she pulled back Clara was smiling. "Why is your cast off, anyway?"

"Martha did it," Jenny answered, "So that she could take the stitches out. I don't know why she didn't just put another cast back on afterwards though, since it's still basically immobile. Hurts less than it used to. Do you want to see a picture of it without any bandages? It's really gross."

"Then no, not really," she said, "I don't like thinking about you being in pain. Show it to Sally later, it'll cheer her up from her hangover, no doubt." Jenny was disappointed by that. She had taken a photo of her bruised, gammy thumb solely so that she could show it to Clara. Maybe she would be more interested later, Jenny hoped. She could always send it to Oswin, she supposed. Oswin would appreciate it.

"…Clara?"

"Mmhmm?"

"Am I a lot like my father?" Jenny asked, changing the subject completely and taking Clara by surprise. "I'm only asking because Amy was out today, too, and she kept saying we're alike. Are we?"

"Well, you _do_ have his eyes," Clara said, "But… yeah. Sometimes you say things, something clever, or some comment about history, or human nature, and… it's like I'm talking to him instead. I just don't tell you."

"Why not?"

"It didn't seem like you'd want it pointing out. Why? Do you now? Do you want me to tell you when you remind me of him? How about when you got frightened by your feelings for me and ran away in the TARDIS? Or… the other morning when you were talking about that alien megastructure those scientists think they've found with the radio telescope. You _are_ just like him sometimes. Or her. From what little I know of your mother, the pair of you seem to share the same blind optimism." Jenny thought about this, Clara watching her with her coffee. Then she remembered something from that very morning.

"He got you something," Jenny said.

"Who? The Doctor? Got _me_ something?"

"Yeah. It's best if I show you…" Jenny said. That peculiar, alien mirror. She had brought it downstairs into the 'crypt' earlier, to test it on Clara while she was asleep and see if it actually worked. Surprisingly, it did. She didn't know how it could be a mirror without reflecting light, but she didn't need to, either. Digging around on the floor on the other side of the bed, she thought about what he had told her, that it belonged to a godmother of his. Did that make it a family heirloom? Did that mean she was part of a family? She plucked it off the floor finally, fumbling in the dark even _with_ her low-light glasses. "Now… don't freak out, or anything," Jenny warned, sitting back up and holding it so that Clara could only see the dark, matte back.

"Why would I freak out?" Clara, perplexed, asked. Then Jenny proceeded to flip it over and show Clara her first, most passionate love: herself. And she sure did stare. "Is that a photo?"

"No. I don't know what it is," Jenny said, letting Clara have the damned thing that was sure to become her most prized possession. The only thing she could see herself in. "I think dad said it was some sort of species identifier, something to do with Van Gogh."

"Wait – 'dad'?"

"Well, he… you know, he said sorry for a lot of things. He told me why he left me. For the first time in the last few months he's actually trying." Clara smiled at her.

"I'm glad. I'm happy for you. And for me, if you getting along with the Doctor means presents. Will he get a camera next, do you think?" Clara asked, "Or a synthetic garlic substitute that contains no allyl?"

"Well _I_ could get you a garlic substitute if you want," Jenny said, "You've never asked. Are you asking now? Do you want fake garlic paste?"

"Is that a trick question? Of course I do. Life without garlic bread isn't a fate I'd wish on anybody, Jen," Clara said, all the while ogling her pasty, dead self in the mirror. Then she smiled at herself and spotted those fangs for the first time, and gawped, and Jenny laughed.

"…What does Orlando mean?"

"Orlando?"

"When you were drunk, earlier, you said you were going to 'write the next _Orlando_.' And you said that I 'could be your Orlando.'" Clara laughed.

"That's a surprisingly romantic thing for me to come out with when I'm drunk," she said, still examining her teeth and her new, sallow countenance. "It's upstairs, you could always read it."

"Or you could tell me what it means?"

"It's a book about a character who lives for hundreds of years without visibly ageing, changes gender halfway through, and meets all sorts of famous, historical figures. Woolf based Orlando on a woman she was having an affair with in real life," Clara explained, then she quoted, "' _Time went by, and Orlando, wrapped in his own dreams, thought only of the pleasures of life; of his jewel, of her rarity; of means for making her irrevocably and indissolubly his own_.' So you see, it _was_ quite romantic of drunk me."

"I guess it was. So. Shall I text Other You to tell her to say thanks to my father for the mirror?"

"Yeah, sure, I'm very grateful for the ability to stare at my own face again. And you and I could take pictures in it. Do you think I show up in pictures taken in mirrors?"

"Well," Jenny said, picking her phone up from nearby, "We'll see tomorrow. Today. Whatever."

"I'd love pictures of us…" Clara said wistfully, "The only ones of us are from before we were together. Don't you think it'd be nice?"

"I found old photo albums," Jenny began, "On the ship, earlier, they're on the TARDIS now. Pictures of me over two-hundred years. So, yes, it would be nice for us to have pictures together, of course it would." Clara smiled, then yawned widely. "I thought you said you weren't going to go back to sleep?"

"I wasn't. But I think I might now. I'm dying for some eggs. With salt. Lots of salt…"

"How about," Jenny said, taking the mirror out of Clara's hands to put to the side, "You leave this alone and go to sleep, and I'll have a toasted scrambled egg sandwich ready for you for breakfast when you wake up? Extra salt, promise."

"That would be _wonderful_. What in the world did I do to deserve you?" Clara asked.

"Maybe it's the universe balancing itself. Making up for all the bad things that have happened to you. But, you know, Clara, I'm still a person. I'm not some ethereal space-goddess. No one's perfect."

"Well I think you come pretty close."

"Why is the pub open until four in the morning?" Jenny asked abruptly.

"The Mermaid?" Clara frowned, "It's open all night every night, their closing hours are, like, four in the afternoon until seven at night."

"That's weird."

"Is it? It's because that's when they have their service, most of the village."

"Service...?"

"They're the, uh..." Clara strained her memory, "Followers of... Oc'thubha. Something like that. It's a religious society. Hence me not knowing a lot about it, I don't really react well with religion. Sally and Esther went to one of their meetings once, for the free biscuits."

"Wait - _most of the village_? Are in a 'religious society?'"

"Yeah, forget about it, it's fine. There's freedom of religion in this country, Jen."

"Right..."

"Now, are you gonna stay down here and come to bed too?"

"Oh, I don't know. Thought I might go see if Esther wants some company, since I assume Sally's out for the count. Or I could-"

"You can be the little spoon?" Clara entreated, cutting her off. Jenny paused and mulled this over, and while she did, Clara also said, "And I'll stroke your hair."

"…Okay," she said, relenting, like she always did. Grumbling, she got under the covers, "When did you learn all my weaknesses?"

"When you fell in love with me," Clara murmured, wrapping one arm tightly over Jenny, the other one under her head.

"You know, when you were drunk, you called me 'baby.'"

"Did I?"

"Yeah. Funny, since I'm only a hundred and eighty-one years older than you."

"Mmm, it really turns me on when you talk about what a decrepit old woman you are."

"Go to sleep, Clara," Jenny whispered.

"But-"

" _Go to sleep_."


	8. Biohazard

**DAY 139**

 _Biohazard_

 _Ravenwood_

Was it bad of Clara that she had grown to rely on her girlfriend as a kind of living alarm clock? Jenny hardly ever slept. But she was very good at waking Clara up on a morning gently, the way a bleeping noise of hatred in her ear never did (especially with her ever-so-sensitive bat-hearing.) Except, that morning, or late afternoon as it actually was, Jenny didn't wake Clara up. She woke up after hearing a bang, which turned out to be her phone falling off her mattress onto the floor after vibrating itself out from under her pillow. It fell against the wooden leg of the bedside table and was much louder there than on the soft furnishings, and startled her awake. She rolled over, away from Jenny, who was fast asleep, and saw it was nearly three o'clock in the afternoon and she had five missed calls from Dylan Danvers, presumably asking her where in the hell she was because she was meant to be at work. Immediately, she swore, and nearly fell out of the bed scrabbling to retrieve the device.

"Shit, shit, shit…" she muttered to herself, fumbling with her phone, trying to answer it, but she wasn't quick enough and it rang out. She wouldn't call him back right away, she would just hurry up and get dressed as soon as she could. Maybe she would skip out on showering. She was sure she stank of booze, it was evident she'd been on a bender, but she could slip to Sally and Esther's in the early evening and steal their shower for twenty minutes, she was sure. "Why didn't you wake me up?" she asked grumpily, nearly tripping over as she peeled her dirty pyjamas off and tried to find clean clothes in the gloomy mess of her cellar. Jenny didn't answer. "Jen?" Nothing. "Jenny?" Clara frowned and dropped the skirt she had scrounged back onto the floor. "Are you awake?" she went over to the left side of the bed. She'd been awake not five hours ago, both of them had. She crouched down. "Hey?" she shook Jenny's shoulder. And then she was worried. Two nights ago Jenny had slept, she shouldn't be asleep now, it didn't make biological sense. And her heart rate, when Clara listened carefully enough, it was through the roof. She shook her shoulder again, quite aggressively, and felt her hand nearly burning against Jenny's skin when she took it away. Sure, Time Lords were hot, but not _that_ hot.

Panicking, Clara dashed up the stairs with that sort of speed only the undead were capable of and ransacked her own cupboards (the contents of which she knew nothing of herself) until she found a jug, which she filled at the sink with cold water. She didn't know why Jenny wouldn't wake up. She wasn't dead, she was far from dead… or maybe she wasn't far from it. Maybe she was very, very close to it, and that thought made Clara even more frightened, and not without reason. So took her water in her jug back into the cellar and trickled it onto Jenny's head. At least she didn't have to throw the whole thing over her before she finally awoke, with a groan.

"Are you okay!?" Clara asked, a little more urgently than she meant to. Jenny looked like she was sweating, too, which was also bad because Clara rarely saw her sweat (and, not to be too blue, the pair of them did engage quite frequently together in some pretty exhaustive physical activities.) She wished she had a thermometer somewhere in the house so that she could take Jenny's temperature properly, it had to be obscene. She couldn't have been intending to fall asleep. If she had been, she wouldn't have promised Clara eggs.

Distantly, Clara was aware of her phone still buzzing, Dylan still trying to reach her, but she ignored it. She could get fired, she didn't care, all she cared about was Jenny Harkness.

"I don't feel well," Jenny mumbled.

"You don't look it, either," Clara said, brushing a bit of Jenny's now-wet hair out of her face.

"I'm too hot."

"Yeah, I know, have a drink," Clara offered the jug, and Jenny leant over, had her head hanging over the jug like she was about to try and take a sip. Then, out of nowhere, she heaved and was sick into the water. Clara's disgust was outweighed by the knowledge that Jenny was ill, and her other knowledge that Time Lords did not get ill. So what was going on?

* * *

 _Martha_

Martha wished she had a job some days. There were the days on the TARDIS that were the most exciting days in the world, ones she wouldn't trade anything for. Then there were the days where nobody offered to go anywhere, and she didn't have a clue where to go herself, and so she and Mickey ended up drolly watching daytime television in their room. Except that day was even worse, because she didn't even have Mickey for company, because he was elsewhere with Rory on one of their boys' days they had to fight back against Donna and Amy's spa days. So it was just Martha, bored, mindlessly watching _Four in a Bed_ and craving a fry up, thinking she might just be unhealthy and make herself one for dinner.

It really was a welcome disturbance when her phone rang, even if she was perplexed to see it was Clara Ravenwood calling her. Clara hadn't had her number until recently, when Martha had been trying to get a hold of Jenny to ask prying questions about the state of that mangled thumb of hers. Though she assumed it was a pocket dial, she answered anyway, absently saying, "Hello?" But in response she was treated to fervent hysterics.

" _Oh, Martha, thank god you picked up,_ " Clara said, proceeding to babble very quickly a whole lot of words which Martha couldn't discern.

"Slow down, Clara," Martha said, but Clara didn't, "Clar – _Clara_!" Clara shut up. "What's going on? Speak slowly, I can't understand you."

" _Something's wrong with Jenny_."

Martha frowned. "Wrong? What do you mean, wrong?"

" _Can Time Lords get sick? Do you know? Because I was with the Doctor for a long time, and I never heard anything about him or any other Time Lord getting ill._ "

"Jenny's sick? How do you know? What symptoms has she got?" Martha had never heard anything about them getting sick, either. But Jenny, being borne of a progenation machine, might work differently. She regenerated differently, after all.

" _I don't know – raised temperature? Higher than usual, definitely. Weird heart rate. Also weirder than usual, because I listen to her hearts a lot, you know, and I have very good hearing these days. Then she was literally sick in a jug, she wouldn't wake up until I poured cold water on her, and she's definitely sweating. And Jenny_ never _sweats. Plus, she smells… off_ ," Clara said. Yeah, Martha thought, that definitely did sound like Jenny was sick.

"When was the last time you spoke to her?" Martha inquired.

" _Ten o'clock, less than five hours ago_."

"Did she seem fine then?"

" _Yeah. Nothing wrong, nothing at all, and now she's hardly conscious._ "

"Alright," Martha said, standing up, "You stay calm, and keep a close eye on her, try and keep her awake. Call me straight away if anything changes. I'm going to go talk to the Doctor." It took a few minutes of Clara panicking to get her off the phone so that Martha could leave, but she did in the end. She had only seen Jenny last night, nothing had seemed out of the ordinary. What illness was this that could wipe through her immune system so quickly?

Ten might have always been her Doctor, but he was not the closest one and not the one Jenny liked best. Of course the one Jenny liked best was off in the future, so Martha would have to make do with Eleven and desperately hope that he was in. At least he was only two doors down, after Amy and Rory. She knocked loudly, but didn't get an answer. And she kept knocking and knocking and knocking with no response at all, going as far as to shout. She gave up and tried to open the door, but found that it was locked. Maybe he was in Adam and Oswin's room? Or maybe Clara was there, and she could tell Martha where her husband had got to? So she turned around and walked opposite the hall and knocked on their room next, and was relieved when Clara opened it (she knew it was Clara because, in typical, shameless-Clara fashion, she wasn't wearing any actual trousers, and she could see very clearly that there was no fake leg.)

"Where's your husband?" Martha asked immediately.

"Is he not in there?" Clara asked, nodding at her room behind Martha.

"I don't know, nobody answered the door when I knocked."

"Well he was in there when I came over here this morning to nick some of their cereal," Clara said, and now Oswin had made her way over to eavesdrop on the conversation. At least Oswin knew to wear more than just knickers on her bottom half, unlike her lazy sister. "Hasn't been to tell me he's going anywhere, and he usually does."

"What's the matter? You look freaked out," Oswin added.

"Clara – Ravenwood, I mean – just calls me out of the blue five minutes ago saying Jenny's sick," Martha explained, "And she's never heard of Time Lords getting sick, and _I've_ never heard of Time Lords getting sick, so I thought I would find one of the Doctors and ask them. Do either of you know anything? And why is your door locked if he's in there – did you lock him in?" she questioned Clara.

"Oh, no, I don't know who locked it. I just phase through it normally. Probably him, yesterday," Clara shrugged, "And, um, he mentioned once this weird thing with the Ponds, where Amy was ageing and time was moving differently… I really don't know, I wasn't listening. He definitely said something about there being a disease that only affected creatures with two hearts, though, and he had to stay on the TARDIS so that he didn't catch it. But I think that was only on that one planet."

"What symptoms does Jenny have?" Oswin asked, Clara walking past the two of them to get to her bedroom door, saying she would get the key and unlock it from the other side. Martha listed what she knew of Jenny's symptoms back to Oswin. "A temperature? And a weird heart rate? She always has a temperature and a weird heart rate."

"Well I assume that her vampire girlfriend with super-senses will be able to tell when something to do with her is a bit out of the ordinary," Martha said coolly, "And she did vomit, too. And can hardly regain consciousness." Clara's bedroom door slid open from the other side, and Clara, all of a sudden, looked just as harrowed as Martha.

"Honey, what's wrong?" Oswin asked urgently. Clara beckoned them in, not saying a word, and switched the light on as they did. What they found was Eleven curled up in bed with the sheets kicked off and a very obvious pool of sweat staining the sheets around him, skin practically grey. "Well this isn't good."

"Stay with him, here," Martha ordered Clara, "See if you can wake him up. I'm going to find Ten."

And find Ten they did, Ten minus Rose, who was out tagging along on the earlier mentioned spa day, in the exact same condition. And then they moved from Ten to Nine in the room at the end of the hall and found that River was tending to him. Martha had forgotten about River. Well, not forgotten _about_ her, but forgotten that she wasn't a human, _she_ was a Time Lord as well. Or, she had been, once. But the three Doctors and their daughter were all, clearly, ill. Grey, sweating, sneezing, puking, dizziness – the whole works. In a human, this would just be a sign that someone needed to be kept in a dark room with a cold flannel on their head and some hefty painkillers weighing them down for the better part of a week. But in an alien? Martha didn't have a clue what to do. And River didn't know, either. Fat lot of good she was. Fat lot of good any of them were, including Martha, the only doctor, and including Oswin, the genius. They were all at a loss.

"Well, where was the last place all four of them went together?" Martha asked, addressing whoever deigned to answer her question first.

"They never go out anywhere together," River said, "They don't really like each other."

"Then what kind of disease is this that's _that_ contagious?" Martha wondered.

"Amy was out yesterday, with Jenny and my brother-in-law," Oswin began, "Adam was saying, because he was making himself breakfast in Nerve Centre because we ran out of bacon ourselves, and he overheard her talking about some weird monsters and he said it reminded him of some video game… you know what, you go get Helix to do a scan, and I'll go ask Adam what Amy said."

"Alright." It really was just a lot of desperate actions by people who didn't have a clue what was going on. Though, something had obviously come over Oswin all of a sudden, because her distress had suddenly melted into a demeanour which might even resemble something so calm as curiosity. Martha didn't have time to question her, though. She had to go get the Helix handset.

 **AN: It's a hilarious story, because, you know, I JUST updated saying I didn't know if I was gonna take a break, and just the other day I did that whole poll about whether to do superheroes or space pirates, and now I finish space pirates and I go to university in a week and I've changed my mind again (which is my prerogative, as the writer) so I'm not doing superheroes. I will have to do it, obviously, at some point, to resolve the Manifest arc, just like I'll have to resolve the synths arc and Oswin's father and whatever else, but for now, I'm gonna do this. And then next week I'm going on break again, and I'm gonna focus on writing** ** _Spook Watch_** **through October for Halloween. Then in November(ish) I should come back. But expect double updates all this week, and FYI, the last chapter has practically been finished for two days, and the chapter after this is already written.**


	9. Ordinary World

**DAY 18,200**

 _Ordinary World_

 _Clara_

"Rise and shine, Oswald, the time to celebrate fake consumerist holidays is upon us," the Doctor said very loudly in Clara's ear. It was lucky Clara was already awake, already trying to forget about the fact her alarm had gone off fifteen minutes ago and she was very dedicatedly attempting to ignore it. The Doctor had coffee with her, Clara could smell it, and she continued to talk away quite happily as Clara stuck her head underneath her pillow, groaning. "You know what they say, the early bird catches the worm. And we're up plenty early. _So_ early, in fact, that I've had time to go about making this latte. Funny thing, I'm not actually in the _mood_ for a latte, so I don't know _what_ I'm gonna do with this one right here. Maybe I oughta just pour it away…"

"Don't you dare," Clara lifted the pillow to scowl at her. The Doctor smiled back sweetly. Clara hated the Doctor's smile, it was too perfect. She was sitting on the carpet next to the bed, fully dressed, trying to wake Clara up early. Ordinarily, this would not happen. Clara would get herself out of bed, with or without her wife, and would trudge downstairs at the usual time of quarter to seven in the morning, half asleep, where she would make her own coffee. Then she would make her own breakfast, too – that is, she would eat a yoghurt.

"Are you gonna drink your coffee?" she asked pleadingly, leaning forwards to rest her chin on the mattress in front of Clara, giving her puppy eyes, "I made it so lovingly, too. Check it out, I made a heart in the foam." She sat back and lifted the mug to show Clara. Clara saw the chocolate-coloured, milky heart swimming there on top of the latte.

"How many tries did it take you to get it right?" Clara pushed the pillow away and met Thirteen's gaze. Clara had been the one to teach Thirteen how to make shapes in coffee, but Thirteen had never had much of a talent for it.

"Only three this time." She smiled. Thirteen held up the steaming mug. "Are you gonna come get it?" Clara sat up a little and reached out her hand to take the mug, at which point Thirteen leant away and pulled it out of her grasp. "Uh-uh, you don't get _anything_ until you kiss me good morning."

"You drive a hard bargain," Clara said, reaching her hand towards Thirteen's cheek instead of the coffee, bringing her close enough to give her the kiss she so craved. Clara paused after she broke away, frowning, "Those other three cups of coffee – did you drink them? It's _all_ I can taste."

"Well I wasn't very well gonna pour them away," Thirteen said.

"God, I'm glad I don't have to spend the majority of this morning with you if you're going to be on a caffeine high the whole time," Clara said, then she slumped back down again with her hand over the edge of the bed, fingertips brushing the carpet, and the Doctor stood up and put the coffee down on the bedside table. "You're going to need the toilet."

"Needing the toilet is an inevitability of life, Coo. Now go and brush your teeth, you're disgusting. And more importantly, you're missing out on all of the capitalist festivities of St Valentine's Day," she said, "You never know, you might get a Valentine's card."

"The only person I want to get a card from today is the only person too stubborn and blindly proud to give me one," Clara said pointedly, dragging herself out of bed. Getting up on time was a real chore. In her fifty years aboard the TARDIS, she had somehow managed to romanticise schedules and alarm clocks. It didn't take more than a few weeks of normality to remember why the lack of these things seemed so appealing to everybody else.

"It's not a real holiday, Clara, it's made up, by corporations," Thirteen said knowingly.

"I know that, but cards are still cute," Clara argued with the Doctor. As she picked up the coffee and walked past the Doctor, she remarked in the doorway, "All of my love poems are made up as well, but you still seem to find them pretty interesting."

"Hey!" Thirteen objected as Clara chortled to herself, heading towards the bathroom, bleary eyed. It was mid-February and the night sky still shone through the windows. "Here I thought I was your muse." While Clara brushed her teeth, the mint waking her up quite effectively, they continued to have a half-gargled argument about poetry and Valentine's cards, looking at one another in the bathroom mirror as they did so. In typical fashion, the Doctor was already dressed. Clara preferred the mornings when she wasn't, the ones after she had slept, and _she_ was the one of them who resembled a zombie as she ambled around in the early dawn.

"You complain about Valentine's Day," Clara said, then she paused and had to spit her toothpaste out in the sink, "But you've woken me up early to eat some fancy breakfast you've prepared."

"Because I know you, Clara, and otherwise you'll get on your high horse and start complaining to everybody about how I'm a terrible wife. Now, you go get dressed and sort out _this_ mess," Thirteen began, lifting a few strands of Clara's unkempt, tangled hair in the mirror, "And if you're not downstairs within ten minutes I'm going to feed your pancakes to Captain Nemo."

"Sweetheart, you can't feed Captain Nemo soggy pancakes, please don't," Clara said, but the Doctor was already going down the stairs. Clara knew full-well that Thirteen probably _would_ start feeding Captain Nemo bits of pancake if she didn't hurry up and go stop her, so she really had to rush. By the time she got downstairs, she wasn't one-hundred percent sure her shoes matched her dress, and she also couldn't remember if the dress was hers or the Doctor's. Being as she could remember seeing Thirteen in it before, and Thirteen _never_ borrowed any of Clara's clothes because she _apparently_ had 'terrible dress sense,' Clara figured it must actually be property of her wife. It was a good thing her wife didn't mind her stealing her stuff.

Immediately upon cutting through the living room Clara checked Captain Nemo, but the large, electric blue lobster just sat there in his tank, on his rock, bubbling away under the water, no pancake shreds in sight. He was not the most interesting of pets, but Clara was not keen on animals, so it didn't bother her. Stealing a lobster was Thirteen's idea, anyway. The most interesting thing Captain Nemo ever did was shuffle over to the other side of his aquarium, or snap his claws meekly at Ravenwood whenever she was dragged over by Jenny for dinner. He was cute though, in a weird way, so Clara would prefer if the Doctor did not poison him with sweet foods like pancakes. He reminded her of home by the seaside – not because there had always been an abundance of lobsters crawling around Blackpool Pier, but because of the smell of the saltwater that emanated from his dwelling.

"Y'know, I get to do _all_ about capitalist vs communist ideologies today, Clara," the Doctor started saying as soon as Clara went into the kitchen, carrying her latte and closing the door behind her. Thirteen had already made a pretty hefty amount of pancakes. "Development of the Cold War – my favourite."

"I dread to think," Clara commented.

"So, _darling_ , what do you want on your pancakes? _I'm_ having hot sauce."

" _You_ are vile, woman. Chocolate sauce, please, and make it snappy."

"Gosh, the nerve of you."

"Less lollygagging and more breakfast. Chop, chop," Clara ordered. Thirteen made clear by her disgruntled expression that she didn't appreciate Clara bossing her around. She even more didn't appreciate the way Clara smiled smugly at her when she looked over, sitting there at their wonky wooden table (a copy of _Ulysses_ propped up one of the broken legs to make it level) with her coffee between her hands.

"Is that my dress?"

"Think so."

"Looks better on you than most of your own clothes," Thirteen quipped, a predictable but fair remark to make when contrasted with Clara's ordering her about.

"So what's the deal with the pancakes if you hate Valentine's Day so much?" Clara asked once her plate of pancakes was set down in front of her by the Doctor. What a funny thing, having an alien wrapped so tightly around your finger that they made breakfast like this totally off their own back, with all of your favourite toppings laid out in separate little bowls. The bowl-thing was just because Thirteen was a bit weird, though.

"I hate the way the modern marketplace has jumped on a bandwagon of falsified romantic ideals, that's all," Thirteen shrugged, coming to sit down herself on the edge of the table next to Clara. She hadn't been lying about the hot sauce.

"Oh, that's _all_?"

"I will, of course, be nice to you, and do nice things, but I'm not going to give my hard-earned money to these damned companies who are preying on susceptible couples who want an excuse to say they make an effort with their relationships. I do make an effort, we both do, which is exactly why we live _here_ now instead of out in space," the Doctor explained. Most of this she explained with her mouth full of spicy, red-dripping pancakes, which smelt pretty rank. "Why does it all rest on me, anyway? What have _you_ done for Valentine's Day, Oswald? All you've done so far is lazed about the place and stolen my clothes."

"I'm romantic all year round," Clara said firmly. The Doctor burst out laughing. "Hey! I am!"

"Are not! Oh my god, you are _totally_ delusional. Maybe once in a blue moon you go pretty amazingly overboard, but most of the time? Nuh-uh. No way. I can't believe you're getting on at _me_ when you haven't done anything yourself!"

"Well, that's where you're wrong, because I have," Clara argued, then she stopped arguing for a second as the Doctor looked at her with smarmy expectancy so that she could eat another of her multitude of pancakes, before continuing, "I have done something super romantic."

"Oh, really?"

"Yep. But you'll have to wait and see. And you, you ingrate, are married to a pretty phenomenal poet," Clara pointed out. That was always her trump card, her poems. Many arguments she had won by reciting poetry she had written about the Doctor back at her. She had to change the subject though, before Thirteen questioned her too much about these romantic evening plans she had talked about. Mainly because these plans did not exist, she had just made them up then. Not that she hadn't been _trying_ to come up with something to do for Valentine's Day, she had just been unsuccessful. "I've spent months painstakingly making you a present."

"Present…?"

"Yeah, it's a collage."

"Of?"

"Pictures of you sleeping, over the last four decades since you regenerated, loads of them. They all come together to make, like, this giant image of you naked," Clara explained, trying to stay serious while she did. Thirteen raised an eyebrow while Clara said all of these things, "It's a pretty generous image, too, I kind of prefer it to the original model."

"I'll cherish it forever. I can see it already, hanging on the ceiling over our bed," Thirteen joined in with the imaginary nude collage, "I'll have to make one of you to join it. We'll put them on this year's Christmas cards."

"Oh, so you'll get Christmas cards but not Valentine's cards?" Clara questioned.

"It's not the same thing! And I don't see a card from _you_ , so you're being a hypocrite."

"That's where you're wrong, I actually _do_ have a card, I swear down. I'm just not going to give you it until tonight, because it has some pretty racy things written in it and I don't want you getting all hot and bothered for nothing," Clara said. _That_ was all true. That was the only Valentine's related thing she _had_ managed to succeed in, because she was pretty good at turning a phrase. Especially if the phrase was dirty.

"Hoping to get lucky later, are you?"

"Relying on it," Clara smirked. Thirteen went to change the subject.

"On a different note – and because we have to leave soon – I've decided that in the spirit of romance and generosity today, I'll volunteer to drive us to work. Simply because I love you _so much_ ," Thirteen reached over to play with Clara's hair while she declared this.

"Wow," Clara leant close to her, "You are doing a really terrible job of buttering me up enough to let you drive the car."

"I don't know what you mean."

"I mean," Clara said, taking the Doctor's hand so that _she_ would have the advantage, "There's not a chance in _hell_ I'm letting you drive that thing. You don't actually have a driver's license, for a start, just that psychic paper, and-"

"I never had a license for the TARDIS, either, I failed the test."

"That means nothing to me, you're a terrible pilot and you crash all the time. You're not driving the car," Clara said definitively, "Not after what you did to the last one. It was really good of Adam to lend _me_ this one, anyway."

"What happened to the last one wasn't my fault! And he's lending it to both of us!" the Doctor protested.

"It was your fault, and we aren't discussing it anymore. I'm driving, like always, end of story. Now go feed Captain Nemo his shrimp pellets before we leave," Clara said.

"Fine. But only because I love him more than I love you."

"Well, you just let me know as soon as the lobster learns how to give head and I'll be straight out of that door, sweetheart," Clara smiled at Thirteen as she stood up, going to put her breakfast plate in the sink. Undoubtedly, she would make Clara wash up later, as punishment for not letting her drive their borrowed car. Anybody who knew what had happened over the weekend would agree with Clara, though.

"Well you better be straight out the door," Thirteen said, walking past Clara to get into the living room, "Because we have to leave in ten minutes, no matter _who_ drives the car." Clara finished her last pancake, wiping up the dabs of chocolate spread that remained, and ditched her plate the same way the Doctor had.

"These were some pretty good pancakes, by the way," Clara called back through, looking for her keys where she had left them. She picked up her wife's keys, too, because Thirteen would forget them otherwise. Not that she really needed them, it wasn't like they went anywhere without each other, or that Thirteen would be able to get home on her own. She would not dare drive the car without Clara's permission.

"Thanks, they were really complicated. They have three entire ingredients, _and_ you have to whisk. I think I've surpassed myself as far as cooking goes," she said sarcastically.

"You know, Doctor, sometimes I kind of wish you _didn't_ pick up all my sarcasm when you regenerated," Clara told her, watching her close the lid on Captain Nemo's aquarium, making sure it was locked. You wouldn't think lobsters were very adept climbers, or very adept anythings, but once he had escaped, and for a few days Clara had adamantly argued they change his name to Houdini. Thank god for the Doctor's tracking device, that battered old thing had a queer knack for crustaceans.

"Oh, I picked it up long before that, don't you worry. Now where's my coat?" she wondered, looking around, "Have you moved it again? You know I hate when you move it and put it away…" she complained. Clara watched her fruitlessly search the living room. Said coat was hanging up in the hallway, but Thirteen didn't search the coatrack, despite it being the most obvious place for a coat to be. Well, it was if Clara had anything to do with it, otherwise she left it draped over the back of her chair, along with a dozen other coats, jackets and scarves she was too lazy to move elsewhere.

This house they lived in was full of knick-knacks and gizmos and trinkets. Things the Doctor had brought with them from the TARDIS, the majority of their possessions which spanned fifty years. There were their two fancy old chairs, sitting in front of the ornate fireplace, a television hanging above that, bookshelves on one side, Captain Nemo's large tank on the other. Upstairs were many more books, their house was filled with them, they stacked up everywhere. In their bedroom was a funny old full-length mirror the Doctor had been given as a gift from someone in pre-revolutionary France, there was a sleek armoire from the distant future, their bed itself was salvaged from the 38th Century.

There were all sorts of photos up, too, to Clara's delight (though the Doctor was ambivalent.) Photos of the two of them and then an odd assortment of 'family photos' usually consisting of the pair of them, Adam, Oswin and Jenny. Those ones were always taken by Ravenwood, who didn't show up, and so it was pointless to try and include her. The Doctor always said she didn't like the photos much because it was impossible to tell how old any of them were in them. There were none of Eleven, though. If Clara were to hang pictures of him, she would feel like a widow, and no doubt Thirteen would find it unpleasant (there were still a lot of pictures of him in an old wedding album Clara kept stashed under the bed, though.)

Clara adored having these things around them, these tokens that proved they had lived, souvenirs from all of time and space. In the house, her marriage was reflected at her in a way that it normally wasn't in the dateless photographs and ageless mirrors. It was tangible proof of their experiences and commitment, just like their house itself, which was relatively small and semi-detached. Sitting around there, with time passing by visibly through the windows, with the clocks ticking away actually meaning something again, was peaceful. There was a solace in the sounds of birds and wind that just wasn't there in dull silence and the hum of distant engines. The floor not moving around unpredictably left Clara understandably grounded, and she had never appreciated the joys of standing still before she put her foot down about their unequal relationship. Every day, Clara remained surprised that Thirteen had agreed to this quaint life, that she had given over the TARDIS to her daughter while they played house back in England.

"Seriously, stop moving my stuff. You know this coat is mafia-made, and mobsters always have excellent dress sense," the Doctor whinged. Clara had stopped paying attention to her wife's quest for her missing coat, she had been leaning on the back of her own chair, which did not have a selection of old rags adorning it. Thirteen was putting on that long coat when she came back into the room, and Clara was looking at the dusty lumps of coal sitting in the fireplace. "Coo? Whatcha thinking about?"

"Just you," she replied with a smile, moving. The Doctor had brought Clara her coat, too, "What's say we light the fire later?"

"Whatever you like."

"It'd be romantic."

"Is that the entirety of the evening you had planned?" She handed Clara her coat and then went to fetch whatever exercise books she needed to take, picking them up where they were usually left, on the floor by the stairs. Clara didn't answer, not wanting to give away that she had planned nothing. Perhaps she would think of something during the day, anyway, and wouldn't need to come clean.

Clara went to open the door, the Doctor being chivalrous and carrying all of their things – their things just being a stack of thin books. But as she headed past, Clara stopped her.

"Hey," she said, putting a hand on the Doctor's cheek.

"Uh, hey?" Thirteen puzzled. Bitter, February air rushing in from outside, the front door ajar, Clara leant in and kissed her.

"Happy consumerist-capitalist-fake-romance day, or whatever it was you called it," Clara told her, moving away only a little, still touching Thirteen's face.

"Happy Valentine's Day to you too, Oswald."

 **AN: Feel free to review, also. I thrive on feedback of all persuasions.**


	10. Plague Ship

**DAY 139**

 _Plague Ship_

 _Oswin_

Remembering something, Oswin disengaged herself from Martha's company as Martha went off to retrieve Helix's handset. She slipped back into her rooms, now free of Clara, and immediately went to steal her boyfriend's attention away from his computer in the corner. When she shook his shoulder he jumped out of his skin and his headphones fell off which – despite their arguably grave circumstances – caused her to laugh.

"Oh my god, what are you doing?" he asked her, still trying to work off his fear.

"I should scare you more often, I didn't know how adorable it is," she joked, and he scowled. He didn't like being scared. That was why he hardly ever watched horror films (not that she was a big fan of them, either.)

"Is that all you want?"

"No, there was something I actually wanted you for…" she said, her thoughts going out of her head after seeing him be cute. _Then_ she remembered again. "Oh, right: look at this." She pushed his chair so that it moved on its wheels and she could project her vivid, green holoscreen out in front of the computer monitor, which she leant over and switched off so that he could better see what she was showing him.

"Hey!" he protested.

"Shush, babe, this is important, alright?" she said, and he sighed and didn't bother to argue with her or switch it back on. Well, she thought, it _was_ important, incredibly important. She brought up a transcript she had made of Thirteen's farewell letter to show him a specific part of it; the original copy they had burned after copying as a precaution, to stop Jenny, Clara, Eleven or anybody else finding it and getting hints about the future that only _they_ had been entrusted with. "The Time Lords are sick."

"Do Time Lords get sick?" he asked.

"Not as far as we know," Oswin said, "So, don't you think that something like _all_ the Time Lords getting sick would be something she might leave a cryptic clue about?" She didn't wait for him to answer, just interrupted him again when he started talking to point out the snippet of letter she had been looking for*. Thirteen's second point on her five-point list of 'general assurances' they were to give to 'other members of the crew' when the 'time is right.' "It says, ' _It's the flu. Just give them ordinary medicine and tell them to get over themselves_.' Assuming these are in chronological order-"

"Chronological order is always a tough thing for a Time Lord to manage, though," he pointed out, "Ironically enough."

"Yeah, I know, they're useless. But if you assume that it _is_ chronological, then the dancing one already went, and the one about Jack giving somebody a ring definitely hasn't happened. What are the symptoms of flu?" Oswin asked him, and he paused to think.

"Nausea, fever, sore throat, headaches, tiredness – that sort of stuff. How do you not know the symptoms of the flu?"

"I've never had it, have I?"

"Haven't you?"

"No."

" _Never_?"

"What part of, I lived in a space terrarium for my entire life and was allowed minimal contact with other people do you not understand?" she reiterated the finer aspects of her tragic existence to him again.

"Yeah, but, it's the flu."

"Well fifty years before _you_ were born everybody got tuberculosis, but I bet people don't always ask you about how shocking it is you've never had TB," Oswin pointed out.

"Your immune system must be terrible."

"Mitchell, I don't know how you keep forgetting this, but I'm already dead. I can't exactly catch the flu," she told him dryly.

"When you were alive, I mean."

"What are you saying, you're less into me now you find out that I used to have a weak immune system?" she questioned, "Even though I'm already dead?"

"Obviously not. What symptoms do the Time Lords have, anyway?"

"All the ones you said were for the flu. Well, no, I don't know if they have headaches or sore throats. As far as I've heard they're not very up for talking. But, if Time Lords don't get sick, then when they _do_ get sick, they'd be pathetic about it, wouldn't they?" Oswin theorised, "And Thirteen's letter fits with this, don't you think?"

"It obviously can't be fatal if Thirteen even exists. And Jenny, in the future Jenny's definitely still around. So yeah, like always, you're probably right. You're pretty clever," he joked.

"Do you think? I hadn't noticed. Come on," she said, tugging on his arm to get him out of his chair.

"Come on where?"

"To find Martha and tell her it's just the flu!"

"But we can't tell her that," Adam Mitchell argued, "She'll ask how we know. We can't tell her that Thirteen wrote us a mysterious letter full of hidden clues, she'd ask to see it, and it has stuff about her in it." That was true, point number five was, ' _Make sure Martha knows everything will be fine. More than fine, amazing. She doesn't need to worry about anything at all, tell her I promise_.' No doubt Martha would be very interested to hear that, but being as Oswin didn't have a clue what it was about and she wasn't supposed to tell people anything unless she was sure, Adam was right.

"Then what _do_ we say?" she asked him.

"We don't have to say anything."

"But everyone's worrying about them – if they're going to be fine, someone should say something. It was like… when you first froze. When you mutated, right after Thirteen got here, and I thought you might die. Clara _knew_ you would be okay, because the Doctor told her so, and I wish she would've told me."

"It doesn't matter, she did what she had to, for the sake of… the timeline, or continuity, or something like that. They'll get better if this is what Thirteen means, and if it isn't what Thirteen means, then everybody relaxing and thinking they'll be fine is probably the worst thing anybody could do," he said. Now Oswin saw the real reason Thirteen had given her permission to tell her boyfriend about that letter. Because he was the one of them who was sensible, and who thought things like that through, and stopped her from being reckless.

"Alright, well, Martha's got the Helix handset," she said, closing the green holoscreen, missing its dull glow somewhat when it vanished, "So we should at least go see what Helix says about them and their disease." Adam followed her out of the room, probably to make sure she didn't say anything she shouldn't say about the future, as she went straight across the hall to her sister's room, the door of which was still open.

There was Martha, Eleven curled up in the sheets covered in sweat, and Clara sitting in a chair next to him. Martha was holding up the handset and scanning the Doctor with it to see what she could glean, and Oswin, not wanting to accidentally let anything dangerous slip, just observed, absently taking Adam's hand. Adam was more curious than anything else.

"What are you doing with that?" Clara asked Martha.

"I'm having Helix run a simulation of the germs in his system, speed up the process virtually and see what the outcome will be," Martha explained. Certainly a lot faster than painstakingly analysing blood samples, Oswin thought bitterly. She was only bitter about that, though, because she had been spending the last few days with her head buried in Liam Kent's deranged DNA, in a vain attempt to learn something new about the mutant gene that caused Manifesthood. That was neither here nor there, though. "That's weird…"

"What? What is it?" Clara asked urgently.

"It shows the virus subsiding, being killed by his immune system," Martha said.

"Told you," Adam whispered, "Immune systems; _useful_." She squeezed his hand, in order to make him shut up. Her brother-in-law was dying (not) for god's sake.

"So… he's going to get better?" Clara asked.

"Maybe it's the flu?" Oswin suggested. She heard Adam make a noise of annoyance.

"It _does_ look like that," Martha said thoughtfully, "How could Time Lords catch the flu?"

"It can't just be the flu, look at him, he's barely awake," Clara said.

"Didn't you ever hear Jack's stories about the Miracle?" Adam spoke up, "When he had arsenic poisoning?"

"You think the Doctor's got arsenic poisoning!?" Clara exclaimed.

"No, no, I mean, he thought he just got sick initially, because he was the only mortal person. This is what Esther told me, anyhow. He thought he had a cold, or something, and he never built up any immunity against it, and Gwen thought he was being melodramatic. _So_ … maybe they're being melodramatic?"

"Helix," Martha began, "Run a simulation on the same bacteria in a human body."

" _Affirmative, Dr Jones_ ," Helix said smoothly.

"So this is like man flu, or something?" Clara said, "But… Time Lord flu? Where they whine and pretend they're worse off than they actually are?"

"Oh, don't get me started on man flu," Martha grumbled, "The amount of times I have to tell my husband, _I'm_ a doctor, there is no such thing as 'man flu,' you're just being a baby…he's stopped trying it on now."

" _Error_ ," Helix interrupted, " _One-hundred percent fatality rate in the human genetic simulation_."

"Oh my god…" Martha said, looking at the screen, then she brought it over to show Adam and Oswin. It was a view of a virus infecting a human body on a cellular level, something taking over all of the cells and mutating them, practically killing the host.

"That sounds like what Amy was talking about happened yesterday," Adam said.

"Amy's out today," Martha said.

"I'll ring her." Oswin dropped Adam's hand and got her phone out, dialling Amy quickly and putting it on speaker before she could even pick up, so the four of them listened to it beeping as it rang. Well, technically five of them, but Eleven didn't really look like he was up to an awful lot of anything. He kept shivering. Again, Oswin was reminded of when Adam's cryokinesis had overcome him, nearly two months ago now, and he had been a wreck and for days she hadn't known whether he would live or die.

" _Is this important? I'm at the spa,_ " Amy said.

"Yes, it's important," Martha spoke rather than Oswin, "What happened yesterday? With this disease?"

" _Why?_ "

"Because all of the Time Lords are now sick with some illness that Helix says has a one-hundred percent fatality rate in humans, so what is it?" Oswin pressed her.

" _Wait – they're going to die!?_ "

"No, it doesn't look like it," Martha assured her, "But it would still be useful if you could tell us what you know. None of them are really talking. Adam thinks they're being melodramatic."

" _There was a doctor on the ship, Kolway, who was studying it before he killed himself, called it the 'Anobine Infection.' And Jenny's crazy ex-girlfriend-_ "

"Jenny's _what_?" Oswin asked.

" _Ask her yourself. Anyway, she said it only affected humans, but it turned out she was lying, she didn't know if it did or not. But they believed her and had their helmets off in the space suits, it must be that. It was very contagious, breathing any of the air would cause you to be infected,_ " Amy explained, shedding some light on the bleak situation.

"Helix, can the virus affecting the Time Lords spread cross-species?" Martha asked.

" _Negative, Dr Jones. The 'Anobine Infection,' as Mrs Williams calls it, has mutated into a new strain within the advanced Gallifreyan physiology. Cross-species infection is near-impossible_ ," Helix informed them.

" _Can't you tell that thing to call me Amy?_ " Amy said.

" _Affirmative, Amy_ ," Helix, who could respond to requests directly and didn't need to be told what to do by Oswin, corrected itself.

" _Are they going to die?_ "

"No, they're not going to die. Nobody's going to die."

"You can't say that. Somebody could die at any moment," Oswin pointed out.

"Yes, but not everybody likes to think about death 24/7."

" _If nobody's going to die, can I go? I'm supposed to be in a mud bath right now_ ," Amy said, and Oswin just hung up on her. She didn't care what Amy was doing. Besides, she didn't understand spas. Or mud baths. Mud was disgusting, why would anyone voluntarily drench themselves in it? God, she missed the future, even if she _had_ had as much of the future as she could stomach the day before, dropping Fyn and Atoc off on Venus Zeta and enlisting Adam in helping them move everything in (he had been very tired last night, the poor boy, especially with his bad ankle.)

"I was right, then," Adam said, "They _are_ just being pathetic. Probably never had a cold before."

"And you'd know _all_ about _colds_ , Mitchell, wouldn't you?" Oswin remarked, and he smiled.

* _chapter 965_


	11. Bad Education

**DAY 18,200**

 _Bad Education_

 _Clara_

It was a good thing they arrived at school a damn sight earlier than any pupils did, because Clara didn't even want to imagine the reaction they would get from juveniles as they pulled into the staff carpark in a bright white, pristine Ferrari 458. Now, Clara didn't know a lot about cars, but she did know that this car was very expensive and very fast, and she was having to pay her brother-in-law a _lot_ of money to make sure she was insured for it, after what had happened to the last one. Which was entirely the Doctor's fault, she might add.

"I wish it was summer, then it would be like when we went to Los Angeles," Thirteen said wistfully, getting out of the car to the awe of one of their colleagues. It wasn't like two people on teaching salaries could afford a Ferrari, and last week they had definitely been driving around in a battered sedan that was at the bottom end of the market for used Vauxhalls.

"We've been to L.A. loads of times, which one?" Clara asked, making sure the car was parked properly and that it didn't have any scratches. It was beyond her why Adam Mitchell kept buying cars, he still lived on the TARDIS and barely needed any of them. She narrowed her eyes at her wife every time she so much as brushed her fingers on the car. She did _not_ want a repeat of Saturday's events.

"The first time! Honestly, Clara, it was the _hottest_ thing I've ever seen, and it was July. There's never been a more amazing sight than you in those stilettos and that leather jacket with those bomber shades, showing up with your cigarette and your gum, in your stolen candy apple green convertible*. If it was summer right now, we could have a repeat of it, summer dresses and sunglasses and this Maserati." She said this while Clara opened the boot and got their things out. Sports cars were always skimpy with the sizes of their boots, though, and the few things they had only just fit. The Doctor just watched and leant on the car.

"It's a Ferrari, it has a horse on it," Clara told her, putting the car keys in her mouth to hold them while she had her hands full. Perhaps Clara, too, wished they were in Los Angeles in July in 1947. But they weren't. They were in England in February, 2022, on a freezing Monday morning, outside of a grim high school.

"Whatever it is. The focus of my anecdote was you, not the car." Clara gave Thirteen her stack of books and shut the boot with her elbow, biting down on the lock button of the keys. The lights flashed and the doors clicked, and Clara wondered about the likelihood of the thing getting nicked before the day was out. "I've always loved the Forties, though. For the aesthetic, I mean, not the oppression and the war. And the cars – it's beyond me why Adam wouldn't lend us that Hudson Commodore!"

"Because it drives like crap," Clara said, balancing her books (with the sneaky aid of telekinesis) and managing to put her car keys in her coat pocket, "The clutches are always way too stiff on any car built before 1980."

"Speaking of 1980s cars, we also could have borrowed the DeLorean. Or the Batmobile. _Or_ the Ecto-1." They talked as they walked towards the double doors into the school, few other teachers milling around. It was just gone eight, and they were due for a meeting in the staffroom. One scheduled to be fifteen minutes longer than the morning briefings usually were, not that either of them knew why yet. She hoped it wasn't going to become a regular part of McWatt's 'new initiatives.' He was only _acting_ head teacher, he didn't have the authority for this sort of stuff, not until the board chose a replacement. God knew when that would be, though. Clara pushed the door open with her shoulder and held it for Thirteen with her foot.

"And then we could have looked even crazier than we already do, great idea," Clara remarked, having to keep holding the door a few seconds longer than she would have liked as Evelyn rushed to get in, carrying all manner of art supplies. The crazy thing was that Evelyn Stark, head of art, couldn't even draw. It was an irony Clara never failed to point out to the Doctor when they were alone and Evelyn had annoyed her, though the Doctor usually made a quip back about being nice, and things being 'abstract,' and said that art was all a matter of opinion. And then she would say that there were loads of analytical texts besmirching Clara's poetry, but Clara maintained that that was only because the great academics of literature didn't know a thing about 'C.O. Smith,' because time travellers using pseudonyms were utterly untraceable, and they were bitter about it.

"Where did you two get that car from?" Evelyn asked. She didn't thank Clara for holding the door.

"Ours got written off on Saturday, so our brother-in-law is lending us this one for an as yet unspecified amount of time," Clara explained, all of them walking together now to get to the staff room to see what McWatt had in store. Nothing good, most likely.

"What? Someone is just _lending_ you a Ferrari?"

"Thank god my sister married a multimillionaire," she commented.

"What happened to your car that it got written off?" Evelyn asked.

"Well-" Thirteen began.

"The Doctor crashed it," Clara said. At the school, they were Dr and Mrs Oswald. Yes, people _did_ think it was weird that Clara called her wife 'the Doctor' all the time, and never by her 'first name' that wasn't actually her first name. But it had been almost six months, and people were over their weirdness. There was always plenty of that in a school anyway.

"I did not crash it, they ran in front of me," she argued.

"Well, you weren't actually insured to be driving it, because you don't have a driver's license," Clara said, "And what do you mean they 'ran in front of you?'"

"They came out of nowhere!"

"' _They'_ were a tree!"

"The circumstances were complex."

"There were no circumstances. You were driving a car you weren't legally allowed to drive, meaning we can't actually claim any compensation, and I _could_ press charges against you for grand theft auto," Clara said. This was a reprise of an argument they had had many times over the last two days. The only thing that had stopped the arguing on Sunday morning was Adam Mitchell's generous 'donation.'

"It was all very ambiguous, darling, I think it's best not to talk about it," Thirteen said, opening the door to the staff room for both of them. Clara scowled at her when she walked past. The Doctor only called her 'darling' when she was being passive aggressive or patronising.

"This is why I don't drive," Evelyn said, "It's bad for the human psyche. Nothing makes you age more than road rage, it's a top cause of cancer." _Bullshit_ , Clara thought. "And it's terrible for the environment, humans are destroying this planet."

"Bad for the trees, isn't it?" Clara quipped at the Doctor.

"Shut up, Clara." Thirteen went to dump her things on one of the tables. For a brief second, Clara almost went and sat somewhere else, before resigning herself to her wife's company. They would be fine as long as they just _didn't_ talk about the car.

However, she wasn't happy that the Doctor had sat on the same table as Graham. Evelyn didn't go anywhere near him, nobody did except the Doctor, because Graham was a pariah. He must be in his late sixties, he was borderline senile, he barely knew anything about updates to the Geography syllabus and all he ever did was rave about his dire home life. Again, though, if Clara ever brought that up, Thirteen pointed out that she was going to be seventy-five in November. Thirteen really didn't like gossip was what Clara had learnt.

"So! Graham. How is the morning treating you?" the Doctor asked brightly. Clara didn't know why she made any effort with the man, he was decrepit, _and_ he was an arse. He grunted. "What do you know about this meeting Douglas has called, then?"

"That bastard thinks he can do what he likes now Norris snuffed it," Graham complained, "Celia reckons he had something to do with it. It's suspicious."

"Yeah, well, Celia still thinks you should beat children, and her knowledge of the life cycle of a star is basic at best," the Doctor grumbled, "I could teach Physics better than her." Celia Frost, head of science, was over by the kettle making tea and pinching biscuits that belonged to one of the other English teachers. Tom Miller, Clara thought. Thirteen glared at her. _Honestly_ , Clara thought pointedly while looking at her wife, _and you say_ I'm _immature_.

"It's not suspicious, Graham, she had an aneurysm," Clara reminded him.

"That's what McWatt wants you to think. He's got access to all sorts of tools, he could have done anything. Chopped up the body, covered up the crime."

"For god's sake, the funeral was open casket. We all miss Elaine – me especially – but Douglas probably didn't murder her," Clara argued.

"Oh, please," the Doctor began, "She smoked in her office all day and didn't do anything."

"Exactly, she let _me_ smoke in her office too if I shared my cigarettes. Now where am I supposed to smoke? I can't stink up the car, or go down by the gates, that's where the kids smoke," Clara said.

"Well perhaps somebody should have an assembly about the dangers of smoking, hmm?" Thirteen questioned sourly.

"You're just jealous of me and Elaine."

"It's 'Elaine and I,'" Thirteen corrected. Clara scowled.

"You know," Evelyn said, leaning over the back of her chair, earwigging on them, "Smoking is actually very good for the soul."

"I'm sure the tumours enjoy it as well," the Doctor muttered.

"You two are having a good Valentine's Day, then?" Celia said coldly, smiling in that nasty way, coming to stand in between the two tables with a cup of tea in her hands. Clara tried to ignore her, but she had some sort of rivalry with the Doctor. Clara thought the Doctor was more to blame for this than Ms Frost was, because she kept arguing with her about Physics when it came to things the human race weren't even supposed to know yet.

"Valentine's Day is a farce," Graham declared, "It's the corporations."

"Thank you! I keep trying to tell my wife that," Thirteen said, "She just won't listen though."

"Just you wait until you've been married as long as me. Thirty years. And for what? Nothing. We hate each other. You'll hate each other too, one day, mark my words. When you get to my age, you'll hate everything," he complained bitterly.

"Thirty years? _Wow_ , that's… a while…" Clara shared a look with the Doctor. It wasn't like that year had been their fiftieth wedding anniversary, or anything. In truth Graham often said things like this to them, that their honeymoon period would end soon. The ruse was that they had just been married for five years, and they _didn't_ mention the whole eloping-in-Las Vegas thing. In a twisted way, Clara thought it was funny how much Graham O'Connor whined about being old. She was in her seventies, and the Doctor's age wasn't even worth mentioning.

"I take it that means you two _aren't_ having a good Valentine's Day?" Celia continued.

"We're having a perfectly adequate one, thank you very much, Frost," the Doctor said.

"I still think it was bad of Elaine to hire a married couple to teach. The two of you are always doing collaborative lessons – I dread to think what they entail. Completely unorthodox."

"Historical context is a vital part of English Literature," Clara defended Thirteen, "Her input is important."

"Well I'm sure she's always _inputting_ things where they don't belong," Celia commented. Clara frowned.

"I can't tell if that's actually homophobic or not…"

"It's fine, sweetheart, she's just upset because the History results far surpassed the Science results in the December mock exams," the Doctor said smarmily.

"There won't be any pet names in my staff room," the angry, gruff voice of Douglas McWatt, interim headmaster and teacher of Product Design declared, coming in finally to explain to them all why they had an early morning briefing. "If I had my way you two wouldn't be allowed within five paces of each other. Maybe with that old bag Norris gone I _can_ have my way, so you'd better watch out. One more slip up like that and I'll have the board fire one of you." It was an empty threat, but Clara could see why people thought McWatt had killed the headmistress now. But, for the record, she _had_ just died of a tragic brain aneurysm. At least if he was around, Celia would shut up.

"You know, Douglas, waking me up earlier than usual disrupts my chi. If I'm not my usual energising self, the children may suffer," Evelyn told him in her breathy, haughty way. She was one of those women who wore too many scarves. It was like she was wearing _only_ scarves, things which were thin and trailed off her to make her look spectral. Evelyn Stark was weird.

"Chi doesn't exist, woman," Celia snapped at her.

"You can't silence my beliefs, Celia," Evelyn said.

"Stark, she's right, shut up," McWatt ordered her. Clara had never once seen McWatt smile, she didn't think he was biologically capable of it. Clara then noticed a young man lurking behind McWatt by the doors. He was wearing a suit and tie, so he definitely looked like a teacher, but he seemed very confused. Just sort of stared about the place. "First things first," McWatt looked over his shoulder at the newbie. None of them had ever seen him before. "What are you doing, boy? Get over here. This is Cole Campbell, he's Mr Boyd's permanent replacement after the incident with the glue last term."

"The man's a coward, it was only a Pritt stick," Celia began, "It can't have stuck him to the chair at all. Just shows the History department is severely lacking in mettle." The Doctor scoffed in response and Clara rolled her eyes.

"Try not to let them put glue on your chair," McWatt advised Cole. New History teacher, that would give Thirteen some excitement in her day. Clara wondered what the first impression of her wife would be, especially since her wife had already consumed three cups of coffee that morning. "Moving on. Valentine's Day. Valentine's Day means kids finding excuses to have sex, and have it everywhere. All over the school. In their houses. Behind the bike shed." He stopped speaking then for dramatic effect. "It needs to be stopped. We don't need another teen pregnancy, we already had two last year."

"But the year before we had three, so the numbers _are_ going down," Evelyn pointed out. McWatt grimaced. Well, he was always grimacing, but he grimaced a little more at that.

"Abstinence is the key to happiness, trust me," Graham grumbled.

"Exactly," McWatt agreed with him, "This afternoon will be off-timetable. Sex education, in forms." There were resounding groans from the members of staff in the room.

"That's not fair, I had this whole lesson planned about Chamberlain's foreign policy being a work of genius before the Second World War," Thirteen argued with him.

"Chamberlain was a failure," Celia said.

"You don't know _what_ you're talking about," Thirteen snapped.

"There _was_ a Second World War, so _clearly_ he failed."

"That man did what was best for this country."

"You're not even _from_ this country. I'm surprised you know anything about what happened before Pearl Harbor was bombed."

"Hold on," Cole interrupted quietly, "There was a _Second_ World War?" Everyone silenced.

"You do teach History, don't you?" McWatt said. Cole nodded.

"But you don't know about World War Two?" Thirteen questioned him.

"There was one _after_ the one with Hitler?" Cole asked her. She frowned.

"Uh…"

"Right, enough of that. First day nerves, everybody's been there. Except me. I haven't been nervous since I came off tour in 2003. Can't afford to be nervous in the battlefield," McWatt said. Nobody spoke, and then he sniffed quite loudly and resumed, after they were all notably harrowed. "Don't care about your lessons, we can't afford another teen scandal. I trust you'll all cover the basics?"

"Remind us of the basics again?" Clara asked.

"Why don't you just try and convince them to play for the same team, Clara? Can't get pregnant that way. Tell them about AIDS. Then they won't have any kids. They need to be prepared," McWatt said, "On the subject, I need you to speak some girls in Year 10 about homophobia – they've been saying 'dyke' again. But don't worry, this time, they weren't talking about you. Meeting dismissed." McWatt left the room as quickly as he could. He never stuck around in the staff room.

"Brilliant," Clara muttered, checking the time on her phone. It was ten to nine. "Do you want a cup of tea?" she asked the Doctor, standing up.

"I'll have coffee."

"You're not having more coffee, it's tea or nothing."

She pouted, but then said, "Fine. Tea, if you'd be so kind."

"Will you be alright with the sex ed, Clara?" Celia inquired, "Since you have to sleep with a _man_ to get pregnant, I was wondering if you knew how to do that? To warn the children away from it?"

"I'm not actually a lesbian," Clara pointed out, "I'm bisexual, and yes, I do know, but I was wondering the same thing about you, Celia." Celia glared at her, and Clara smiled back as she filled the kettle. Cole Campbell had stolen Clara's seat and was talking to the Doctor now, Clara could hear them.

"So you teach History as well?" Campbell asked her.

"Oh, yeah, I love History. Anything old."

"Are you the head of department?"

"Nah, Vaughn is the head. He's not here, he's always late. I'm Dr Oswald, by the way. Everybody calls me 'the Doctor.' And I mean _everybody_ calls me it," she said.

"Not your first name?"

"Well no, see, that's a funny story – my name is actually Thirteen. Crazy, huh? It's because my parents were totally in a deranged cult," she said while beaming, which threw him off guard. It threw everybody off guard, but this Doctor had been oddly adamant about her alias being 'Thirteen.' "But don't call me that."

"So are you American? Canadian?"

"What I am is late," she told him, picking up her things. She met Clara halfway back to the table and took her tea, "Do you need me to show you to your classroom?" she asked Cole. He told her he did, because Douglas hadn't shown him where anything was. Typical McWatt.

"I'll see you for lunch, then?" Clara said to her, "Meet you outside my room?"

"Sure thing, like always," Thirteen smiled as she left with Cole in tow. In five minutes the doors would be open and the corridors flooded with kids, it was best to get out of the way before that happened. Unless you were tall, then it wasn't so bad. Clara Oswald, however, was anything _but_ tall.

"He seems odd, doesn't he?" Evelyn said to Clara after Cole and the Doctor had left.

"Most people seem odd if you give them enough time, trust me," Clara replied, taking her tea and going to pick up her books, carrying her coat draped over her arm, holding her tea in the other hand.

"A History teacher who doesn't know there was a Second World War, though?" Clara thought to herself, _is it any different than an art teacher who can't draw?_ "It's not good for the school to employ people like that."

"Then take it up with Douglas. I have to go mark mock exams from Friday, anyway, I didn't get a chance to over the weekend, what with the car crash," Clara said on her way out. The last thing she wanted was to be stuck with Evelyn Stark during her free period.

"You gave them a mock on a Friday? They only just had mocks in December," Evelyn said.

"It pays to be prepared. Don't make fun of my teaching methods."

"I'm sure the kids make fun of them plenty, _and_ you, if you give them mocks on Fridays," Evelyn pointed out, but by that point Clara had gotten sick of her and left the staff room. As if that was even true. There was no way the kids didn't like her because she gave them mock exams every other Friday. Was there?

* _chapter 306_

 **AN: What would you guys think of me doing another crossover storyline with _The X-Files_? It just seems like the sort of thing I'd need to do before this is over, would be Mulder and Scully and the TARDIS crew. And by TARDIS crew, I basically mean Whoufflé. If I was gonna do that, it would definitely be with those two.**


	12. Love and Friendship

**AN: Yes, all of the present-day chapters are fluff about the various ships, and arguably the future chapters as well. No, this isn't the last time I'll be writing Thirteen and Future Clara. And finally, no, I'm not doing any Niver, I honestly could not give a fuck about Niver and don't want to put myself through that sort of suffering (Ten and Rose are bad enough.) So, yes, I'm aware of the lack of Nine. I don't care about the lack of Nine. There's plenty about the other characters.**

 **DAY 139**

 _Love and Friendship_

 _Ravenwood_

She had taken the day off. Dylan hadn't been all too happy about that, and thought she was skiving work because he'd managed to hear through Hollowmire's grape vine about her drunken escapades the previous night. Whether she had convinced him of the truth (that she needed to look after her sick girlfriend) or he had just gotten tired of arguing, she didn't know. But Dylan could think what he wanted, she didn't care. All she cared about was Jenny. That was why she had spent most of the day suffering in the living room with the curtains wide open, letting the sunlight she was so averse to flood into the room. She must look a sight, she thought, sulking there on the sofa, wearing all-black and tinted glasses with the dark hood of her dressing gown pulled up to protect her from the light, a mug full of warm blood held tightly between her hands. Jenny was lying down, half-curled up, her legs in Clara's lap with Clara's arms resting on those. She hadn't properly woken up yet, and it was getting late.

"She's okay," Esther Drummond assured her, catching her staring at Jenny's sleeping form again. Clara had been willing to outright beg for Esther to come over to keep her company, but it was lucky that Esther didn't need begging to be nice and help her friends. She was, she said, there more as a favour to Jenny than to Clara. Clara she was more annoyed with, because apparently she had been woken up at four in the morning by Sally Sparrow trying to cook toast over the electric hob in the kitchen and almost setting it on fire. Then she had tried to convince Esther to wait on her hand and foot because she was too hungover to do anything for herself. And then (as Esther told it), when Sally kept texting her from the attic asking if she would kindly make some soup, Esther had replied saying of course she would make soup. And then she had put on her coat and shoes and left, coming to Clara's and keeping her phone on airplane mode.

"I know," Clara said, "I can hear her hearts. I just worry. I'm also kind of worried that this thing might jump to _me_ ; my DNA is closer to hers than to yours now. Well, probably not _yours_ , your genetics must be all over the place-"

"Accurate."

"-but humans in general. The rest of them. The living." Martha kept asking Clara for hourly updates on Jenny's sickly condition, trying to find out whether she was properly awake yet. Martha was texting her, then Sally had started texting her when she figured out Esther wasn't in the house, but Clara was under strict instructions not reply to Sally Sparrow.

"Do you mind people asking you about being a vampire?" Esther said suddenly, pausing the video game she was playing. That was part of the arrangement, Clara letting Esther play video games on her fancy laptop (which Clara suspected was a souvenir from the future) emulated through the television. She didn't mind, she had been reading for most of the day. Clara was taken aback by her question, though.

"Uh, I don't think so. Nobody ever does, though," Clara shrugged, "Why? Is there something you want to know? You're not going to ask me to bite you, are you? I'm pretty sure Sally asked me to do that a fair few times last night while she was drunk. Not that I did."

"You couldn't bite me, you'd get electrocuted," Esther pointed out.

"I wouldn't bite you even if I could."

"So you don't have crazy bloodlust?"

"No, obviously not, otherwise Sally and everyone else in The Mermaid last night would probably dead. And if I killed _one_ of them, I'd have _all_ of the Followers of Oc'thubha after me," Clara said, "And you, no doubt. It's like… you know those really unhealthy food trucks? Why am I even asking, of course you know about unhealthy food trucks, you're American… well it's a bit like walking past one of those when you haven't eaten all day. But it's not like you're gonna murder the guy in the truck and steal all his burgers. I'm not an animal. Just a different species."

"I'm starving now that you mentioned those food trucks, god, I miss them," she sighed.

"Why would you miss them? We have plenty of them here," Clara said, "You just have to find them. Hang about at retail parks, or something. Actually, that reminds me, I keep meaning to go out somewhere and buy new crockery…" When she said that, Esther spared a glance at the mug Clara was holding, which looked like a skull with the top sliced off.

"You know people actually used to drink out of real skulls?" Esther said, "Which I always thought was strange, because, wouldn't the mead or ale or whatever just pour out of the eye sockets?" Clara lifted the mug she was holding to look at it, then shrugged and took another sip of blood.

Then Jenny coughed and Clara's attentions were instantly consumed by her, and she hastened to put her mug down on the coffee table in front of her where Esther's computer was.

"Jenny? Are you awake?" Clara asked. Esther had paused her game to see. Lo and behold, Jenny Harkness opened her eyes, finally. She had been asleep for hours. In her illness, she looked about as dead as Clara, who knew (now that she had means by which to see her reflection) she was pale and haggard and sullen. She had the complexion of a recently dead corpse. She _was_ a recently dead corpse.

"I'm dying," Jenny croaked, her eyes finding Clara. She seemed like she believed it, too.

"You're not dying. You've got flu. Although I don't much fancy your chances if you don't have something to eat soon," Clara told her.

"I feel like I'm going to die. I can see the light."

"You can see the sun because I have the curtains open. You're not going to die, Jen. Listen to me. You know the Anobine Cartax? And the infection you were telling me about yesterday? You caught it, except it reacts differently with Time Lords. It mimics influenza. Martha ran simulations, you'll be fine," Clara said, "Now, you're gonna sit up and stop wallowing, and I'll go make you a Lemsip." Clara lifted Jenny's legs and stood up, heading towards the kitchen, but her hand was grabbed on the way past.

"I want your face to be the last face I see," Jenny said, looking into Clara's eyes hopelessly. Clara frowned and then glanced over at Esther and rolled her eyes very exaggeratedly.

"Well if you try not to look at Esther then it will be," Clara said, pulling her hand free.

"Shall I make some soup? You have soup, right?" Esther asked Clara, and only then did Jenny realise that they weren't alone. Then she groaned and curled up, rolling onto her side.

"…Soup would be wonderful, thanks so much, I'm sure I have some somewhere," Clara answered when Jenny wouldn't. Esther got up and left the room and Clara turned back to Jenny. "Do you want me to bring another blanket up from downstairs?"

"A blanket won't delay the inevitable," she mumbled. Wow, the others on the crew had been right; the Time Lords _were_ being melodramatic. Clara wished Jenny would go back to sleep. She shook her head and left. It didn't matter how much Jenny moped, she was going to be fine.

"Oh my god," Clara whispered to Esther when she went into the kitchen, "Do you hear that? It's like dating Emily Brontë." Esther laughed.

"Like you'd pass up the opportunity to date Emily Brontë," Esther said, rifling through Clara's cupboards looking for canned soup. It was a good thing that Jenny, despite being a master chef, had the lowest standards of anybody Clara had ever met when it came to food. She would eat anything.

"I hate that you're right…" she grumbled, "Emily was definitely the hot one. Charlotte was too uptight, and Anne was too religious. Don't get me started on Branwell."

"What? You've met them?"

"I wish. I did used to have a certain degree of an involvement with Jane Austen, though, on more of an… _à la carte_ basis." Clara dug out a box of Lemsip sachets she had in one of the cupboards, which happened to be the same cupboard as the elusive soup. She took out a can of chicken soup and held it out to Esther, but Esther was looking at her funny. "What?"

"What do you mean 'involvement' with Jane Austen?" she asked quietly.

"Exactly what you think I mean."

"Wait, you _slept with her_? I know she was a good writer but she lived before the commercialisation of toothpaste," Esther pointed out. "People didn't have proper toothpaste until after 1900 – they used to make it out of charcoal."

"Why do you just know that?" Esther shrugged. "And, well, she…" Clara scowled, then brandished the soup can at Esther, "You know what? Yes, I did, and I'd sleep with her again in a heartbeat, toothpaste or no." Esther took the can finally. "I mean, hypothetically, I would. If I didn't have Jenny. I would never do anything to jeopardise my relationship with her, she's my sun."

"She's your _sun_?" Esther found that funny.

"Yes, she is, Little Miss Relationships-Are-Icky, I love her more than anything in the world," Clara said, "That's why I'm making her a Lemsip and going downstairs to get more blankets. Now, do you want a coffee?"

Some ten minutes later they returned to the living room bearing gifts, and Clara was surprised to see that Jenny actually had managed to sit up, though she'd stolen the cushion Clara had been leaning on.

"You've got chicken soup, Lemsip, and another blanket," Clara said, passing her the bowl and putting the mug of lemon-flavoured flu remedy on the floor next to her. At least she was still awake, too.

"Aren't you supposed to be at work?" she asked hoarsely.

"I took the day off for you," Clara said, "Now have your soup Esther made so lovingly."

"I wouldn't say it was _loving_ , it's canned soup that's been in the microwave," Esther explained.

"I'll make it up to you," Jenny croaked, turning to look at Esther, "I'll make you a sandwich. But it'll be the best sandwich you've ever tasted."

"Sandwiches are my favourite food," Esther said seriously, "Along with milkshakes."

"Then I'll do milkshakes as well," Jenny said. She was practically whispering. At least she wasn't talking about how she was going to die anymore (it was annoying.) "I want a milkshake right now…"

"I'm going to McDonald's in a bit, you can have one then," Clara told her, sitting back down on the edge of the sofa, "And I'll nip to the supermarket and get you some throat soothers, too, you sound dreadful. The Lemsip will help with that."

"I'm dying, Clara." Clearly she had spoken too soon.

"Soup, Jen. Steaming hot soup." Jenny huddled up on one side of the sofa, covered in blankets, blowing on a spoon full of beige soup. It was the kind that was so cheap it didn't actually have bits of chicken in it.

"Why is Esther waiting on me?"

"It's all part of a cunning ploy she has to trick you into making her sandwiches," Clara said.

"I'm hiding from Sally," Esther answered for herself, "The woman had the nerve to try and get me to make soup for her earlier."

"But… you just made _me_ soup," Jenny pointed out.

"Well, _yeah_ , I know, but _you're_ actually ill. _She's_ not ill, she just drank too much, and that's her own fault. And your girlfriend's fault."

"Say it to my face," Clara muttered.

"It's your fault," Esther said (to her face) flatly. Clara grumpily crossed her arms.

"Didn't anybody ever teach you it's rude to point fingers?" she retorted, and Esther just sighed.

"Is my dad sick?" Jenny asked as though she had only just realised the Doctor had been exposed to the infection yesterday, too.

"Yes. All of them are, all the Time Lords, it's _that_ contagious, apparently. He'll be fine," Clara assured her, "Martha's keeping an eye on them all." Jenny nodded and slurped her hot soup. Outside it was starting to get dark. The sky was red and the sun, though she couldn't look at it for more than short lengths of time, was setting beneath the horizon. Clara still had her sun-glasses on their maximum setting and her dressing gown hood up. She probably looked like a druid. Jenny had put her legs back across Clara's lap, and Clara nudged her and she met her eyes.

"What?" she asked, and Clara was taken aback for a second by how gorgeous she looked in the sunlight, in spite of her dire illness. "Clara? Why are you staring at me?" She hadn't realised she'd been staring.

"Esther thinks it's gross that we're in love."

"I did not say that," Esther argued.

"You basically did."

" _You_ said she was 'your sun' and I thought that was weird."

"Homophobe."

"Okay, first of all, that's really cute and I appreciate you saying I'm your sun. Second of all, you can't keep saying everything is homophobic. You know," Jenny turned to talk to Esther, apparently not caring at all for Esther Drummond's blatant intolerance, "the other morning she ran out of perfume and said that Dior were homophobic."

"I'm gay, I was slightly inconvenienced, therefore it's homophobic," Clara shrugged, "I didn't smell pretty for an entire day. An _entire day_ , Esther. I won't stand for it." Jenny ignored her and reached down to pick up the mug of Lemsip from the floor, slurping that just as loudly as the soup. Was that one of her flaws? She slurped? Was it bad of Clara to constantly be trying to pick faults with her girlfriend? It was only because she didn't have any to begin with. Apart from rather lacking self-preservation instincts. Regardless, Jenny changed the subject and went to pay more attention to Esther.

"Are you playing games?"

"Yeah, it's a PlayStation 3 port I'm emulating through the laptop onto the TV," Esther answered (Clara didn't know what that meant, but Jenny appeared to.)

"What game?"

Only now did Clara actually look at what Esther had been up to on the television for the last few hours. It generally consisted of a lot of climbing up buildings and shooting people with bright blue light.

" _InFamous_ ," Esther said.

"What's it about?"

"This guy who accidentally uses this device that blows a crater in this city and sucks 'bio-energy' out of all the nearby people, and then he absorbs it and becomes a 'Conduit' and gets superpowers. Electrical superpowers."

"You mean like you?" Clara asked, looking at the TV, watching the character create what looked like a forcefield out of electricity.

"Uh-huh. Watch this," she said, and then a huge bolt lightning was summoned forth from the in-game sky above, destroying a whole platoon of enemies and making half a dozen cars explode.

"Can _you_ do that?" Jenny, awestruck, asked.

"I did it when I got brought back to life, but I've never tried since. Seems dangerous," she said, "I don't really do a lot. Real me, I mean. Not in the video game."

"You should try it," Jenny said.

"And _you_ should try not talking," Clara advised her, and then she clapped her hands together and got up, "Right, I'm going to buy fast food and hope vampires can't have heart attacks. Or worse, acne breakouts. Who wants what?"

"I'll have-" Jenny began.

"No, you're having milkshake, that's it, you've already been sick earlier. Just have your soup, Jen," Clara said, and she seemed disappointed. Clara thought just the milkshake was risky, though – dairy wasn't really the best thing to have for a bad stomach. Clara added to Esther, "And yes, I'm paying for yours too, it's only fair after how much help you've been all day."

"Well then I'll just have chicken nuggets, if you're offering. And a milkshake. Are you sure you don't want me to give you some money?"

"Yeah, it's fine, don't worry about it," Clara assured her, going to find her shoes.

"Aren't you going to get changed out of pyjamas?" Jenny asked.

"No, it's a drive through, it's fine," Clara said, picking up her keys from by the door, "I'll be back in about twenty minutes. And you're not getting a milkshake until you finish your Lemsip."

" _Fine_ , Clara. I love you."

"I love you, too. And you, Esther, obviously. I daresay you're my sun," she added, smiling. Esther, distracted by her game, gave her a thumbs up, and Clara disappeared out of the door to fetch dinner.


	13. The Wasp Factory

**DAY 18,200**

 _The Wasp Factory_

 _Clara_

For the first three hours or so of Clara's day, nothing notable happened. She had all of first lesson free to mark exams, nobody dropped by to annoy her like the Doctor often would if they had free periods at the same time, and then second lesson she had Year 8s learn about sentence structures, teaching them not to start every sentence with 'the' because it didn't read well. Now, though, she was trying to teach Year 11 _An Inspector Calls_. Really, the GCSE syllabus just got more and more grating.

"Daniel, if you call Daisy Renton a slag one more time, I _will_ give you a detention," Clara said, leaning on her desk with the play in one hand, her cold cup of tea she had been given at break by the Doctor in the other.

"But miss-"

" _One more word_ and you _will_ have to stay behind tonight for a lecture on the hardships and prejudices sex workers face, okay?" she snapped at him, "And the same goes for anybody else."

"Don't you have plans tonight, miss?" a girl, Rita, quipped from the back of the room, and there were sniggers around. Honestly, it was like being on the TARDIS back when everyone lived together again. Soon enough Rose Tyler was going to burst into life in front of her in a flurry of golden sparks and start accusing her of getting up to no good in the communal shower stalls. Clara didn't answer the question about if she had plans, it had struck a nerve.

"I don't understand this play," another boy, Alex, interjected, "We're supposed to feel bad for her, but she _did_ accidentally drink bleach."

"She drank it on purpose, you idiot," Rita remarked to him.

"Why? It would kill her."

"Duh."

"Okay, that's enough, let's not make a joke of her tragic suicide, shall we?" Clara stopped them.

"But miss, when we did _Romeo and Juliet_ , you said they were both 'stupid children,'" Daniel argued with her, " _They_ killed themselves."

"Well, I… you know, you're doing a terrible job of making me think you _don't_ want a detention with me. Do I have to call your mother? I've had to call her so often we're on especially good terms," Clara pointed out to him. It was entirely true. Daniel's mother was pretty nice. There were more snickers about that, but this time they were laughing _with_ Clara, not _at_ her. For once. She was never the 'funny one.' Which was a real shame, because for decades she had been under the impression that she _was_ the funny one. But no, that award went to the Doctor, of course, because everyone loved the Doctor, which would bother Clara if it wasn't for the fact _she_ loved the Doctor as well.

"He's hoping he'll get extra sex education if you give him a detention," Rita commented.

"Well _that_ was inappropriate, you're getting a negative point for that."

"Nobody gives Year 11s negative points," she argued.

"Probably because they think if you're sixteen and you still can't behave, you're beyond the point of helping. And who told you lot you have the afternoon off-timetable? You're not supposed to know yet," Clara said.

"Miss Stark told us," Daniel said. Clara scowled. Of course it was Evelyn, she didn't know the meaning of the word 'clandestine.' In fact, she really probably didn't. "Do we have to have a proper lesson?"

" _Yes_ , obviously, especially since this afternoon probably won't be educational for any of you. I know you learn about contraception and abortion and whatever else in RE," she said. A good handful of these kids were in her form – her joint form, with the Doctor. It was some initiative Norris had introduced before she, as Graham so elegantly put it, 'snuffed it.' Two tutors per form. _Apparently_ they were put together because it was 'easier for the alphabet' with their shared surname, and because of the fact people would get confused between them otherwise. She could see that they were probably legitimate reasons, but part of her still thought it was the result of some joke among the rest of the faculty.

"Why? What are you gonna do?" Rita asked.

"I don't know, stick on one of those old videos."

"What kind of videos, miss?" Alex questioned. More laughter.

"You will be disappointed to know I haven't brought pornography with me, since that's _clearly_ what you're getting at. First of all because I'm not a pervert, and second of all because we didn't get told about this until this morning," she said.

"So you have porn?" Daniel asked.

"Inappropriate. Whole school detention for you on Friday – I'll be sure to let your head of year know what you've been saying. _And_ Mary," she said, Mary being his mother. "And no, I don't have porn, I have a wife. She hates it." A lie. The first part. Not the part about Thirteen hating it (Thirteen _really_ hated it.)

"This book's about a prostitute," he said.

"It's a play."

"So we can read about prostitution but not about porn?" Rita questioned.

"You don't 'read about' porn."

"What's _Fifty Shades of Grey,_ then?"

"It's a travesty, don't go anywhere near it," Clara advised, "And if you _do_ , don't pay for it. Not that I support stealing, don't quote me on that."

"Have you read it, miss?"

"You'd be surprised what I've read, Natasha. Now, can we please discuss the political subtext of this play? What kind of message do you think Priestley was trying to deliver to his audience in Edwardian Britain? In the final act when the Inspector talks about humanity having to work together to overcome the future tragedy of the First World War?" Clara asked them.

"Communism, innit," said a different boy, Ethan.

"Socialism, technically. But yes, good. Left-wing politics was gaining momentum back in the day-"

"Dr Oswald talks about communism a lot," Ethan interrupted her.

"…You're doing the Cold War, though, aren't you?" Clara asked.

"Vietnam. We did the Tet Offensive this week," he said. She paused and thought.

"I'll have words with her. She's not supposed to sway your political opinions." Her wife was an idiot. A politically vocal idiot. It got really exhausting sometimes – that morning and her complaining about 'corporations' and Valentine's Day was a prime example. Since she stopped living like a regular person and moved onto a spaceship with a gay alien, she'd sort of ended up not caring about politics. Being as she was most likely going to return to said spaceship before or just after the next election, she still didn't care, and thought that if the government knew about what she'd been up to for fifty years she'd end up disenfranchised. And she'd deserve it, too.

"Is Priestley trying to say that rich posh twats get away with murder?" Rita said.

"You have a whole school detention on Friday as well now for swearing," Clara said.

"I didn't even say anything! That's out of order, miss."

"You know perfectly well what you…" she trailed off, spying something out of the window which distracted her. It promptly distracted the twenty-something kids in the room as well, all of them turning to look at what she saw, and what she saw was a pretty weird sight in the staff carpark. It was that new History teacher, the one who didn't know the difference between the World Wars, Cole Campbell, wandering around out there aimlessly in the cold February air. She put down _An Inspector Calls_ , and her tea, and went to open the blinds properly to see what was going on.

"Who is that?" someone asked.

"That new History teacher," somebody else replied.

"What's he doing?" Ethan asked Clara.

"I have absolutely no idea," she replied. She was just as confused as the kids were.

"Maybe he's lost? You should go see," Daniel advised her.

"And leave you lot unsupervised? No way. And besides, it would be five minutes before I got out there," Clara said. Then she frowned as Cole sat down on the bonnet of a car which didn't belong to him, because it was a huge, grubby Land Rover of McWatt's. "Everyone, close the blinds and sit back down, ignore him. If anybody asks, I didn't see anything, okay?" It took a minute, but when Cole didn't move anymore they all listened. He better not go near her new Ferrari, she thought.

"Can't we just make posters this lesson?" Natasha asked her as she sat back down at her desk.

"What? No! You have your GCSE exams in four months, of course you can't make posters." For the next five solid minutes, the entire class unanimously begged her to let them make posters.

"It's only fair, miss, you _are_ asking us to lie for you about that new teacher," Rita pointed out. _Shit_ , she thought. Now she was being blackmailed by fifteen-to-sixteen year-olds, most of whom were delinquents. Why was it so hard for them to behave? _She_ behaved just fine in high school. Of course, she did also do quite a bit of sleeping around, and had actually had her infamous promiscuity discussed with her by 'concerned teachers.' It was lucky they had never told her parents, her father would have killed her, god rest his soul.

"…Fine, alright? I want a mind map with quotes on it from all the characters. At least two quotes for each, and you can go about memorising them for homework for the next few months. But you're doing a mock exam to make up for this, and for the fact you have the whole afternoon off," Clara said. At first there had been noises of success and elation, but then they turned to ones of bitterness when she mentioned a mock.

"You give us too many mocks, miss," Daniel said, "Dr Oswald never gives mocks."

"Well I think she should – do you want me to tell her to? There are _all sorts_ of underhand methods I could use that would _convince_ her to give you all _plenty_ of practice papers," she threatened.

"Are you going to teach us about them this afternoon?" Alex asked, doing a fake tone of voice that sounded like genuine curiosity.

"Definitely not."

"We don't have any coloured pens. Colour coding is good for dyslexia, you know," Ethan said. God, teenagers were incorrigible. He didn't give a damn about dyslexia, they just wanted to use felt tips. Clara related, though, she _did_ like felt tips… she had a whole collection of Sharpies at home she didn't let her wife touch. The Doctor had a magical gift for making pens run dry.

"Alright, I'll go get some pens…" she grumbled, giving in to them. Halfway out of the door, she added, "And I'm trusting you lot not to get rowdy. Anybody does anything severe while I'm away, and I'll give you _all_ an extra exam paper for homework." Then she left. Now they couldn't get up to anything without getting shouted down by the rest of their classmates.

Speaking of her other half and felt tip pens, though, she wasn't going to deny that the Doctor was her first port of call when it came to scrounging stationary, when of course she _was_. Any excuse to see Thirteen, even for thirty seconds, was good enough for Clara to go skulking around towards the Humanities corridor. If she couldn't find any there, then she'd be forced to go two floors up to try and borrow off of Evelyn Stark, and Evelyn was always a real miser when it came to lending out art supplies.

She regretted it though. She should have gone to Evelyn first. Clara knocked and opened the door to Thirteen's room and immediately found herself bombarded by a thousand miniscule projectiles she quickly deduced to be Celebrations. Tiny Maltesers and Milky Ways and Twixes littered the floor at her feet. Clara looked around and found the Doctor right away, standing there looking quite amused.

"We're just doing about the Berlin Airlift and Operation Little Vittles," the Doctor explained, "You know, in 1949, when one of the pilots delivering supplies dropped candy out of his plane to give to the children in Berlin." She was teaching Year 9. One last kid who was a little late on the uptake threw his Bounty right at Clara's head, and it hit her just above her eye, and she flinched. Before she could tell him off (though she didn't rightly know who he was), Thirteen interrupted, "You getting hit by them makes you a disgruntled Soviet soldier."

"In which case I hope a Wendigo comes to put me out of my misery*," she muttered, "Do you have any coloured pens I can borrow?"

"Of course, darling. I mean, uh, not-darling," she hastened to correct herself, but she didn't do a very good job of it. Thirteen went to go get pens and Clara lingered in the doorway, trying to ignore the eyes on her from the thirteen year-olds. Probably hearing the Doctor slip and accidentally call her 'darling' was the most interesting thing to happen to them all week, especially those few who didn't even know they were married. The displays the Doctor had in her classroom were extraordinary, because she put a _lot_ of effort into them, sitting up all night at home cutting out pictures and sticking them together. Clara thought it was sweet (her own displays were terrible.) The Doctor's room was also very warm and dark, because they'd been watching some black and white documentary on the projector.

"By the way, I know you really enjoy the whole left-wing-activist, Che Guevara thing, but you do know we're not legally allowed to influence kids' political opinions?"

"Che Guevara was homophobic, _and_ a racist," Thirteen said absently, searching through one of her cupboards, "But _fine_ , whatever you like."

"Who's Che Guevara?" another kid Clara didn't know asked the Doctor.

"Key Marxist leader during the Cuban Revolution in the Fifties. It's not on the syllabus," she answered, pulling out a shoebox full of pens, "He wasn't even Cuban, he was from Argentina." _And_ you're _not even from this planet_ , Clara thought to herself. As Thirteen brought the box of pens over Clara stooped to pick up one of the Maltesers from the floor (all the Celebrations were still in their wrappers, they hadn't been contaminated by children.) "Hey, those chocolates are for the good people of Berlin, Oswald."

Clara took the box and made to leave, calling back, "When will you Americans stop being so morally righteous?"

"Goodbye, now!" And the door closed.

On her way back to her own room, she had to pass by Cole Campbell's new room. Ordinarily, she would have thought nothing of it, if it wasn't for the earlier incident she had witnessed in the carpark earlier. He was back in his room, though, on his own, looking quite lost.

Clara paused and observed, briefly forgetting about her class of Year 11s – they were old enough to behave, though. The door to the room was slightly ajar, and a loud buzzing noise coming from within drew her attention. A wasp, a large one, she could see it clear as day. It flitted around Campbell's head and he flailed at it, as though trying to swat it. Clara couldn't think of anything _worse_ to do to a massive wasp than aggravate it, normally she would open all the windows and vacate the room, or make the Doctor catch it in a glass and throw it out into the garden. Thank god, she thought a moment later, she had been there to see what she saw, because what she saw was a grown and easily confused new teacher grabbing an enormous stinging insect out of the air and sticking it into his mouth. The buzzing became muffled, and then she heard a crunch, and put a hand to her mouth and backed away around the corner to where she couldn't be seen.

What the _hell_ was that!? He had just eaten a live wasp! A _wasp_! A wasp which was _alive_! A dead wasp would have been weird enough, let alone one that was still kicking, kicking with all six of its freaky little legs and its translucent wings and evil, buggy eyes. Had McWatt even given that man a criminal record check? She'd only encountered him for a total of five minutes and already she knew Cole Campbell ought to be committed. At least looked over by a mental health professional.

"Excuse me?"

Clara jumped and looked around to realise Cole had left his classroom and she had not heard. He stood there by the wall, tall and gangly, looking at her with an amiable smile. She forced herself to smile back.

"Sorry, sorry, just… had to go get some pens, needed a moment to myself, you know what kids can be like," she said, then she paused and added, "You do know what kids can be like, don't you…?"

"Your name's Clare, isn't it?"

"Close – I'm Clara," she said politely, "And I really ought to be going, as well, so if you'll just-" She tried to walk past him, but he stopped her.

"No, don't go yet, I need a favour."

"A favour…?" she asked incredulously. He continued to smile, in a nervous kind of way. It would be endearing if it wasn't for the fact she couldn't look at his teeth without thinking about the wasp they chewed up not two minutes ago.

"I, uh, I heard this rumour about you…" he began. _Oh, here we go_ , Clara thought. Good thing she was used to having rumours spread about her. "It's just, people were saying you're a lesbian, and I need some help with this… girl…"

"I'm not a lesbian, I'm bi," she informed him.

"It's the same thing though, isn't it?"

"No. Not really. Can this not wait? I have to-" Again Clara tried to leave, and again Campbell stopped her. She was on the brink of resorting to teleporting away.

"Do you believe in love at first sight?" he asked.

"I… well, I suppose so. My sister and my brother-in-law had that. Love at first sight isn't synonymous with true love, though, it can be misguided infatuation, could be toxic, I wouldn't say first impressions are a whole lot to go by," Clara said.

"You seem like good friends with her, _and_ you're gay, so I thought you would help me?" he said. Clara stopped dead.

"Wait, wait, wait – which, um, which girl is this?"

"Thirteen, the American."

"You want to ask…? You think...? _Love at first sight_? With… with the – with Dr Oswald? The...? I…" Clara stammered uselessly. What kind of weird Valentine's Day was this? This weird, confused wasp-eater now wanted to ask her _wife_ out on a _date_? He thought that he had fallen in love with the Doctor? Love at first sight? It was ridiculous! Even she didn't claim that, how could she when the Doctor had showed up on her doorstep dressed as a monk? A _stinky_ monk. A stinking monk who appeared to be stalking her.

But this bloke? He was weird. Majorly weird. The Second World War stuff was just the tip of the iceberg. And as for the Doctor? She could be covert if necessary.

"I'm only asking because you seem like great friends."

"…Well. You're in luck because we are _the best_ of friends. And she is totally, completely single. Doesn't have one single plan for Valentine's Day. In fact, she keeps telling me she _wished_ more men would ask her out, seriously. I reckon you'd be in. Definitely ask her out. Tonight. She'll say yes," Clara lied, "But I have to go now. Left the kids unsupervised, you know how it is. Bye, now!" She finally got away.

How had he heard a rumour that _she_ was gay without hearing about her wife? Hearing they shared a name? They both wore wedding rings? Then again, he was very… flighty. Thinking about it, it wasn't so hard to believe Cole hadn't noticed. She supposed Thirteen just hadn't introduced the faculty, otherwise she would surely have complained about Celia, warned against crossing Douglas, pitied Graham and mentioned, oh, yes; _that stunning, brunette English teacher with the dimples and the chocolatey eyes? That's my wife._

Perhaps Clara was being a little generous when it came to her own description of herself. Still. She wasn't _wrong_. She was suddenly glad, as she returned to her room, that she had let them do posters. She needed time to sit and think about how on Earth she was going to explain this catastrophe to her dear other half, but the only thing running through Clara Oswald's mind was the word _shit_.

* _chapters 840-847_


	14. In Sickness and in Health

**AN: Moved into the old university and whatnot today. Regular updates though, mainly because I have the next three chapters pre-written.**

 **DAY 139**

 _In Sickness and in Health_

 _Rose_

Rose Tyler was in a bad mood. She was in a bad mood because the Tenth Doctor was ill, her _fiancé_ was ill, and while she had been out at a spa all day pretending like everything was hunky-dory in her life, he had been fighting to breathe in their bed and no one had thought to tell her. Not even Amy Pond (that cow) who had known the Time Lords were sick the whole day and had been right there next to her. Upon hearing the news second hand in Nerve Centre, Rose dropped her tea and teleported straight into her bedroom, which was dark and stiflingly hot.

She went to switch the light on and saw Ten, bleak and grey curled up in bed, a mess. He groaned when the room brightened up. He was awake, at least, that was a start. That was good, right? Or should he be sleeping? Where was Martha, she thought, looking around? Martha Jones was vacant. Probably off tending to one of the _other_ Time Lords, but Rose didn't really care about any of the other Time Lords, she only cared about Ten.

"Bloody hell, have you just been lying here all day?" Rose asked him. She wished that there was a chair to sit in, but they didn't have a chair in their room, it was cramped. She kept meaning to ask him to build them a new one, like Eleven had done for Clara. Had Clara asked for that room? Or had he done it spur of the moment? Why did Ten never do things like that? Maybe when they were married, which would hopefully be as soon as possible, he would.

Rose took off her coat and kicked off her shoes, going to sit down around the other side of the bed. He didn't say anything. "Doctor?"

"Wha'?" he groaned uselessly, his mouth half-open, face sunken into the pillow.

"How do you feel?" she asked. No response. She frowned, then raised her voice like she was talking to a deaf person, "Do you want a cup of tea?" she said loudly.

" _Rooooooose_ ," he whinged, turning so that he was face-down in the pillow instead, slumping there. Well, maybe she was worried about him possibly dying before they could actually get married; now this engagement was properly in the works and she had a shimmering rock glaring up from her left hand to prove it, it was quickly becoming the only thing she thought of. Her first wedding she never talked about, especially not to Ten while she was trying to make him plan, had been taken over very quickly by her mother. It got to a point where she and Tentoo just did whatever Jackie wanted them to do because it wasn't worth the arguments. But this time she would call the shots. And the Doctor, obviously…

"Martha's right, then," she said, still speaking loudly. "Don't you just have a cold?"

"I'm _dying_."

"The time vortex is telling me you're not," she said. Of course it hadn't, but Martha had, and it wasn't like Martha was going to _lie_. When she mentioned the time vortex he opened his eyes and looked at her. She smiled. "Do you want a flannel, or something?"

"Why would I want a flannel?" he grumbled, moving his head to look at her again, frowning. His whole face was shiny with sweat, and his hair was lank.

"Put on your head. A cold one," she said. Then pressed put the back of her hand against his forehead and he flinched away, "You've got a fever. I think. I can't tell that well. It'll cool you down."

"I don't want a flannel."

"What _do_ you want? Anything?"

"No."

"Do you want me to leave?"

"… _No_ …"

"How about… soup? Porridge? Some of that stuff out of the machines? That stuff's really nutritional, it'll probably be good for you," she suggested, but he just groaned and dragged some of the sheets out from under her so that she nearly fell over, burying his face. Rose sighed and reached over to play with his hair, pushing it up so that it nearly looked the way it did when it was gelled (a look which took him hours in the bathroom every morning to achieve.) It flopped back down when she moved her hand, though, and he pulled the sheets away and met her eyes.

"Have you done something with your face?"

"I've been at a spa, haven't I?"

"With who?"

"With Donna and Amy."

"Donna… where's Donna?" he asked her, and she shrugged.

"How should I know?" He groaned again. "You know, Doctor, I haven't actually promised to be with you in sickness and in health yet. That's a thought, wedding vows… should we write our own?" He didn't seem interested. Typical man. All about the proposal, never about the wedding. And the proposal was the easy bit. Well, perhaps she had never proposed, but there was no need for Ten to have gotten so worked up about it all. She would never say no to him. "Have you had a wash today?" He just made more disgruntled noises. "God, fine, _don't_ talk to your fiancée…"

"Oh, don't be like that."

"I'm not being like anything. _You're_ moping."

"I'm not well, Rose!" he whined, "I've never been not-well before. I can barely breathe. Can't your power make snot cease to exist?"

"I am not going anywhere _near_ your snot, don't care how much I love you."

"Come on."

"No."

"Please?"

"No!" Rose laughed as she protested, the Doctor struggling to sit up to try and put his nose (and the rest of his face) near her, "Get away from me, I don't want to catch your alien diseases."

"I don't believe you."

"You think I wanna get sick from _you_?" she questioned, leaning towards him, smiling, "I don't want _anything_ to do with you." He smiled slightly and moved to kiss her when somebody thumped on the door. "Stop trying to kiss me while you're all… ew." Because she didn't let him get close enough to infect her (not that she _would_ get infected, but he still had a pretty nasty blocked nose), and because Donna burst through the door, he threw himself back down onto the bed and resigned himself to melancholy once more.

"Is he dying?" Donna asked immediately. She didn't even wait for someone to say she could come in.

"No he's not dying," Rose said.

"I am dying," he mumbled, putting his hands over his face.

" _He's not dying_ ," Rose mouthed when he couldn't see, rolling her eyes very exaggeratedly and making a face. Then she remembered something and nudged Ten with her elbow to get his attention again.

" _Whaaaaaaaat_?" he complained.

"Weren't you just asking where Donna is a second ago?" she asked him.

"Was he?" Donna asked.

"Yeah, and I said I didn't know where you were." Ten said nothing, so Rose prodded him again. He really was a big, lanky mess that evening. Their sheets most definitely needed a wash as soon as possible; luckily the TARDIS did all their laundry for them, just like it did for everybody. Except for Eleven and Clara. They had to suffer with washing their _own_ clothes. Rose found that amusing. "Doctor?"

It was then that they were joined by their second unwelcome guest of the evening – although, Rose didn't think that Ten on his own would be very good company. She supposed _he_ would want rid of Donna, and the newly arrived Captain Jack, but Rose didn't mind having them there at all. Even if she _did_ wish that they would knock and not just fling themselves over-dramatically through the doors at impromptu moments.

Jack came in and then said, "Just wondering if there's any last chance of a three-way before he snuffs it?" nodding at Ten.

"You'd have to ask him," Rose said.

"I _am_ asking him," Jack said, but Ten just continued to wallow silently in the throes of his illness. Tentoo used to get sick, used to catch colds, and he didn't deal with them very well, being genetically human and never vaccinated against anything. Rose had become convinced that he was going to die very young from something very treatable – like chicken pox, potentially lethal when contracted by adults. Or TB. But Ten didn't have that excuse. He was being a baby.

"What are you talking about?" Donna asked.

"Sex, Donna. Heard of it?" Jack remarked. She glared at him. "What? Are you jealous? There's always room for one more. We'll make it a party. Invite Sean."

"Oi," Rose elbowed Ten, "Jack wants to know if we can have an orgy, or something."

"No," he mumbled.

Rose looked at Jack with her best pretend, disappointed expression, and told him, "He said no."

"So you're gonna let me die a virgin? Shame on you."

"Shush, he wants to talk to me," Donna said to Jack. There was a pause in which everyone looked to Ten, still curled up there in the sheets with a pillow on his face, like they were all waiting for him to talk. Then he coughed. She was getting tired of this. She would need another spa break at this rate.

"Honestly, this is exactly like when he regenerated, he was completely out of it for ages."

"Yeah, but then he'll have had the excuse of, you know, dying."

"I might die," Ten argued, muffled by the pillow. Apparently the only time he could bring himself to speak was when someone questioned the ambiguity of his mortality. Finally, though, he did move the pillow, and Rose snatched it off him so that he couldn't hide himself again, not without exerting the phenomenal amount of energy which it would clearly take him to roll onto his front again. "Donna," he said like he had only just noticed her.

"Yes?" she asked.

"Won't you be my best man?" he asked. Rose frowned, looking at him.

"Uh…" she faltered, then lowered her voice and said, "We haven't discussed this." He completely ignored her.

"Or, best woman, I suppose. Can you do that? Is it allowed?" Ten asked, not looking at Rose. She'd asked him just the other day who he wanted to be his best man and he hadn't said anything decisive. She had honestly been expecting him to pick another version of himself to do it, though she didn't know how much store she set in either of them saying yes. Thirteen would say yes, if she was there, but then, Rose thought Thirteen might say yes to anything.

"You want _me_ to be your _best woman_?" Donna exclaimed. Ten nodded. "Seriously?" Rose was just looking at him. Was he delusional?

"Who else would I want? You're my best friend."

Then, _very_ theatrically, Jack cleared his throat. He cleared his throat incredibly loudly for at least five full seconds, and then when he stopped, he gawked at Ten, slack-jawed, who looked back innocently. And then with both hands he pointed at his face and said, "Hello!? I'm _clearly_ best man material! I am _the_ best man! Out of all of them, _all_ the men."

" _I'm_ the best man now," Donna said, grinning smugly at Jack, who was mortally offended.

And then Rose got a genius idea, clapping her hands once to get attention and pointing at him, "You can be the maid of honour."

"The maid of honour!?" Jack exclaimed in horror, then he paused, and then repeated a little more thoughtfully, "The maid of honour… hold on…" then he beamed and began to fan himself, " _The_ maid of honour? _Really_? _Me_?"

"Yep," said Rose, very unsure of this decision. But what could she do? Jack was probably her closest friend. She would, to be quite honest, love to have him there with her throughout her second big day. After all, he hadn't even been there for the first.

"Oh my god. Oh my god, Donna, I'm the maid of honour!"

"I know!" Donna beamed, "And _I'm_ the best man! I get to plan the stag party."

"I get to plan the hen party," Jack said. After the last hen party on the TARDIS – that whole Dalton Lodge fiasco – Rose wasn't sure she wanted a hen party at all anymore. Nothing good could come of people getting drunk on that spaceship. Unless Jack did something different – like going to a spa. Again. God, she loved spas…

"This is gonna be the best wedding ever," Donna declared.

"Well you're not planning it, though," Rose pointed out to her, and Donna waved her away, turning to go towards the door. Jack was still muttering to himself, _maid of honour_ , over and over again, and on his way to follow Donna did a very camp twirl in his long coat.

"Seriously, I'll take care of _everything_ ," Donna said as she left, an elated Jack in tow.

"I don't really want you to take care of everything. Or anything, really," Rose said.

Donna smiled, nodded, and mouthed as she closed the door, " _Everything_ ," winking. Then they left, completely distracted from Ten's illness by their own new promotions.

"Brilliant," Rose muttered, slouching down, her arms wrapped around the spare pillow, "Donna and Jack trying to plan our wedding." She looked at Ten, and Ten was smiling.

"What could possibly go wrong?"


	15. Toxic Valentine

**DAY 18,200**

 _Toxic Valentine_

 _Clara_

She let her class go five minutes early in order to minimise the delay between the Doctor showing up at her door and them getting to the privacy of the car so that they could go out for lunch, as they did every day. She sat with her coat already on, ready to go, tapping her foot agitatedly. She wanted to check her phone, wanted to text the Doctor and warn her, explain, but the Doctor did not have a mobile, she still refused to get one. All her calls went to their landline or through Clara. Sometimes, she really did feel like a glorified secretary for the woman she loved.

Thirteen and Cole Campbell worked on the same corridor – god forbid they bump into each other, god forbid he ask her out when Clara wasn't there to do damage control, before she had a chance to explain that Thirteen _needed_ to go out with him to try and figure out what was the matter with the boy. On top of all that, she was also faced with the ambiguity of Thirteen's reaction to all of this. Yes, she would be unhappy, annoyed, confused, even angry. But after Clara had explained, _then_ what would she be? Forty years of Thirteen and she was still an enigma – but that was aliens for you.

The Doctor didn't knock as she came in, she just did, after checking for a second to see if the class was gone. Clara immediately stood up and tried to rush her out.

"Not like you to let them go early for lunch, usually – hey, what are you doing? What's the hurry?" Thirteen questioned as Clara forced her out of the classroom, hands on her shoulders, steering her around like a toddler that couldn't be tamed.

"Don't speak, just walk, quickly," Clara ordered.

"Uh, why? What's all this about? Have I done something wrong?" Thirteen continued to ask her things, continued to stall and walk slowly and fight against Clara as she attempted to make her leave and get to the staff carpark as soon as possible.

"Look, we just have to get out of here before we bump into – Hi!" Clara was forced to interrupt herself when the very man she most certainly did _not_ want to see came gliding out from around the corner like some kind of spectre. She nearly pushed Thirteen right into his arms. Then again, she thought a second later, wasn't that exactly what she was _trying_ to do?

"Oh, hey – did your first lessons go okay?" Thirteen asked, "I always find the trick is to make a lot of jokes. If you're funny. If you're not funny they'll hate you even more – it's a hard one to master." Clara disagreed with her on that, but now wasn't the time for a work-related spat between them. There would be plenty of time for that in five minutes or so.

"They were fine, after I had a word with Clare," he said.

"Clara," Clara corrected through gritted teeth. Okay, getting her name wrong once was understandable, but twice in the space of an hour? That bothered her. She suddenly wondered if she ought to just start making out with the Doctor right in front of him, to put an end to this stupid scheme of her own creation before it could really get going. But there were a dozen kids milling about the hallways (she should probably tell them off for loitering), so it _really_ wouldn't be appropriate. If PDA was banned for the kids, it was banned for the staff. Which was fair enough.

"A word with her? When?"

"Just after I came to borrow those pens from you – Cole here told me something _super interesting_ ," Clara continued down this path of self-destruction. If her marriage ended because of this, she was going to call Jenny and make her come punch her in the face. And Jenny punched _hard_ , but if Clara upset her mother she would be more than willing, alternate universe doppelgängers regardless.

"Uh-huh?" Thirteen frowned at Clara, who gave her a very pleading look masked with a smile in return.

"I was wondering if you might have dinner with me tonight?" Cole asked.

" _Dinner_?" Thirteen exclaimed, and gawked at him, "Hang on, you know I'm-"

"Single!" Clara interrupted in a higher voice than usual. She was still gripping Thirteen's shoulders like a vice as this exchange occurred, "Totally single. And desperate. For men. You're always telling me how you wished more men would ask you out. Because you're lonely. And very available. And incredibly straight."

"What are you-"

"Seriously, this one is so straight she's almost homophobic," Clara continued, "If only _I_ could get lucky with her. But she's all about the, um, sausage." Thirteen kind of looked like she wanted to be sick when Clara said she was 'all about the sausage.'

"Well?" Cole implored, "You, me, tonight? Text you the details?"

"Go on, say yes, sweetheart," Clara advised, beaming the most painful beam that had ever beamed.

" _Sweetheart_?" Cole asked. The Doctor remained utterly lost for words. Clara knew she was probably going to end up being made to sleep downstairs in one of the armchairs because of these shenanigans. That was the best case scenario, too, the worst was divorce.

"Just my fun nickname for her. For my friend. My best friend, in the whole world, who's my friend. Who's incredibly straight and single and absolutely free tonight. Are you going to say yes?" Clara asked Thirteen directly.

"I… yes?" she said unsurely. Clara turned her thousand-watt smile (which felt like it was also emitting those thousand-watts into her cheeks she was so embarrassed for herself) back to Cole Campbell, some very confused Year 7s wandering by.

"There you go, see? She said yes. Just like I said she would," Clara told him. He opened his mouth to speak and she cut him off again, "Oh, would you look at that? We're nearly late for lunch. Our friendly lunch, because we're such great friends." She called all this back at him while continuing to drag the Doctor away, towards the doors, the Doctor who kept glancing between them and barely managed to say a word. "Talk about this later, you two lovebirds! Bye now!" A set of double doors closed on them and left them outside in the cold, a stone's throw from the main gate.

Thirteen did not say a single thing until Clara carted her all the way back to the shiny new Ferrari, discreetly checking it for any scuff marks courtesy of Cole Campbell. She at least did the chivalrous thing and opened the door for Thirteen, who stared at her for a second before getting in. Clara shut the door on her and took some _very_ deep breaths before getting in her own side. Then all hell broke loose.

"What the hell was that, Clara!? What on Gallifrey is going on right now!? I've spoken to him for less than ten minutes' total! Why are you setting him up with me!? Am I in a parallel universe where we aren't married, or something!? That's the only remotely acceptable explanation for this! I barely know him! I don't even like him, I don't like _anyone_ in _that way_ apart from you and you know it! Aren't you gonna even _try_ to explain!?" Thirteen ranted. She didn't reply. "Clara!? Seriously!? The silent treatment? After this nonsense? C'mon!"

"I'm sorry!" Clara said, louder than she intended, "I… panicked." She only spoke when she had managed to start the car, her hand shaking a little because she really didn't like when Thirteen shouted at her. Thirteen rarely did, and when she did, it was always within reason. Like now. Maybe it wasn't the best idea to be driving in Adam's car while they were also having a fight?

"You _panicked_? What exactly am I missing here?"

"Okay, okay, so… so just listen to me, alright?"

"I would listen to you, but you haven't been saying anything!" the Doctor protested.

"Alright! Okay. So. The thing is, you know this morning Campbell was… weird? About World War Two? Sort of confused? All that?" Clara asked.

"Yeah, sure I do, I mentioned the Cold War to him when I showed him around and he asked if it was called that because it was all fought in the Arctic," Thirteen informed her, "You know, I'm not sure he's even qualified. Continue."

"Well, third period I saw him wandering around the carpark aimlessly, then he went and sat down on the hood of McWatt's Land Rover. I had to shut all the blinds to stop the kids staring at him," Clara went on. She had her hands clenched tightly around the steering wheel, being careful not to drive too fast. She was barely having to touch the accelerator to make this thing rocket down the roads.

"Maybe he was just lost?"

"I'm sure he was, but it's not exactly hard to find a set of doors back into the school, there are a lot of them. That's not even the weirdest thing, alright? After I got those pens off you, I saw him in his empty classroom with this wasp, and he ate it. Like, the whole wasp. It was alive, flying around him, and he just grabbed it out of the air and _ate it_. I heard the crunch, sweetheart. Then while I was freaking out about that, he walks out of the room and starts asking me if I'm gay because he wants advice asking a girl out – turns out that girl was _you_ , so I…"

"Panicked?"

"Yeah. And I was gonna explain, but he cut us off! So… well… well I don't know. I don't think he should really be allowed to teach in a school, regardless of if he's… if his origins, I mean, are… unearthly," Clara said carefully. Thirteen had been sitting in the passenger seat at a slight angle, turned to face Clara, one elbow leaning on the door by the window. When Clara finished she crossed her arms and sat forwards, though. They were nearly at the café they had lunch at practically every day.

"So now you think aliens can't be teachers, huh?" Thirteen questioned.

"No! That's not what I'm saying! _You_ , wifey, actually know what you're talking about," Clara said, "You've lived through most of Earth's history yourself, albeit out of order!" She glanced over to catch Thirteen snickering a little, and realised she had just been making fun of her. Clara pouted. "Meanie."

"So you think he's an alien?"

"Whatever he is, he's obviously not qualified, and I'd go as far as saying he's a danger to himself. Anybody who eats a wasp is a danger to themselves," Clara said, going to park up.

"How big was the wasp?"

"Oh, it was massive. What are you going to do, then? Go on a date with him?"

"Well… I don't know. What about your Valentine's Day evening plans? I thought you were… well, not _making_ dinner, but I thought you were arranging it? It was your responsibility? You said you had all these really romantic plans," Thirteen was saying. Clara stopped the car after carefully parallel parking outside of their usual haunt, and looked at her wife, biting her lip.

"…I don't have any romantic evening plans," she admitted sheepishly.

"You _what_? So why did you say you did!? You're full of surprises today, Oswald, and not the good kind of surprises. The bad ones," Thirteen complained.

"I didn't know what to do! It's different here, on Earth, I can't just say we're going to go to Venice for ice cream for breakfast, and then sneak into a banquet in Ancient Rome for lunch, go catch a matinee in the West End and then stop off to have dinner in Saturn's asteroid belt," Clara argued, "I just didn't know what to do, I've been thinking about how to impress you for months, and I can't come up with a single thing."

"Well setting me up on a date with some guy doesn't impress me," Thirteen argued, then she got out of the car and cut off their conversation. Clara had to hurry to follow her into the café, where they stole their regular window table, the Doctor going and asking Flora for 'their usual.' Nobody else ever seemed to come in this place, but it was divine. It was one of the few places Clara had seen that sold white hot chocolate, and she had a large cup of it every single day.

"I think it was _very_ impressive that I got him to go out with you when you weren't even acting like you were into him," Clara said.

"That's because I'm _not_ into him."

"Yeah, exactly. I'm amazing."

"I – what?" Thirteen was confused, unable to understand how it had all suddenly backfired and Clara looked as though she had done something helpful when, really, she had not.

"Listen," Clara whispered to her over the table as they waited for their food, which was little more than just sandwiches, "The way I figure it, you go on this date, right? Then just… act like it doesn't work out. Disagree with everything he says. And even if he _is_ still into you after all of that, you'll just have to dump him."

" _Dump him?_ I don't know how to dump somebody! What happens if we're totally wrong and he _is_ a perfectly adept _human_ teacher, and then we have to keep working with him? He'll find out we're married. He might find out we're married within the next hour, then _we'll_ be the weird ones," Thirteen said.

"Sweetheart, you're forgetting about the fact he _ate a wasp_. And if it stung him, he didn't seem to care. Even if it was dead the sting would still be venomous," Clara argued, "And dumping people's easy, I've had to do it loads of times."

"I do not know how to dump somebody, Clara. I've actually been happily married for fifty years, which _you_ seem to have forgotten," she hissed, and then she had to get up and go retrieve their food from the counter, Clara passing her a ten pound note so that she was the one who was paying. She always paid for lunch. In fact, any food they had like this, any restaurant or takeaway or drive-through they went to, Clara paid. It was the way they made things fair, since every other meal – every meal that had to be cooked – was Thirteen's responsibility. And that was a lot of time and work put into just mitigating Clara's uselessness.

"I know," Clara said, putting ketchup on her bacon sandwich, "You should practice breaking up with someone on me."

"But I actually like _you_ , don't I?"

"How should I know? Pretend we've only had one date, it went terribly, and dump me," Clara ordered her, pushing the bread back onto her sandwich so that tomato sauce trickled down the sides. As Thirteen narrowed her eyes and thought about this proposition, Clara took a huge bite out of it. Delicious, as always. That and her white hot chocolate made every lunch a perfect lunch. Though, it was of course less perfect than every single lunch the Doctor had ever cooked for her out of love and courtesy.

"You got your brain wiped _twice_ on our first date, _that_ was pretty terrible, and we still made it. I don't understand your-"

"Just do it!"

"Okay! Chill out! Right… Clara. You're my wife. And you're amazing, you're my soulmate and the love of my life and I think we should be together forever will you please marry me again and adopt lots of dogs?"

There was a pause where Clara met her eyes, then exclaimed, "That was shit! Focus! And we're not getting any dogs because Captain Nemo is more than enough, and we're not getting married again because we don't have the money."

"I'm sorry! You're just really pretty and great and wonderful and-"

"You're doing it again," Clara stopped her. She scowled, annoyed at herself for being so pathetic. "Alright, why don't you channel your feelings for me when we go bowling and I always win?"

"You mean when you cheat?"

"All a matter of opinion, darling."

"Well then I would say I hate you and I wish you were dead."

"That's great, tell _him_ that and you'll be sorted."

"You want me to tell some poor schmuck I just met this morning that I hate him and I wish he was dead? Doesn't that seem a little harsh to you?" Thirteen questioned. Clara was chewing her sandwich, though, and didn't have a chance to answer right away. "You have ketchup on your cheek."

"Lick it off."

"Absolutely no way," Thirteen said. Clara gave her a sad look and wiped her own face, licking the ketchup off her finger when she discovered it next to her nose. "…This date… as inarguably incredible as I so obviously am-"

"Of course."

"-I don't really think I'll be able to tell what this guy is just by talking to him. Unless he's some kind of shapeshifter and he shifts to his 'true form', or secretes something super tell-tale, I won't have a clue. What I'm getting at is, he needs to be somewhere where he can be scanned easily. Like… you know… our house…"

"If you invite him to your house on a first date, he'll think he's gonna get lucky. It's Valentine's Day, _I'm_ the only one supposed to be getting lucky with you tonight," Clara argued.

"Well you already shot _that_ idea in the foot when you set this whole thing up and neglected to fix us any other dinner plans," Thirteen retorted. Clara glared and distracted herself with her bacon sandwich for a few more minutes. They sat in silence, both of them thinking.

"You'd have to move all our weird stuff, all the pictures of us, anything that pertains to me – which reminds me, you'd best give me your wedding ring for safe-keeping so he doesn't see it," Clara advised her. That actually made her upset, and Clara sighed apologetically, "Look, I'm sorry, but I won't lose it, and it's only for a couple of hours." Between them, they had a lot of wedding rings. They _used_ to wear a few of them at once, about three, but when they'd moved to Earth six months ago Clara had remembered that that looked kind of odd. Of all their wedding rings, they currently wore the most normal-looking ones, those ancient ones stolen from a jeweller's in Los Angeles, fifty entire years ago. After that one, the Earthling-ness of their rings had deteriorated. Indeed, the latest ones were both set with about a hundred tiny, red, crystal-like gems, incredibly valuable in some corners of space, set into a rose gold coloured alloy. They were gorgeous, but very indiscreet. In Clara's current wedding ring, she still had the initials _TED_ engraved on the inside, for _The Eleventh Doctor_.

"Fine, but only after you finish your lunch. I don't want you making it smell like ketchup," Thirteen said. Just as Clara was about to change the subject to something else – like this sex education thing they were supposed be doing with their shared form that afternoon – the Doctor asked, "Do we have any Retcon?" Clara frowned as she tried to remember.

"I think so, I remember us bringing some here, but I can't remember where I put it," she confessed.

"Useful," Thirteen quipped, then, "You'll have to find it."

"Why?"

"Because if he _is_ a human, we should probably erase his memories of the whole day. He already has a reputation for being confused and incompetent, we can hardly make that worse. And since _you_ stashed the Retcon, and _you_ orchestrated this entire thing, it's only fair that you're the one who goes and finds it, so we can do _some_ damage control, at least," Thirteen made a good point. Reluctantly, Clara agreed to embark upon this search. The Retcon would, no doubt, just be in the first aid kit they kept in the bathroom.

That first aid kit was something the Doctor was pretty proud of, actually made her feel like her namesake. It worked from advice from Rory Williams, Martha Jones, Clara's sister, lots of people. Essentials, but not just regular essentials, essentials for people like _them_ , who got into all kinds of trouble. It had antidotes for rare diseases, rare infections, alien illnesses, some of that ointment of Oswin's that removed ninety percent of scarring. And, she hoped, their supply of Retcon, Torchwood's selective memory loss drug. Well, actually, Clara thought this batch might have been donated by Undercoll (courtesy of Hayley Cohen), but the specifics weren't important.

"Alright. But what am _I_ gonna be doing?"

"What do you mean? I don't know. Go for a walk?"

"You know we have earpieces?" Clara said wryly. Thirteen looked at her for a long while, Clara fighting a smile on her face.

"No. No, no, _no_ , Clara."

"Yes! You wear the earpiece, _I'll_ hide upstairs in our bedroom and listen in and tell you what to say, how to mess it up," Clara said.

"I have seen so many movies and so many TV shows and read so many books where people try that, and it has never once gone well, _ever_ ," the Doctor argued.

"Yeah, but the whole point of our operation is that it doesn't go well."

"You want it to go awfully?"

"Well I'd hate if he turned out to be great and you left me for him, so, yeah."

"Then _you_ can cook dinner," Thirteen said.

"…But I'm not allowed to touch anything in the kitchen that isn't to do with drinks," Clara reminded her in a timid tone of voice. Her ban from the kitchen was just as extensive as her ban from computers – which was _still_ in effect most of the time. It really was a good thing that when she had lived on Earth before _ever_ meeting the Doctor, she'd been terrible with technology. If she had become as reliant upon it as, say, their brother-in-law, this ban might as well be a legitimate handicap.

"Cook the, uh, what do you call them? Space worms? Where you get the noodles and you put the baked beans on top of them? With the ketchup? You make that when we get home, then stick it in the fridge. When Campbell gets there, I'll reheat it in the microwave. Pretend it's mine. It'll be disgusting. Trust me, Coo, your cooking is a fool-proof way to spoil an evening," Thirteen assured her, speaking as though this were a compliment. It still grated on Clara a little, but she was more than used to these jibes at her expense.

"Fine, I will. If you're there. Make sure I don't break anything."

"Sure."

"Now, on another note, I think we ought to talk about this sex education talk we have to give, or whatever it is," Clara changed the subject.

"Just go home and bring in some of your secret porn collection you think I don't know about," Thirteen said. Clara stared at her. She smiled sweetly. "You're so adorable when you think you've successfully hidden something from me."

"…That would be incredibly inappropriate."

"Uh-huh," Thirteen said, "Well I'm just about finished here." She really had already wolfed down her entire lunch. That was remarkable, because while Clara's might consist of a simple sandwich, Thirteen had been eating a Full English with _all_ the trimmings. Except black pudding, because she couldn't stand the smell of it, even though Clara always said _she_ would eat the black pudding.

"That's because you eat like some kind of dog that hasn't been fed for a week," Clara said. She was finished too, though. They didn't really have a lot of time for lunch, only forty-five minutes. They needed to be getting back. She picked up her hot chocolate and her coat. It might be freezing, but she couldn't be bothered at present putting it on. She would probably regret it later.

"Well _sorry_ for being hungry," Thirteen argued, "I just get excited when I have things cooked for me, I'm so used to having to do _everything_ for some total _ingrate_ I live with."

"I know what you mean, I _always_ get excited when I remember that I have this _amazing_ wife who graces me with her _wonderful_ home cooking every single day," Clara told her, holding the door open.

"How dare you make me feel bad for calling you an ingrate," Thirteen went to get in the car. When Clara was starting the ignition, she said, "I think you should take the reins on the sex-ed thing."

"Why's that?"

"Well, it's all about humans, isn't it? _Human_ physiologies, _human_ reproduction. I don't know a single thing about human anatomy," Thirteen said.

" _I'm_ a human and you've explored _my_ anatomy _plenty_."

"Gross."

"I'm insulted. And you're a liar, you're just embarrassed. You know most of those kids are sixteen and have had these sorts of talks have a dozen times before? We could probably just put on some film and have them lie." They were driving away by this point; it was a bit less than five minutes that it would take them to get back to the school.

"'Some film'? Didn't you just say bringing your porn collection would be inappropriate?"

"A proper film, I mean."

"That would be irresponsible of us."

"I was thinking _you_ would take the helm," Clara said, "You're the only person I know who's been both a man _and_ a woman for extensive periods of time."

"Well _you're_ the one with all the experience having STIs."

"Okay, ground rules, you are _not_ to mention that, at all. No-one needs to know that, especially not a bunch of gossipy teenagers," she said, and Thirteen didn't say anything more. "…Shall we just wing it?"

"Yeah. Let's do that. Good plan."


	16. Memory Lane

**DAY 140**

 _Memory Lane_

 _Eleven_

Yes, he was ill, and yesterday had been very tiresome for him. He was the oldest of all the Time Lords presently aboard the TARDIS (or not aboard, as in Jenny's case), and had gone the longest without ever getting ill. He had gotten ill as a child, of course, nobody could never eliminate diseases because they kept mutating and new ones kept spawning, but that had been more than a thousand years ago and he could scarcely remember.

It was late when he woke up. Far later than it usually was, even on those rare nights in which he managed to wrangle a few hours of sleep. It was funny that he felt more well-rested after being ill than he did most of the time, especially when taking into account that he didn't even have his wife by his side when he woke up. And he quite liked his wife and her company. But she wasn't far, it was revealed, when he began to stir that morning. She just wasn't in bed. Clara was sitting in a chair next to him with her feet up on the end of the mattress. Initially, he thought she was reading a book; it took him a moment to realise she was on her phone, and whatever she was looking at, she didn't seem very pleased.

"Morning," he said hoarsely, not realising how hardly able to talk he was until he actually tried to do it. She looked up from her phone right away and put it down on the chair next to her. Her displeasure was replaced by a soft smile once she saw he was awake.

"Morning," she said right back, moving her feet off the bed and leaning towards him in the chair. It was the same chair Oswin had been sitting in a week ago while Clara deliberated keeping or getting rid of that lightning scar. And she still had it. Her arm was still all bandaged up. He didn't know Martha's latest estimate for how long it would be until they healed enough to remove the dressing.

"How are you?" he croaked.

"How am _I_? Shouldn't I be asking you that? You're a mess, Chin, you look like you have sex hair minus the sex right now."

"So I look like I have hair?"

" _Messy_ hair," she said, then he laughed slightly and it soon turned into a heavy cough. She passed him his handkerchief from the bedside table, the same handkerchief he had spent the better part of yesterday sneezing into (it was now in dire need of a wash, but he was too ill to care.) "See, I _said_ I should be the one asking _you_ how you are."

"I just remembered something-" he coughed again, "-that's all." Even though he was coughing, when he finally got some respite from his diseased lungs he found himself smiling at her.

"What? What did you remember? Something good?"

"Yes, very good, I daresay."

"What? Come on, spill."

"I remembered the morning after our first kiss. Kisses. There were a fair few of them, if I recall correctly," he said, still smiling at the memory. It was a good memory. They should create more good memories together; he longed for the day when his head would be full of them, full to the brim with nostalgic depictions of Clara Oswald and himself, together and happy. But they were together and happy right then, were they not? Even if he _was_ sick. Clara was frowning, though. "Do you remember?"

"Uh…" she was in deep thought, and then she met his eyes and bit her lip.

"Clara…"

"Don't hate me."

"Did you forget our first kiss?"

"Maybe?" she said meekly, and his jaw dropped. He didn't know whether to be offended. "I don't even remember how we actually started going out…" Clara sat in vacant thought for a while, desperately trying to recall these key moments in their relationship she must have forgotten. Then she shook her head. "Seriously, I'm ashamed of myself. I'm totally blank. Remind me?"

"Why should I?"

"Because you love me?"

"Drat. You're right. How inconvenient." He pushed himself up in the bed and Clara leant over to help him sort out his pillows. "You smell nice this morning," he said.

"Thanks. It's called 'shampoo.'"

"I've never heard of it, sounds marvellous." She kissed his cheek before she sat back down and dragged the chair even closer. "Anyway, I suppose it was only on the third day of this whole fiasco, when we had to all stay at the Maitlands'."

"Back when there were just twelve of us, as opposed to…"

He waited a while as he saw her struggling to count everybody in her head before answering for her, "Sixteen."

"Yeah. Sixteen."

"Don't you remember? I slept on your floor."

"Oh _yeah_ ," a smile broke on her face, "I remember how flustered you got when you asked that."

"And how you kept toying with me."

"I can't do that anymore. You know me too well."

"Good, it was very exhaustive thinking I had to tip toe around you because you might up and leave me. And now I have the confidence that you _won't_ ever do that – that's the only good thing that abominable future-woman ever did," he talked disapprovingly of Thirteen, "You were upset and asked me how I cope with losing everybody I get close to, and you were talking about Echoes, or something. I probably just kissed you to make you be quiet."

"Great."

"I'm joking, though, of course, my adoration for you could not be controlled any longer. It can never really be controlled."

"That's why nobody likes us," she told him, "Which I think is all your fault. I have an abundance of self-control."

"You have an abundance of self- _deception_ if you believe that, Clara." She shifted guiltily and spared a glance for her phone which, though it was on silent, kept lighting up with notifications she didn't appear all that keen on checking.

"And then, after that," she resumed their conversation, "it still took me another entire week to get you to shag me. In which we were sleeping together without, you know, _sleeping together_. Seriously, sweetheart, you do give off this prudish impression that sex is totally off the menu. I was willing to swear off it for you, that's why I didn't actually try anything. Until I was drunk."

"They were very awkward nights, weren't they?" he mused, thinking about what that had been like. He didn't know, all those months ago, where the boundaries laid with them, whether there was any real permanence. He hardly even knew a lot about Clara as a person, she was an impossible and unattainable girl he had found himself smitten with who was, all of a sudden, fast asleep in bed, _next to him_. _With_ him. It wasn't something he had ever had with River. It wasn't something he had even known he wanted before Clara came along. He hadn't known if it was alright for him to touch her or hold her or stroke her hair.

"They're not anymore, though," she smiled, "And you say I have no control when I hardly even touched you for a week. Until I figured out if you were okay with it. And even after that I had no idea if that was, like, some one-off." He laughed and coughed again. Seriously, she said, "I should really stop being so funny while you're ill – I'm not sure you can handle it."

"Imagine that, regeneration by my wife's sense of humour. That would certainly be deathly amusing." Clara then spared yet another glance for her phone which, he could see, had been lighting up fervently for the last few minutes. "What's going on?" he asked.

"Hmm?"

"Your phone."

"Oh. I'm having a fight, it's not important," she said, waving him away.

"A _fight_?"

"Not a proper fight. A Facebook fight. Honestly, it doesn't matter, I'll turn my phone off, you're far more important."

"What have you gotten into a fight over?"

"My dad told my bloody aunt that I'm refusing to go to this stupid garden party – you know, the one he told me about weeks ago? When we went for dinner*?" she said, turning her phone off. He did enjoy that she was willing to switch it off for his benefit – he knew how attached to those things people were in the Twenty-First Century. _Well_ , he thought _, just wait until the Twenty-Second Century when the radiation in them starts making peoples' heads balloon incredibly_. What a sight that would be. Maybe he would take her to an ER in 2140 and show her.

"Yes, I remember."

"Well she started posting all this stuff that was obviously about me – you know, things like, 'When will someone tell supposed "bisexuals" that being a slut isn't an identity.' Because who else could that be about, really? I'm not exaggerating when I say she's horrible – she's bitch supreme, Chin," Clara explained. It did sound like she might really be 'bitch supreme' if she was saying things like that. "Then she started actually having a go at me herself for being 'spoilt' and 'marrying poorly.'"

"I'm beginning to think that maybe we _should_ go to this blasted garden party," he grumbled, "At least then I can defend your honour."

"I can defend my own honour, Doctor."

"Two heads are better than one," he said knowingly, "Besides, wouldn't it bother her a wonderful amount to see how happily married you are? You could show me off. We could do a piano duet. Or… I could yodel."

"Don't do that. God. She already thinks you're a heart surgeon."

"Maybe we should go?"

"Because there's nothing I love more than canapés and casual racists."

"Not until I'm better. At least think about it? I do enjoy exposing awful people for what they really are. And there'll be free food. Speaking of food-"

"Adam will make you breakfast when he wakes up. It's that or you eat Rose's tube slime she's been feeding Ten since yesterday. He's probably going to die of malnutrition. Forget about food, you've been awake for at least ten whole minutes and you haven't asked once about your ailing daughter."

"Jenny?" he exclaimed, "She's sick as well?"

"I told you yesterday she's sick."

"I barely remember anything from yesterday. I have to go see her," he declared, trying to get out of bed, but Clara put a hand on his shoulder to stop him.

"No you don't, she's fine, you're both ill and you both need to rest. She texted yesterday morning saying Ravenwood says thank you for that mirror," she told him. If she had told him that yesterday, he had forgotten it too. "You can ring her in a bit, when my aunt gets the message and stops harassing me."

"No, I should go right now, or she'll think I don't care."

"She won't, sweetheart, she's not a dick," Clara said, "Promise."

"She was drunk the other night. Ravenwood, not Jenny. She was saying some dire things, but unfortunately I can't tell you what any of them were, because she gave me an excellent idea of what to get you for your birthday. And you'll guess if I mention anything. Can't have that, it's a surprise."

"I'll be a whole quarter of a century old. Does that make you feel like a nonce?"

"Yes. Now can we move on? Won't you go wake Adam up?"

"No. Have some patience. It's still early."

"But-"

"But nothing, Chin. You're staying in bed all day. Martha says so. You don't want to cross Martha, do you?"

"I suppose not. She frightens me more than you do. Then again, you don't frighten me particularly. Can I have a drink at least?"

"You can have tea," she said, standing up and going through the room towards the kettle on the little table of its own, in between the piano and one of the bookshelves. And soon she would have a new book for her shelves (none of his books were on them, he had a whole library of his own), and it gave him great pleasure to imagine them slowly but surely filling up over the years. It also gave him great pleasure to watch her wander around, an entity all of her own. "Or do you want hot chocolate?"

"Definitely the chocolate, please, if you'd be so kind."

"I'm always kind," she said, doing something with the mugs.

"Are you wearing proper pyjama trousers for once?"

"Well, I slept on the sofa, didn't I?"

"Did you?" he asked, shocked.

"Yeah, and I got cold. Hence the clothes. But you kept sweating and you have a fever still and you were thrashing around – it was easier to sleep over there," Clara told him.

"Oh. I'm sorry."

"It's fine, sweetheart."

"Perhaps that's why I'm sick. Withdrawal from you. These are all symptoms."

"Well, lucky for you I'm not going anywhere, you can have me all to yourself," she smiled, " _Especially_ since I had the excellent idea to spend this time while you've regained lucidity to talk about our wedding – which I nearly forgot was happening, to be honest." _Oh, no_ , he thought. What were the protocols for divorce in drunken, inter-species marriages? "Now. Do you think we should have the ceremony in the morning or the afternoon? Because it's a thing about lunch – would we provide one? And then you have to think about…" And to be honest, he thought, listening to her spiel when he was unable to get away, he wished the illness would take him.

* _chapter 877_


	17. Educating Creature

**AN: FYI, I am super busy right now and the only reason there are updates is because I have the chapters done in advance, after this the next one is ALMOST done, and then after that there are about three more that haven't been started on at all, so I have absolutely no idea when I'm gonna get a chance to do those during Freshers' Week.**

 **DAY 18,200**

 _Educating Creature_

 _Clara_

If she had to pick one person in the entire universe to pair up with to teach sex education to teenagers, she would most definitely not pick her wife. Then again, of the selection of people who sprang to mind right away, the Doctor was probably the best of a handful of evils. Her sister was still the absolute _last_ person she would pick. That was because she was inappropriate, though – but Thirteen? She wasn't inappropriate, so much as… prudish? A bit of an idiot? At least she wouldn't traumatise them like Oswin would, though. And Clara was still under the impression that they wouldn't even _need_ to teach anything. Their form was Year 11, it wasn't like it was Year 9, just heading into the twisted, hormonal annals of puberty and a pervading sense of inadequacy.

"Okay, first of all," Clara said immediately upon coming into the room, the Doctor trailing after her. Clara went to put her tea down on her desk, "Anybody asks any inappropriate questions, and I'll just sit here and read you Bible passages about abstinence for two hours. Understood?" That was the thing about having to teach alongside her wife, who knew absolutely everything about her and had spent almost every hour of every day in her company for five decades, she had this penchant for undermining Clara's authority. Probably why kids that were taught by both of them had the nerve to act up sometimes. At Clara's comment about the Bible, the Doctor snorted.

"You've never touched a Bible in your life, if you even _tried_ to pick one up you'd probably give it a rash," Thirteen said. The kids laughed. Of course they laughed. Clara had figured out a while ago that they preferred the Doctor to her, but then, the Doctor was just one of those people. With charisma and charm and a billion quirks and interesting stories. They'd probably like her _even more_ if they figured out she was a space alien, but the Alpha Twelfth Doctor was, so far, doing a far better job than the Beta Twelfth Doctor of keeping her true nature a close-guarded secret. Even if she did say pretty odd things sometimes. But Clara thought they were on purpose, like when she mentioned their 'cruise.' She remembered that _vividly_ , because Clara could not remember them ever going on a cruise. It was only after some extensive questioning that she realised the Doctor was referring to the time they had been stranded in a rowing boat in the Pacific Ocean for four days, TARDIS unable to land and fetch them until they washed up on a deserted island. Not fond memories.

"And if I get one more smart comment from _you_ , I'll be giving you some divorce papers," Clara threatened. Thirteen beamed.

"Oh, really? You know, I've never read divorce papers before. How soon can you have them ready?" she retorted. Then she sipped some of her coffee for added effect. According to the Doctor, that was her ninth cup of coffee that day. When she told Clara that on their way back from lunch, Clara had told her she had a problem. Then the Doctor had responded that she'd stop drinking coffee if Clara stopped smoking, specifically saying it would be a 'fun couple activity,' 'like a cleanse.' After that Clara had dropped it, and had lurked down the road to get her nicotine fix. She didn't even smoke that much...

"…Unbelievable…" Clara muttered, because she was too mature to think of a comeback. Also, she couldn't think of one. The Doctor smiled at her. Clara had to fight the urge to tell Thirteen she hated her.

"Are you gonna teach us sex education, miss?" a boy who wasn't in Clara's English class, Joshua, asked her. They had form in Clara's classroom. To her annoyance, the Doctor slunk over to steal the chair behind her desk. There wasn't another chair. _Women_ , she thought resentfully to herself.

"Right, do any of you actually want to do sex education, or do you want to watch a film and lie to Mr McWatt about it and pretend you learnt lots of things about contraception?" Clara questioned them, going to sit on the desk.

"Aren't you gonna teach us how to put a condom on a banana, miss?" Rita, who _was_ in her English and was a real troublemaker most of the time. She usually behaved for Clara. Clara liked to think that was because Rita was fond of her, but who knew for sure? It was usually Maths she got kicked out of, and Clara always thought, who needed maths, anyway? She had the Doctor for all that stuff. _Arithmetic_. Blech.

"I'd hate to know where you're putting a banana that means you'd need to put a condom on it," Clara remarked.

"It's safe sex, innit."

"Right… well, I… suppose…"

"They clearly already know plenty of things about sheaths and whatnot," Thirteen said. Clara looked around and stared at her.

"Sorry, did you just say 'sheath'? Are you from the dark ages?"

"Is that not what the proper name for them is...?" Wow. She seemed to be actually asking.

"I think you ought to just shut up for the next two hours, to be honest."

"I did say that _you_ should talk to them. Just ask if they have any questions – do you guys have any questions?" _Yeah_ , Clara thought, _just invite the teenagers to ask the queer couple whatever questions about sex they like_. What a phenomenally _fantastic_ idea. "Oh, wait, we should have, like, a no-judgement, nothing-leave-this-room, anything goes policy."

"That's the worst idea you've ever had," Clara said, "Apart from the one about getting a bouncy castle to put in the garden."

"Well they need to know these things!"

"But _you_ don't know these things to tell them. I don't want to be on the receiving end of this."

"Have you been on the receiving end a lot, miss?" Rita asked.

"Detention!" Clara shouted at her.

"You already gave me a detention this week."

"Well you can have another."

"That's not fair, I just said anything goes," Thirteen told her.

"You can field the questions then. Go on, move, out of my chair," Clara ordered. The Doctor had her feet up on the desk, but moved them and got up when Clara swatted at her legs. This was definitely going well. Part of her thought they must be being filmed, or something.

One of the things she _didn't_ like about working with her wife was the fact that they bickered. They _always_ bickered, and made comments, and were sarcastic, and had been like that for a very long time without ever needing to put a lid on it. And now they _did_ need to put a lid on it. And they were, suffice it to say, not very good at it. Though the kids seemed to enjoy when they made digs at one another, unless it got particularly severe and people worried they might actually be serious. Of course Clara would never do anything to jeopardise her marriage on purpose, neither of them would.

"Okay, bring on the questions."

"You are digging your own grave, Doctor," Clara warned. She got shushed. _Don't say I didn't warn you_ , she thought.

"Why do you like Miss Oswald?" Joshua asked.

"Wow. Jeez. Right in at the deep end there, aren't you?" Thirteen was taken aback. _Told you so_ , Clara thought. Clara just waited to see if she would answer, the Doctor taking her place leaning against the desk with her arms crossed. She just thought. "Hang on, what's that got to do with safe sex? This whole thing is to limit teen pregnancy, learning about _us_ does nothing to that effect."

"I agree," Clara mumbled, "Although, I'm kind of interested to hear your answer now."

"Oh, fine. Give me a second to think of something school-appropriate… uh… I mean, she's really nice," Thirteen said.

"No she isn't," Rita argued.

"Oi!" Clara protested.

"You just gave me two detentions! And you give us too many mock exams."

"I do not give you too many mock exams. And my mock exams are entirely irrelevant to what _she's_ saying because I don't give _her_ mock exams," Clara said, taking another sip of tea.

"Don't you give her oral exams?" she asked, and Clara nearly spat out her drink. But Thirteen laughed.

"Good one," she said, then Clara, trying not to choke, _glared_ at her, and her smile vanished straight away, "I mean, that was highly inappropriate. Obviously. And now you have a detention from me now as well as two from her."

"That's not fair!"

"It's very fair, and I have half a mind to tell your head of year," Clara threatened, their head of year being Celia Frost. Then Thirteen got them (sort of) back on track.

"Okay, I've thought of something. I guess it's kind of like, when you're with someone every day, you can't _help_ but become fond of them, even if you say you hate them – not that I hate you," she added to Clara at the side, "They become a part of you, and you don't want to lose them, like if you get a kidney removed. You don't want to get rid of that kidney, which is why you take it and you put it in a semi-translucent jar of formaldehyde and pickle it on the mantelpiece so that you can _never_ be away from it and its amazing urine filtering capabilities, because in the end it was super loyal to you for at least half a century. Then it becomes a killer dinner party anecdote." Everybody stared at her. Including Clara, who had never heard this vile analogy before. She wasn't even sure what it meant.

"If you got a kidney removed you are not pickling it on the mantelpiece," Clara told her, "…Or me, if I died, for that matter, it's a bit Norman Bates."

"I'll have you know that my friend Roald Dahl kept bits of his spine that needed to be removed in a jar in his shed," Thirteen told her sharply.

"...Yes, because the shed isn't in the living room. We eat in the living room."

" _You_ eat in the living room, and I wish you wouldn't, because you get mess all over the rug and _I_ have to clean it," she remarked.

"Alright, crumbs in the living room bother you, but a pickled kidney in a jar wouldn't?" Clara questioned. Of course the kids were very interested in this incredibly weird exchange between the married couple who taught them. It really didn't do anything for her authority to have her wife around saying creepy stuff like that every day. It was a bit of a frequent occasion. When they'd lived on the TARDIS, Clara had gotten used to it, because there hadn't been anyone around to listen apart from their immediate relations. But the Doctor had all these… thoughts and opinions… influencing impressionable children. It wasn't a good mix. The Doctor in short bursts caused enough of a lasting effect, god knew what these kids would be like in ten years.

"If you spilled the kidney onto the rug like you did that salad you were eating last week, then yeah, it would, especially because that salad was ninety percent mayonnaise."

"Are you saying your kidneys are ninety percent mayonnaise?"

"Of course I'm not, that's ridiculous."

"But keeping a kidney in a jar _isn't_ ridiculous?"

"This clearly isn't going anywhere," Thirteen told her. She rolled her eyes and sunk back down in her chair with her tea. Pickled kidneys weren't really anything to do with safe sex and contraception, but she was going to have to have serious words with her other half when they were alone about how not to treat failed organs.

"Are you doing anything for Valentine's Day?" a girl whom the Doctor took for History, Tia, asked. Probably desiring to get off the topic of organ jars, though the Doctor could easily argue that this was relevant, because it was kind of like the Egyptians, and she _was_ a History teacher.

"What an excellent question. I don't know, Oswald, are we doing anything for Valentine's Day?" the Doctor turned to question Clara. Yet the children were there waiting with baited breath to see what their answers to these Valentine's Day questions were. Clara had been painted into a corner, though.

"Don't bully me. We have an anti-bullying policy, you know. Are there any questions that _aren't_ about us and are _actually_ about sex education?"

"How do you have safe sex if you're a lesbian?" Joshua asked.

"Make sure you have a wash," Clara said. The Doctor cleared her throat.

"I kind of think that one warrants a legitimate answer…"

"Dental dams. Which you can actually make out of condoms, they have many uses. Anything to add, Doctor?" The Doctor paused for a long while then. Clara still wasn't over 'sheath.' It was like living in medieval England.

"…Probably just listen to my wife… I mean, to Mrs Oswald. Or google it. I hear Google's pretty useful in this century. Maybe we _should_ just put on a film…." She looked to Clara to see if she would get support in this, but before Clara could answer, Ethan from Clara's English asked another question.

"How come you never have pudding with breakfast, but you do with every other meal?" he asked.

"That's not really about sex," Clara told him.

"Are you obsessed with sex, miss?" Rita questioned. Thirteen made a noise that Clara knew from experience was a suppressed laugh she turned into a chesty cough. Clara tried not to have a reaction to it.

"Breakfast is interesting," the Doctor began saying, "Because this morning, we had pancakes, and that's kind of pudding on its own, you know?"

"Then why do they say breakfast is the healthiest meal of the day, if it's pudding? How come some people get pancakes and others have to have Weetabix?" Ethan continued to question.

"Weetabix is good for you," Clara told him.

"Only boring people like Weetabix," Rita said.

"Okay, back to the sex ed," the Doctor interjected, before Rita could add that Clara was boring, which was obviously where she was going, "The thing is, Mr McWatt is very worried about this school's teen pregnancy rates, because there were two just last year – one of them was a girl in _your_ year, remember? And now she doesn't have any GCSEs."

"But there were three the year before, Doctor," Joshua pointed out.

"That's what Miss Stark said in briefing… Anyway, let's get it down to zero, shall we? With, uh, birth control. That stuff," she turned to Clara, "Don't they usually, like, give out condoms, or something? I would, but we don't have any."

"We do, actually," Clara said, "Because my sister brought loads of them over three months ago when she wanted to have a water balloon fight in the garden, and I confiscated them. Forgot to throw them away."

"How old's your sister?" Rita questioned.

"Same age as me, we're twins," Clara said.

"Identical twins?" Joshua asked.

"Yeah."

"So she could pretend to be you?"

"She could try, but she wouldn't do a very good job of it, she only has one leg."

"Is she a lesbian too?"

" _I'm_ not even a lesbian. And answering personal questions about myself is one thing, I'm not going to start slagging off my sister to you lot," Clara said.

"How do you get pregnant?" Tia asked.

"You're sixteen, I'm pretty sure you know how to get pregnant," Clara remarked.

"Maybe. Shall I try and see?"

"No! Don't do that. Just do nothing at all, with anyone, or use protection. Go get the injection, go to a clinic and get put on the pill, remember that the morning after pill exists, if you go to a sex clinic they'll definitely just give you free condoms, or – you know, I'm pretty sure you all learn this in RE anyway," Clara said.

"Yeah, come to think of it, Mr Vaughn definitely showed me an RE paper before where there was an eight-mark question about the religious controversy surrounding contraception," the Doctor said, "Can you please just try not to get pregnant, okay? It reflects badly on us. And if you do get pregnant, please remember to tell anyone who asks that we definitely did discourage getting pregnant while you're a teenager."

"Isn't teen pregnancy really bad in America? There are more teenagers that get pregnant in America than here," Rita pointed out to Thirteen, personally attacking her for her accent. It happened a lot, come to think of it.

"In fairness there are just a lot more teenagers in America _to_ get pregnant," she said, "And I really don't know, I, uh… moved here a long time ago. Just didn't lose the accent."

"What do you actually think of America, miss?" Joshua questioned.

"Kind of complicated. I guess I'd have to give it ten out of ten for concept, but only three out of ten for execution. And zero out of ten for sales pitch – I mean, it was totally a waste of tea when they threw it all into the Boston Harbor. Can't have been good for the fish, either. But I guess you can't blame them for not wanting to be ruled by the British, the British are _notoriously_ awful," she said, "No offence. Anyone going on to do A Level History here in September, just be prepared to learn about the British Empire and the myriad of genocides and subjugations of probably millions of innocent native peoples."

"Is that true?" Ethan asked Clara, to Clara's surprise.

"Oh, yeah. The British are terrible, that's why everybody else in the world hates us. Well, it's mostly the English they hate."

"The rest of the world doesn't hate us," Rita said.

"Yes they do, why do you think we always lose Eurovision? We only get to the final because we give money to the competition. Actually, last year I think we were second to last," Clara continued to say.

"Then they're racist," Rita argued.

"Well, not really, we _do_ deserve it, for forcibly taking over a third of the world and enslaving and killing loads of people, and stealing all their stuff."

"She's right," Thirteen said, "Like, if I were to ask you guys who the greatest British prime minister is, I bet you'd all say Churchill, but the hilarious – and by hilarious I mean awful and totally not hilarious at all – thing is, Churchill was responsible for the murder of three million Indian people, and he built concentration camps in Kenya, and campaigned to 'keep Britain white.'" Again, Thirteen proved that though she wasn't actually qualified to teach history, she was _very_ good at it. And this was why they frequently did collaborative lessons.

"People complain about American imperialism these days, but America wouldn't exist without the oppressive rule of Great Britain back in the day," Clara said.

"You should teach History," the Doctor told her jokingly.

"This country hasn't done anything remotely 'great' since it won the Second World War, and even then it wasn't like it was a lone effort, we definitely wouldn't have won if the Americans hadn't joined. After that, America and Britain started their 'special relationship,'" Clara said, doing inverted speech marks with the hand that wasn't holding her tea, "And now everyone hates both of us. With good reason."

A knock on the door preceded the entry of Douglas McWatt, who didn't have a tutor group to be teaching the birds and the bees to because he was too busy with his deputy head duties, and now his interim headmaster duties while he replaced Elaine. Clara supposed he was just prowling the corridors to make sure everybody was doing okay. Unless he was just checking up on them specifically, and Clara wouldn't put it past him to do so. He was very in favour of them 'keeping [their] relationship out of school time.' As if they went around making out in store cupboards and taking breaks for quickies in the staff toilets – neither of those had ever happened. Well, the first one had. But only twice. Though they had only been caught _once_ , and that was the important thing; if you weren't caught, you technically hadn't done anything wrong. The law and rules dictated right and wrong, but they couldn't dictate anything if they were kept in the dark.

"What's going on in here?" he asked, like they were up to something.

"We were explaining about the special relationship between Britain and America," Thirteen informed him, and then realised he had walked in on a sex education class and _not_ one of her History lessons and tried to cover for herself and spluttered a bit. Of course, the act of her trying to hide this made him assume some pretty unpleasant things about what was _really_ going on.

"Because she's British and you're a yank?" he asked the Doctor, nodding at Clara, "Don't teach them about lesbianism. Nobody cares about your 'special relationship.'"

"Lesbianism is an excellent way to stop teen pregnancy," Clara pointed out coolly, "Though, I'm not entirely sure anybody calls it 'lesbianism.'"

"They do behind your back," McWatt assured her. _Oh, wonderful_ , she thought.

"It sounds like a religion," Thirteen said, then added wistfully, "I kind of wish it was. Then I'd _definitely_ go to church more often than I do now. Which is never. Not a fan of organised religion."

"Like William Blake?" Ethan interjected.

"Yes!" Clara said to him proudly, "Exactly like William Blake, remember that for your literature exam, this argument about lesbianism." McWatt then looked at her like she'd been rude. "What?" she asked him, "Blake was a key poet of the Romantic period, it's important. And I _said_ the mock exams are useful."

"You've been telling them all about your 'special relationship' and reading them romantic poetry?" McWatt questioned.

"What? God, no! The Romantic period was a movement in popular literature and art that started in the Eighteenth Century, the word 'romantic' didn't mean what it means now, it meant-"

"I don't care, Clara," McWatt told her. That was a thing he liked to do, call the teachers he didn't like by their first names in front of the kids to demean them. It worked very well. He never did it to the Doctor, either because her fake first name was just too weird, or because he actually liked her. Probably the latter. Everybody liked Clara's wife. It got a bit annoying sometimes, but it wasn't like Clara was any good at finding reasons to _dis_ like her, even if she sometimes got very motivated to do so, like when they had to mingle at functions – which happened more often than one might believe.

"Well then, we'll be all too happy to get back to the topic of vaginas and penises now, so we'll be seeing you, Douglas?" the Doctor said to him, fake-smiling. Clara smiled at him too, but _her_ smile was genuine because she was more or less swooning over the Doctor very slyly coming to her aid and giving McWatt a taste of his own medicine. Nobody usually dared call him Douglas in front of the kids.

"Abstinence," he grumbled to himself, slinking away and pulling the door closed.

"Or lesbianism! Don't forget the lesbianism! Or any of the gays, for that matter. Or, you know, just any couple who can't biologically reproduce on accident, of which there are many. Gender is a spectrum just like sexuality!" she called after him, but then he was gone.

Clara turned to address the class, "Right, after that catastrophe, you really better not get pregnant or get anybody else pregnant. We'd get in _loads_ of trouble if you did now."

"Didn't McWatt kill Norris?" Joshua asked, "Everybody says he did, they say he killed her with a hammer and put it back in the DT classroom."

"That is absolutely not true," the Doctor said, "The poor woman died of a brain aneurysm, her head was not bashed in, she was not chopped up, or sawed up, or stabbed, it was an _aneurysm_ and you cannot murder someone with an aneurysm. It was an open casket funeral, she had not been mutilated, okay? These rumours are bad for Mr McWatt's reputation and for the school."

"Now the lot of you are going to shut up, use birth control and condoms, and watch _Dead Poets Society_ for the rest of the day," Clara told them, "And if _any_ of you tell Mr McWatt that this wasn't the best sex education seminar you've ever had, I'll make a seating plan for form." They groaned unanimously.

"Y'know," Thirteen said quietly to her as a few of the kids began to talk among themselves and Clara dug out the DVD from the recesses of her desk. She'd not watched anything on DVD for the longest time, "Sometimes when we teach like this, I feel a real good cop bad cop kind of vibe."

"Just put the film on."


	18. Opinion Overload

**DAY 140**

 _Opinion Overload_

 _Jenny_

"To be honest, Clara, I don't give a shit, you're clearly insane."

"Just because you're too _blind_ to see it!" Clara shouted right back at Sally Sparrow.

"I'm not blind! You're just crazy!"

"Don't be homophobic."

" _Homophobic_!? Can you hear yourself?"

While all of this was going on, Jenny Harkness met the ailing eyes of Esther Drummond across the room, both of them mutually willing that one of them would kill the other in some sort of tacit suicide pact. Because of the fact Sally didn't give Alpha Clara the time of day, nobody had ever picked up on this argumentative streak of compatibility in their friendship before. It was something to do with Jenny herself, she was sure, that was the reason Clara Ravenwood could control herself around Sally. The fact of the matter was, sexualities aside, Clara and Sally were remarkably similar, so having them in the same group was a bit like the unstoppable force meeting the immovable object (which wasn't even scientifically possible.) Esther had been over to offer her culinary assistance to Clara and Jenny again, while Sally had shown up later on, and now Clara had bought dinner for them all to make up for getting Sally so obscenely drunk two nights before.

Next to Clara, the row continuing, her phone rang. Jenny, wrapped up in a blanket and wishing the flu would just kill her so she wouldn't have to listen to the most ridiculous and pointless fight in the universe anymore, glanced down and saw it was Oswin who was calling. And Clara didn't notice one bit. Esther had her fingers pressed into her temples. She had given up trying to talk sense into either of them (well, mainly Clara) a while ago now. Jenny just wanted them all to be quiet. Seeing that Clara was not going to answer the phone, Jenny took it upon herself to do so, seeing it her duty as Clara's girlfriend to take a message, at least. So she snuck a hand out of her blanket cocoons and took the phone.

"Sorry," she said when she picked up, before Oswin had a chance to talk, talking very hoarsely as her throat still felt like it was possibly on fire, "Clara can't come to the phone right now because she's having an argument with Sally Sparrow about pig sex."

"It's not about pig sex!" Clara protested next to her, and Jenny groaned.

" _She's what?_ " Oswin asked.

"You heard me," Jenny said.

"It isn't about pig sex," Clara said firmly.

"I mean, it is a _bit_ about pig sex," Sally said, and Clara glared at her.

"Just shut up. I'm the one with the literature degree here."

"And god knows how you got it!"

According to Sally and Clara, this was not a fight, this was a 'discussion.' A 'civil conversation.' Jenny had been desperately trying to think of some excuse why she had to show Esther, alone, the library upstairs, just so that they could escape. But she had yet to conjure anything. She would suggest walking somewhere to buy dinner, if they weren't already all sitting around eating takeaway pizza (courtesy of Clara), and if she had the energy to walk anywhere at all. Which she did not.

"Sorry, Oswin. What's up?" Jenny asked.

" _Well you weren't answering your phone, and I wanted to know how you are_ ," Oswin said, " _I don't really want to talk to Clara much at all_."

"Neither do I right now," Jenny sighed.

"I can hear everything you're saying," Clara told her sharply.

"And _we_ can hear everything _you're_ saying, and I'm sure that both of us wish we couldn't," Esther argued.

Jenny yawned down the phone, "I guess I'm alright. Just tired. And I have a headache."

" _Has Clara been looking after you alright? And yes, I'm perfectly aware that her and her gargantuan bat-ears can hear every word I'm saying_." Jenny saw Clara scowl, but she didn't say anything. She was still 'talking' to Sally.

"Of course she has, she's a dream, like always," Jenny said, smiling to herself. Clara's scowl vanished.

" _Yeah, a wet dream_."

"Do you ever switch off?"

" _No. And I find that offensive, me being a hologram_."

"How's my father?" Jenny asked quickly. She didn't want to get into one with Oswin about her being 'deadist.' 'Deadism' did not exist, however sure she was that Esther and Ravenwood would disagree with her if they heard anything of it.

" _Your father?_ "

"Yes, my father."

" _All of them?_ "

"No. Just Eleven. The others can… well I don't care what they do, because they don't care what _I_ do."

" _He's fine, I think. Keeps trying to go visit you, I heard, but Clara keeps stopping him because he's ill too. And also because she's worried your girlfriend might kill him_ ," Oswin explained. Jenny looked at Ravenwood on her right, the pair of them sat next to each other on the sofa. Esther was in the armchair; Sally was on a chair from the kitchen she had dragged through, in between the sofa and Esther.

"You wouldn't kill my dad, would you?" Jenny asked her.

"No, of course I wouldn't kill your dad, I like your dad, I think he's alright," Clara assured her.

" _Understatement of the century_ ," Oswin remarked in Jenny's ear. Jenny didn't say anything for a while, she was thinking. " _Something wrong?_ "

"Will you put him on?"

" _Who? Husbandy?_ "

"Yeah. Please, Os."

" _God, alright, fine, but you're not talking to him for long because I have to get back to Adam and I don't trust the Doctor with my phone_."

"Why? Might he change all the contacts in it to incredibly inappropriate, borderline disgusting nicknames?" Jenny questioned.

" _Who on Titan would do a thing like that?_ " Oswin asked innocently. Of course she would never own up to her nicknaming-shenanigans. Jenny knew for a fact that her own name in Ravenwood's phone was 'Corpse Fucker.' What she didn't know was how Oswin kept getting into Clara's phone, even when Jenny tried to use the sonic screwdriver to stop her. To be honest, she thought it was rude.

"I don't know, but if whoever _is_ doing it values my friendship at all, I really think they ought to put all the names back to what they're supposed to be and stop," Jenny told her.

Begrudgingly, Oswin said, "… _I'll bear that mind_ … _I'll get him now_ …" Clara nudged Jenny, and she looked over.

"Did you get her to fix the names in my phone?" she half-whispered. Jenny nodded and smiled proudly. There was a very brief moment where Clara, who was sitting very close because Jenny was trying to cool herself down by lurking close to Clara's vampiric iciness, trailed her eyes over Jenny's lips. And then Sally Sparrow threw a chip at her head.

"That was one of mine!" Esther protested as Clara glared.

"Why'd you throw a chip at me!?"

"Because you were going to kiss her, you can't just start making out when you have guests."

"I wasn't going to do anything of the sort," Clara lied, because everybody knew that she was.

" _Hello? Jenny?_ " said Eleven down the phone.

"You were," Sally said, taking another chip off Esther.

"I'm going to electrocute you if you do that again," Esther said. Sally looked over and narrowed her eyes at Esther, then slowly reached out a hand to the box of chips. The Doctor was trying to say something to Jenny, but she had grown distracted watching this. Then Esther, who wasn't wearing her gloves, swatted Sally's hand away, blue sparks flying out of her fingertips.

"Ow! I can't believe you just did that!"

"I told you I would!"

Remarkably enough, Sally went to try and snatch _another_ chip, at which point Esther finally gave up and got out of the chair to come and sit on Jenny's left on the other end of the sofa.

" _Jenny? What's going on? Oswin's making faces at me_ ," the Doctor talked again and took Jenny by surprise (she had nearly forgotten she was on the phone to him.)

"Tell her to stop being a baby then," Jenny said, feeling like she was being intruded on with Clara on one side and Esther on the other.

" _What did you want? She's going to take the phone off me in a minute_ ," said Eleven, " _Sorry in advance._ "

"Just have to ask you a question about _Animal Farm_ ," Jenny said.

"Well don't ask your dad!" Clara protested.

"Only because you know he'll agree with me, just like _everybody_ will agree with me, because _you're_ literally mental," Sally argued. Esther made a very irritated noise next to Jenny. "Go on, ask him," Sally encouraged.

" _Is she trying to tell you it's about gay pigs?_ " he asked, right after Jenny put the phone on speaker so that they could all get a resolution to the argument.

"Yeah," Jenny said, "How did you know?"

" _Because I've had this argument with her before as well. It's not about gay pigs, it's a satirical critique of Stalinist ideology_ ," Eleven answered.

"Which is exactly what I said!" Sally declared triumphantly.

"Snowball and Napoleon are in love, they're star-crossed, they just can't be together because-"

" _Because one of them symbolises Lenin and one of them symbolises Stalin and it's a microcosmic representation of the downfall of true communism in Russia after 1917_ ," the Doctor finished Clara's sentence.

"I said that as well," Esther argued.

"But then you betrayed me," Sally said. Esther went back to ignoring them all and eating chips.

" _What's going on? Are you having a party?_ "

"Yeah. Everyone's naked," Sally said.

"Nobody's naked," Clara shook her head, "Although, Sally, if you and I want to go into the cellar together I'm sure we can change that?" Sally, who wasn't prepared to continue the sarcasm to try and call Clara's bluff, clenched her jaw and shut up. Jenny elbowed her.

" _I'm going to have to go,_ " Eleven said.

"Just tell Oswin that I say stop being a pain."

" _I'm not telling her that._ "

"Why? Are you scared of her? She's not going to do anything to you, father," Jenny said, "She's all bark and no bite. Just ignore her and make Clara tell her off."

"Or he could make friends with her," Esther, who could presumably hear everything being as she was sat right by Jenny, "She's not _that_ bad."

"Doesn't she ask you to marry her every other day?" Sally asked.

"Well, yeah, but, aside from that-"

"You only talk to her because you fancy her boyfriend," Sally said, and Clara laughed.

" _I have to go, really._ "

"Right, yeah," Jenny said as Esther started arguing that she didn't have a crush on Adam Mitchell, "I'll call later, though, I'll call Clara."

" _Yes, I very much_ -" the phone hung up. Oswin's doing, no doubt. Jenny held Clara's phone out to her.

"I told you so," Sally said to Clara.

Right as Clara began to argue _even more_ , Jenny finally tried to end it herself, rather than just staying out of it, "Okay, every time you bring this up, Clara, part of my attraction to you vanishes."

"But your attraction to me was already so monumental to begin with, how does it make a difference?" Clara said, and Jenny raised her eyebrows.

Then she nodded at Sally Sparrow and said, " _She_ is a bad influence on you."

"I'm not!" Sally argued.

"Jenny's right," Esther said, "Can't everybody all agree to just not talk about _Animal Farm_ ever again?"

"Fine. If Sally's going to be so-"

"Oh my god!" Jenny exclaimed, "Clara. I love you. But I want to punch you in the face. I'm going to make a cup of tea, because I feel like my head is going to explode." Jenny stood up from the sofa and the blanket around her shoulders dropped off behind her. She was still wearing her dressing gown, though, and she wrapped her arms tightly around herself to try and keep from shivering. This chaos wasn't good for her and her illness.

She skulked off to lurk in the kitchen and wait for the kettle to boil, filling it up all the way so that it would take longer. Jenny then remembered that a few hours ago she had put washing in the dryer in the next room, the tiny room that had the washer, the dryer, boiler and the back door all crammed into it. Originally, Adam had suggested they keep the blood freezer in there, until Oswin pointed out that that was a stupid idea and they should probably put the blood freezer in a secret room in the cellar. Jenny went to see if the clothes in the dryer were actually dry or if they needed an hour or so more.

"Hey," said a soft voice, but it still made her jump. Her senses were all over the place, she was so full of cold she could barely tell when people were creeping around. Especially if those people were vampires. Clara was leaning in the doorway, blocking some of the dim candlelight coming through from the kitchen.

"You scared me," Jenny said, opening the door of the tumble dryer.

"...I'm sorry about arguing with Sally," Clara said, coming into the little room and shutting the door behind her, leaving them with just the light of the moon coming in through the glass in the back door, bouncing off the silver of Jenny's spaceship hovering silently in the garden.

"Yeah, well… I have a really bad headache," she muttered, feeling about at the clothes within the machine. They were not dry, though, so she sighed and set it for another hour. Clara touched her elbow and took her by surprise yet again. Jenny half-expected a kiss, but Clara pulled her into a hug, which happened to be (in that moment at least) a far more satisfying gesture. Jenny didn't outright hug back, but she did bury her face into Clara's shoulder and the crick of her neck. "I'm really tired…"

"Do you want me to see if I can get them to go away?" Clara whispered to her. It was a good thing the dryer was on, stopped nosey Sally eavesdropping.

"No, they're your friends."

"They're _our_ friends, Jen, and I'll ask them to leave if you want," Clara said, still holding her.

"Well what do _you_ want?"

"I want some alone time with you."

"Clara, I'm not having-"

"I don't mean sex," Clara said defensively, letting her go but taking both her hands, being _very_ gentle with the right one, which was _still_ immobile and _still_ perpetually hurt a great deal. "I just mean that Esther was here all yesterday, and now both of them have been there all of today, and it's getting late for the people who aren't nocturnal. I kind of feel like I've been neglecting you while you've been ill."

"Of course you haven't been neglecting me – and I'm a grown woman, Clara, I _can_ take care of myself," Jenny said.

"But _I_ should be taking care of you right now," Clara said, "I don't know, maybe I'm…" she stopped talking and made an odd face, glancing over her shoulder at the closed door. Then she whispered, "Sally's saying she thinks we're making out in here."

"I really wish I was up to making out, but I'm not," Jenny said pitifully.

"Best not. Don't want to give her the satisfaction. But it's your call, should I ask them to leave? You _are_ still sick, you're well within your rights to want some peace and quiet. From them. Not from me, I hope," Clara said, still holding her hands.

"…Alright, I admit it. Yes, I'd like if they would leave."

"Do you want to hide in here while I do? I'll say you're here because it's cooler and you feel better."

"I _do_ feel better because it's cool. And that's cowardly."

"Well you should definitely stay if you feel better, though," Clara said, and Jenny couldn't be bothered arguing, and maybe she _was_ a little cowardly, because she let Clara leave to go and convince Sally and Esther to vacate the premises. But the cold temperature by the back door really _did_ relieve her dreadful headache somewhat, so that was where she lingered for what must have been at least ten entire minutes until the door opened again, and there was Clara, and over the racket of the dryer Jenny hadn't heard a single word that had transpired in the next room.

"Are they gone?"

"Yeah, finally. Kept complaining that it's started raining – it's only a drizzle. But it's just us now, I've got you all to myself, and thank god, because I want to talk to you," Clara said, holding out her hand for Jenny to take, which she did, finding that Clara had finished off making the tea she had begun herself earlier.

"Talk to me?" Jenny asked, marvelling at the peace and quiet in Sally and Esther's absence. She liked Sally and Esther, the Spooks, of course she did, but Clara was right; she was sick, and alone time would be wonderful. And they had been around for the last two days.

"Yeah – cos while you've been ill, I've realised something. Or more like, remembered something," Clara said, letting go of Jenny's hand so that Jenny could hold her mug of hot tea in it, considering the other one was useless. God, she hated having a broken thumb. Clara instead grabbed her right forearm to tug her over to the sofa and make her sit down, at which point she sat next to her, _very_ close.

"If you're trying to get off with me it's not going to work, for the record," Jenny said, drinking her tea.

"Jenny, I am not _always_ trying to get off with you," Clara argued.

"You liar."

"Whatever," Clara muttered, "What with you being ill and not much up to talking, I've been thinking a lot-"

"Are you breaking up with me!?" she exclaimed suddenly.

" _What?_ God, no! No, Jen! Why would you think I'd do that?"

"I don't know; it's what people usually do."

"People usually break up with you? With _you_? What possible reason could they have?"

"Being too obsessed with finding my father, wanting to get out of East Berlin and escape the stigma involved with dating another woman in 1960s Germany, they were only with me for a bet, death. The usual. Stealing my pirate ship," Jenny shrugged. Maybe she shouldn't have mentioned the death one. She didn't want Clara to ask about it, she hated talking about it, even though it had been forty years ago.

"Hold on," Clara began, "Someone was only going with you for a bet?"

"That's what happens when you're in the army and you only look about twenty but you're a very superior rank _and_ arguably hot," Jenny said.

"I don't think _anybody_ would argue with the fact that you're hot."

"I was really upset about it, to be honest. Didn't let it happen again. Well, I guess… no, when we slept together, _I_ was the one doing it for a bet…" she thought.

"That's what I was thinking about, like I was saying before you got paranoid."

"What was? Me doing you for a bet?"

"No, us before we were actually together. You're sick, so I was thinking about back when _I_ was sick," Clara explained, "Because, you know, I've never really mentioned, but… well you'd just split up with Jack, and then you came to take care of me. What I _mean_ is, that was when I realised I'd totally fallen in love with you."

Jenny found herself smiling; "Aw," she said, "That's sweet."

"It's because you didn't used to be so nice. Don't get me wrong, you _were_ nice, but then you regenerated, and now you're… amazing," Clara said, "And I wanted to tell you. And also assure you that I'd never break up with you. That's a weird thought, actually; what if we're together for, like, ever? I might never have to go on another awkward first date again. I might never pick up a stranger in a bar and kick them out at four o'clock in the morning."

"Because those things are the highlights of your life up to this point, I'm sure. And you never kicked _me_ out of your house at four in the morning."

"That's because I fancy you. Honestly, Jenny, you could have just packed up and moved in with me and I probably wouldn't have told you to leave I was _that_ smitten. As it is you keep bringing stuff over, and you've been living here for a week now," Clara pointed out.

"Is it bothering you? If you want me to go, I'll go," Jenny said quickly.

"It's fine."

"Because I don't want to put too much strain on us too early, you know? We're kind of whirlwind as it is."

"Maybe whirlwind is what suits us best," Clara shrugged, "I don't mind. You can stay as long as you need to. I love having you around."

"Well then it's a good thing I love _being_ around."


	19. Inhuman Footprints

**DAY 18,200**

 _Inhuman Footprints_

 _Clara_

Was it wrong of her to be annoyed that, at present, her wife was in their house, serving food that Clara had cooked, to a man she was not married to? While she herself lurked, alone, in the chilly garden shed smoking a cigarette? At least in the shed, she thought resentfully, she could have proper cigarettes, not those electronic jobs she was forced to vape with in the house because the Doctor hated the smell. The Doctor would just have to put up with all of her shed-junk stinking of tobacco.

At least, she thought resentfully, most of her resent directed towards herself, the idea of Thirteen miraculously falling for Cole Campbell and his 'charms' had been shot in the foot very early on. Clara heard it over the earpiece; heard the Doctor invite Campbell through the living room and then heard Campbell ask if Captain Nemo was what they were having for dinner. Clara could almost picture Captain Nemo's horrified little lobster face. But it was still only _almost_ , because Captain Nemo couldn't change his facial expression. Lobsters didn't feel emotions, or pain, they didn't have the brain capacity. Not that that stopped the Doctor from being abominably outraged.

Clara sat with a long-range scanning device in her lap, aimed vaguely towards the house, waiting for it to do its thing. Unfortunately, 'its thing' took a lot of time to do, so she had a lot of time to kill, a lot of time to spend listening to her wife try and flirt with some weirdo. And Thirteen was not very good at flirting, Clara had quickly learnt while listening. She could flirt with Clara no problem, but anybody else? She became a train wreck. It was kind of amusing.

Sometimes, Clara dropped a line for the Doctor to say to try and schmooze Campbell, whenever she drew a painful blank, but for the most part Clara stayed quiet on the earpiece. Mostly because, while supervising Clara's latest foray into the world of 'cooking' (it was debatable if pouring baked beans over microwave noodles constituted as much), the Doctor had begged for her not to be a pain, which she argued was more than fair since Clara's being-a-pain was what had gotten them into this mess to begin with. Besides, she was so irritated at herself and had grown so uncharacteristically melancholy as a result of this, she could hardly bring herself to make snide quips. So she just moped and smoked and watched the scanner languidly.

" _You have a lot of books_ ," Campbell commented. He had nothing interesting to say, which was a shame considering so many of actions were 'interesting' to say the least.

" _Oh, most of them are Clara's_ ," Thirteen said, then Clara heard her cough and splutter, " _Clara's that she leant me, is what I mean, and I keep forgetting to give them back to her. My friend_." _Smooth_ , Clara thought dryly to herself. It was a lot of this. Wasn't as thrilling as it had initially seemed. Sometimes she heard the chink of cutlery on plates, but nothing all that captivating.

"Have I mentioned how boring this is?" she complained a minute later, "Ask him if he likes wasps."

" _Do you like wasps?_ " the Doctor repeated to Clara's surprise. She had been kidding, but obviously Thirteen was bored as well. Then again, she didn't have Clara Oswald's sterling company, so why _wouldn't_ she be bored?

" _What are wasps_?" said Campbell.

" _Nothing important_ ," Thirteen said unsurely, Clara frowning in the shed, glancing at the house like that might shed some light on this.

" _Can I use your toilet?_ " Campbell asked quite abruptly. Clara heard Thirteen taken by surprise, pausing briefly before giving him the directions upstairs to the bathroom. Lucky they had locked all the other doors, _and_ their fancy medicine cabinet above the sink. All their other stuff had been stashed in the attic; just a few hours ago they had had an argument about whether the photo of them in front of the Statue of Liberty needed to be put away. Thirteen said of course it did, because you could see the damned Eiffel Tower in the background, what with that photo being taken in Paris in 1886 when Lady Liberty was still under construction.

" _Have you found anything on the scanner yet?_ " Thirteen asked, and Clara didn't answer because she was still thinking about them bickering over which of their possessions needed to be hidden away out of sight. " _Clara_?" she hissed.

"What? Oh. No. I don't think it's working, I'm too far away."

" _I told you, if you didn't break our stealth field generator two months ago, you could have just sat in here with that thing_ ," the Doctor complained.

"Yeah, I know, so you keep saying, but it doesn't change the fact that it _did_ get broken."

" _By you!_ "

"I mean, I don't really remember what happened, to be honest," Clara lied. The stealth field inhibitor was just a device that made the user invisible, a little metal ball, smaller than a tennis ball, one held in their hand. Clara had dropped it, it had smashed, the Doctor had been unable to repair it. It got brought up quite often. "Well, if the scanner won't work, what am I _supposed_ to do? He doesn't know what a wasp is, and he ate one, he's obviously… something." No response. "Doctor?"

" _You should come inside_ ," Thirteen said seriously.

"But he'll see me," Clara pointed out, though she did drop her cigarette on the floor and stamp it out with her foot.

" _Just get in here, that doesn't matter anymore, hurry up. Bring the scanner_." Clara sighed but stood up from her chair, scanner in hand, and phased right through the wall of the shed to cross the dark, frosty garden, eyes brushing over her dead rose brush she had planted for her mother by the fence on the left. She phased through the wall at the back of the house as well, keeping an eye out for Campbell.

He wasn't there, though. Instead she walked in to find the Doctor crouched down on the floor examining something, though her body hid what it was from Clara's view.

"What?" Clara asked. Somebody else may have jumped at her practically appearing out of thin air, but the Doctor was very used to it.

"C'mere," the Doctor said, jerking her head to indicate the same thing. Clara trudged over to look over her shoulder and saw there, on the floor, a pool of goo, about the shape and size as a large man's shoe.

"What is that?" Clara asked. Thirteen didn't answer, she stood up and grabbed a knife from the table, then returned to stick the knife into the stuff on the floor and lift it up. It had the consistency of honey, and stretched and dripped from the tip of the silver knife back onto their tiles.

"Morphic residue," she answered, "Ran into a Vespiform with Donna a few centuries ago that left the same stuff behind when it transformed."

"What's a Vespiform?" Clara asked, crouching down next to the Doctor.

"A giant wasp," Thirteen said, "But if Cole Campbell turns into a giant wasp, you would have thought he wouldn't eat a little one. Millions of species leave stuff like this behind. Even humans lose skin all the time, the cons of growing old. Give me that scanner." Clara did give her it, and she held it above the stuff. "I used to have a species identifier, but I made the thing into a mirror that works on vampires and gave it to Jenny – god – decades ago. It sure would be useful right about now."

"So he's definitely an alien?"

"He likes your cooking, Coo, of course he is."

" _You're_ an alien and you don't like my cooking," Clara pointed out sharply.

"But I like everything else about you, so it equals out," the Doctor said distantly, not paying all that much attention to Clara, her efforts mainly focused on scanning the morphic residue.

"So he's an alien, and he's gone to our bathroom dripping this stuff? He wasn't traipsing any goop around earlier," Clara pointed out, and Thirteen paused.

"No, he wasn't… he's transforming…"

"Into what? Why?"

The service bell attached to the scanner dinged to indicate it was 'done,' the little screen on it flashing green. Thirteen glanced down at it to read what it said, Clara waiting to be told the information second hand in a moment's time.

"He's a Khaolu," the Doctor said.

"What's that?"

"Uh, sort of like a big ball, covered in tentacles; they consume other lifeforms to assimilate their shape. Like a Plasmavore, but it's a full, physical change," Thirteen said, standing up, "Which means there used to be a real Cole Campbell, and now he's dead."

"So why is a Khaolu trying to get you to go on a date with him?" Clara pressed.

"How should I know!? Maybe he's lost and he can tell I'm not a human, too, and just wants our help," she shrugged, "Or maybe I'm just a catch. You and I aren't the same species either, remember."

"How could I forget."

They were interrupted, right as Clara was about to ask her wife what they ought to do about the alleged tentacle-alien presently morphing in their upstairs bathroom, by squelching sounds from above. They didn't need to exchange a single word; a mere, worried glance between them was all it took for them to be fully on the same page, and Thirteen left the scanner on the kitchen table as the pair of them crept through their living room, strangers in their own home all of a sudden, to investigate Campbell the Khaolu.

The creature – for it was much more a creature than a man at that point – came galumphing and slithering along the landing and heaved its many-armed self down their stairs. There was a shine to it, and a glistening coat of excretion was left on the carpet. It really was just as the Doctor had described it, a big ball covered in tentacles, sickly green in colour, and it practically rolled as it moved, throwing itself back down the stairs like an oaf. And then, when it reached the bottom and was there opposite the both of them, all semblance of their earlier ruse lost, it lifted itself on four of its many tentacles to be towering above the Doctor and Clara Oswald.

"It's taken me seventy-four years to find you, Doctor," Campbell said, "I didn't think it would be so easy to corner you." Oh, fantastic, yet again they had tried to be clever and had played right into the hands – or suckers – of some unknown, scheming adversary. Was there even any point trying to make plans?

"Corner me? Why? What have I ever done to you? I've never had any issue with the Khaolu," Thirteen said, "I've never even been to your planet. What are you doing on Earth? And what happened in 1948?"

"1948?" Clara asked, and Thirteen gave her an irritated look.

"He said seventy-four years, Coo."

"But it's 2022."

"Yeah."

"But 2022 minus seventy-four is…" she paused, briefly tried to count on her fingers, frowned, probably looked a bit like a computer when it crashed.

"1948. It's 1948," Thirteen said, and Clara gave up. She'd had her telepathic link to Oswin as a mathematical crutch for two-thirds of her life, and when Oswin wasn't there, the Doctor was, or Adam Mitchell. Always somebody.

"It's not what you did," Campbell said in a very guttural, slimy-sounding voice, like his throat was full of phlegm. If he had a throat. She supposed that to eat people and take on their shape, he must, somewhere in his boneless mass, "Your daughter murdered my mother in cold blood." And that had done it. Any chance of courtesy was thrown out of the window when Jenny's character was brought into question – the Doctor would defend her daughter more ardently than she would defend even Clara, or herself.

"Jenny would never murder anybody in cold blood," Thirteen said.

"I'm not here to argue. I'm here to do the same thing to her that she did to me. Even Time Lords won't regenerate from being consumed by a Khaolu," Campbell said. Of course it was a murder plot. It was _always_ a murder plot. It looked like McWatt was going to be doing even more interviews to fill Boyd's old post, now that it turned out his new hire was an alien. An alien who didn't know what they were talking about, she should specify. Unlike her good wife.

"No, you should explain," Thirteen argued, "Jenny wouldn't do a thing like that, what was your mother doing in 1948? Where was she?" Of course Campbell wouldn't listen to reason though. It struck Clara that she was seventy-five years old, and that Campbell had been looking to wreak his revenge on the Doctor for nearly the same amount of time that she had been alive. That was a _lot_ of time to build up a grudge. A tentacle lashed out with the same tenacity as the tongue of a chameleon and would have struck Thirteen's head had Clara not wrenched her out of the way. The woman had a habit of slow-reflexes. So many times it was Clara who acted to save the pair of them just because Thirteen had too much faith in people _not_ to attack her, or because she wasn't paying attention.

"I think we're beyond the point of trying to reason with him!" Clara said, pulling the Doctor into the living room. But the Khaolu was fast, and had suckers, and could stick to walls and ceilings to pursue them through their really quite small house. If Clara had listened to the Doctor's suggestion that they get an enormous mansion (or a castle), then escaping an alien invader would probably be a damn sight easier.

"I'll kill you!" Campbell yelled, "For my mother! You and your wife – let your daughter lose both of her parents." Clara was almost disgusted by that.

"I'm not her bloody parent!" she shouted, sticking her head out for a brief second around the edge of the armchair she had forced Thirteen to join her in cowering behind. A mistake. A tentacle lashed for her and struck her around the side of the face, throwing her to the ground with her cheek hot and soaked with blood from where its spiny suckers had slashed her skin.

"Are you okay!?" the Doctor asked, trying to lift Clara's head with her hand.

"I'm fine," she said, and she was. She would be. It was all surface injuries, aesthetic damage, but now Campbell was gaining on them and clambering over their coffee table and their chairs. The Doctor grabbed Clara's elbow and pulled her into the kitchen, ordering her to push the table over to give them another brief barricade as the thing dragged itself towards them in hot pursuit. "So what are we supposed to do!?"

"Well I'm not going to let it hurt my family," Thirteen said decisively, "You think he'll stop with me? No, he'll try and kill you, and revenge never satisfies anyone, so he'll just move on to someone else. I am not letting anybody try and kill my daughter, even if she _can_ fend for herself perfectly adequately." Campbell's dark green tentacles came flying for the table, lashing it to splinters behind them.

"Of course I appreciate the sentiment and everything, sweetheart, but he's kind of about to kill us and I'd really like to know what you plan to do to stop him, you know, _killing us_ ," Clara hissed at her.

"Oh, right," the Doctor said, then paused. A tentacle whipped through the air between them, grabbing around the table so that the Khaolu could pull itself right over to them. Clara wrenched Thirteen out of the way again just as the Khaolu appeared over the top of the table, and with the Doctor in tow she made a beeline for the hallway and the front door, but Thirteen held her back, "We can't go out there, we have to go upstairs."

"We can't go upstairs! There's no way out from upstairs!"

"Come on," the Doctor dragged them towards the stairs with Campbell coming right after them. Clara gave up fighting, desperately hoping Thirteen knew what she was doing, tentacles wrapping themselves around the banisters so that the Khaolu could force itself to follow.

"Haven't you ever seen a horror film!? When people go upstairs, they die!"

"Shut up!" Thirteen ordered. A tentacle slashed for Clara's foot, but her reflexes were fast enough that she managed to stamp on it with the heel of her shoe. Her lapse as she did, however, meant that when the Doctor kept forcing her upstairs she stumbled and nearly fell over, the Khaolu always right behind them.

Clara trusted the Doctor to lead her and so had her eyes trained on the Khaolu, when her line of vision was abruptly cut off by a bright white something slipping between them. This thing, it turned out, was the bathroom door being slammed shut by Thirteen after she dragged the both of them into the toilet, dropping Clara's hand and hastening to lock the door.

"What good'll that do!?"

"Hold it off!" Thirteen ordered.

" _What_!? How!?"

"You're telekinetic!" Thirteen shouted, leaving Clara to fend off Campbell on the other side of the door, hearing him slither about up the stairs, the squelching easy to identify even through the barrier. The Doctor ran over to the cabinets against the other wall, the large one underneath the sink and the other one above it (they had a plastic step, the kind children used, so that they could reach the top shelf of the cupboard), pulling out all sorts of brightly coloured bottles full of cleaning solutions, some of Earth origin, most from 'elsewhere.'

Clara divided her attention between her wife and Campbell, glancing backwards and forwards, trying to keep a forcefield generating across the door. She had never been all that good at forcefields though, and most definitely not when she couldn't even see what she was trying to ward off.

"What are you doing?" Clara asked, watching the Doctor push the plug into the sink and begin emptying bottles into it, muttering at them to pour out their chemicals faster.

"I'm improvising," she answered, then the Khaolu punched a tentacle through the wall right at Clara's head, and she barely managed to duck, and now it was flailing one of its arms around trying to break a bigger hole in the door. "I told you to hold him off!"

"Well I can't see where he is!"

"For god's sake – you've had that power for fifty years and you still can't use it properly!" Thirteen shouted back at her, pulling out a very small bottle from one of their cupboards that was some ridiculously powerful alien bleach. It was so powerful you were meant to use the pipet-style lid to deliver tiny drops of it into large batches of hot water, and the water would be transformed into something strong enough to scrub away even black mould. Whatever she was concocting in their bathroom sink, it was going to be lethal. "If you're not going to stop him then get over here and help me." Clara did what was requested, coming over and taking a bottle that was thrust into her hands, turning it upside down and wincing when she got splashed by the fluids in the mixture, her skin burning instantly. They really ought to be wearing hazmat suits, or something, but time was of the essence.

Then she felt her foot set on fire and she nearly screamed, jumping away and seeing some of the potion – which was, by this point, a highly volatile acid – drip down from beneath the sink and dissolve its way right through her shoe onto her skin. The Doctor's eyes widened and they both looked down to see that the stuff had been burning through the actual porcelain basin of the sink itself.

While this had been going on, the Khaolu had made dangerous progress in its bid to destroy their bathroom door (and a lot of their house, by this point), and as Clara reeled from the pain in her foot from the stuff in the sink, Cole Campbell in his true form came crashing through into the room, tearing the door and chunks of plaster from the walls apart. Debris was scattered everywhere and the floor was going to start dissolving any second if they didn't do something about their devastating creation.

"Help me with the sink," Thirteen said.

" _What_?"

"The sink, Clara! Telekinesis! You're terrible under pressure, you know!"

Clara didn't really think through what she did next. In retrospect, the Doctor probably meant to undo the bolts and screws keeping the porcelain basin attached to the plumbing system, but that wasn't what she did. No. She used all of her psychokinetic strength, as much of it as she could muster (which was a _lot_ ) to tear the whole sink off the wall, ripping at and some of the piping away, sending it hurtling for Campbell. The missile and its fatal contents struck the Khaolu, and what happened next was rather like a time lapsed video of the process by which a grape was turned into a raisin. Rather than disintegrate, the Khaolu curled up, shrivelled, like how a spider curled its legs around onto itself when it died. She didn't know what kind of a reaction that amalgam of alien chemicals would induce in a great, tentacle beast when it was drenched in them, but she hadn't quite been expecting it to suck itself together so tightly that it imploded.

But it did.

The Khaolu crushed flesh into flesh and at the last second it let loose and popped like a cherry. At least this neutralised the chemicals, otherwise she didn't even want to think of what might have happened to their bathroom. It wasn't just any old bathroom, it had a lot of incredibly fancy and expensive fixtures courtesy of Adam Mitchell (the bathroom was a house warming present), and Clara would _not_ be happy if they were all reduced to bubbling piles of acidic by-product.

Dark green viscera burst out of the Khaolu's skin, ripping it apart and splattering the white walls and floor and the two women with a heavy coat of gunk. It dripped like snot off every visible surface, sickeningly warm and tingly on Clara's skin as she stood there, cringing all over, clenching and unclenching her fists.

"I mean," Thirteen began unsurely, "You _were_ telling me a few weeks ago about how you wanted to paint the walls a different colour…" The glare Clara turned on her when she said that didn't even bear description. "I'll go fetch the marigolds from downstairs…"

 **AN: To the guest who asked if I would ever write about Adwin and Clarenny in the time jumps: I might do a future Clarenny storyline because I had an idea for one but there will probably never be a future Adwin storyline. A present Adwin storyline, yes. Probably not in the future though.**


	20. When It's Time

**DAY 140**

 _When It's Time_

 _Oswin_

What an astonishingly productive phone call to Jenny _that_ had been, she thought, annoyed that her bid to find out exactly how Jenny was (as was her secret job entrusted to her by Thirteen) had been hijacked by Jenny's desire to – eurgh – _speak_ to her _father_. And ask him some arbitrary question about pig sex Oswin was sure was very dull. Oswin dropped her phone back into the pocket of her boyfriend's dressing gown, which she spent most of her time lounging around in those days, and took it upon herself to at least stick her head back into her own room and talk to him. She'd barely seen him all day, and for a lot of the day before after the pathetic verdict of flu had been passed on the Time Lords; she'd been holed up in her laboratory. He had made her coffee that morning, and she had vanished off again to continue her obsessive study of Liam Kent's blood samples.

She didn't walk in on what she expected to walk in on, though, which would be Adam Mitchell playing video games on his fancy-schmancy computer or his equally ostentatious television, perhaps with the online company of Esther Drummond. No, she walked in to hear music, acoustic music, and it wasn't coming out of a speaker. Vaguely, in the back of her mind, Oswin was aware that her boyfriend could play the guitar*, but she had never seen him do so. He was just as bad with that as her sister was with her piano, in that she had never seen him play. But she had also never seen him in the vicinity of a guitar, so maybe that was why, rather than shyness. To go with this new-found musical streak, the boy was singing, too, and he was actually singing well. _Very_ well, in fact. Not that she recognised the song. They didn't have remotely similar tastes in music.

" _All I want is you to understand, that when I take your hand, it's cos I want to_ ," Adam was singing, and Oswin was stunned and forced to stand there and listen by desire, " _We are all born in a world of doubt, but there's no doubt, I've figured-_ "

" _Blood samples finished analysing, Miss Oswald_ ," the voice of Helix's handset interrupted, quite loudly, from Oswin's other, large pocket, declaring that her latest simulated experiment on Kent's blood had completed running. It unfortunately also declared that Adam Mitchell's song had 'completed running,' because he abruptly stopped what he was doing, sitting on the sofa, and turned around to stare at her, aghast.

"Will you stop sneaking up on me!?" he exclaimed, blatantly embarrassed, and Oswin was embarrassed, too, for her own lack of subtlety.

"I didn't do it on purpose! I just came to say hi before I had to go back to the lab," she said, lurking by the door, feeling a little outcast. He clenched his jaw and put his guitar down, leaving it propped up against the arm of the sofa, looking at her over the back of it.

"How long were you stood there for?"

"Not that long," she said truthfully. Given the opportunity, she would have listened to the whole song through, and whatever songs came after it, in complete, devoted silence. "Why do you mind? You're really good." He made a face like he didn't believe her, like she was telling him that as part of one of her usual, fond jeers. "I'm telling the truth."

"Right."

"I didn't know you could sing, Mitchell," she said, walking towards the sofa to sit on his left, the other side to the guitar. He wouldn't trust her to go near it, she was sure. He would think she would break it, and perhaps she would, though she had never really seen one in person before. Nobody had ever brought one to her house.

"How are your experiments going?" he asked quickly, raising his eyebrows in an attempt to look more intrigued than he actually was. She nearly gasped.

"Don't try to change the subject away from how talented you are!" she said, a grin sneaking onto her face, her very amused and enamoured by his embarrassment over this new side of his personality. She shuffled closer to him on the sofa, and he shifted uncomfortably and moved away slightly.

"I'm showing an interest in your afterlife," he shrugged.

"You're interested enough without going to extra effort. And I don't know how they're going, I haven't been able to check the most recent results yet, considering I only got them about a minute ago and I've been in here the entire time."

"Maybe you should go do that, then? Go check?" he suggested hopefully, and she narrowed her eyes.

"Just because you're embarrassed about me seeing you sing? Why should you be embarrassed about that? We've been going out for months, and you don't want me to hear you sing?" she asked, and she was genuinely a little downtrodden about that. What did it mean? He was uncomfortable around her? With her? He must have been able to tell she was somewhat put out, going by what he said next.

"You frightened me."

"I didn't mean to. I just got distracted when I came in." Adam sighed, ran a hand through his hair, but didn't speak. "Where did you learn to sing?"

"I… don't laugh," he pleaded.

"Laugh? Why would I laugh?"

"Because I was in an all boys' choir," he said, and Oswin steadily found herself beaming, "I said don't laugh!"

"I'm not laughing! I'm smiling. It's cute."

"And now you're patronising me."

"I'm not patronising you, Mitchell. You shouldn't be embarrassed just because you can sing well," she said, " _I_ can't sing. Or play any instruments."

"So, what? You're _impressed_?" he asked her incredulously.

"My boyfriend sings and plays the guitar very well, of course I'm impressed! You shouldn't be embarrassed about telling me things, babe. If you tell me the right things at the right times, you might never have to tell them to any other girl," she told him.

"That's putting me under a lot of pressure when it comes to talking," he mumbled.

"You need more confidence," she said.

"Why? Because you pity me?" he questioned. He still wasn't happy about all this, was still recoiling from her catching him singing like she had caught him doing something as blue as touching himself.

"I do not pity you, I'm in love with you, and I really like that you're musical! What are you so worried about? That me hearing you sing would be the world's biggest turn-off and I'd just decide to leave you on the spot?" she asked, and he couldn't think of anything to say in response, just opened and closed his mouth uselessly a couple of times. "What song was that?"

"Just Green Day. You don't like them," he said stiffly, crossing his arms.

"Maybe I like them when you play them," she told him, "I feel like I've been missing out all this time not being able to hear you sing. I'm deprived. You're going to have to make up for it, with… performances, or something."

"Oh, you wish," he said, smiling the tiniest amount.

"I do wish, that's why I said it." He scowled.

"…I'll think about it. Maybe. If you don't laugh."

"I won't, I haven't laughed at all," she pointed out, "I do have _some_ integrity. I'm not a _complete_ arsehole. Maybe about ninety-five percent arsehole, ninety-eight at a push, but never a complete one. So you can play the guitar and sing, and on top of that you're a rich, charitable, attractive genius, and you have glasses, _and_ you can cook? It's getting to the point where I'm not even entirely sure that you exist, babe; I could still be trapped in perfect illusion on the Dalek Asylum and I wouldn't be surprised. You not being real _is_ the only way you wouldn't have dumped me yet."

" _Why_ would I dump you?"

"Um, well," she said, lifting up her hand to count the reasons on her fingers, and he rolled his eyes in response, "First of all, I'm insane; second of all, I'm dead; third of all, I'm insane; fourth, I can be really, unnecessarily cruel sometimes; fifth, I'm a Dalek; sixth, I'm insane; seventh, I'm far too co-dependent on my sister; and finally, eighth, _did I mention I'm insane_?" As she made this list, putting up the correlating finger until she reached the magic eight, his expression gradually changed to a smile he was trying to fight off.

"You've never been very good at putting me off," he remarked. She put her hands down in her lap.

"Well that's _your_ problem, when you realise I'm awful. It's only a matter of time."

"Time could be forever."

"Uh-huh."

"Maybe I'll just never realise."

"Then I really _would_ pity you."

"Why?"

"Having to be with me for that long, deluding yourself that I'm actually a good person to fall for." After she said that there was a very uneasy pause. She said things like that a lot, and he would always try and shower her with compliments, which would never work at making her thing she wasn't a messy, shell of an individual. Instead of letting that happen (again), she changed the subject, "I was just on the phone to Jenny."

"Oh, really? How is she?" Adam asked, "Did she say anything about when she's coming back to the TARDIS?"

"No. I heard the end of an argument between Sally Sparrow and Ravenwood, though, something to do with pig sex."

"Not that thing about _Animal Farm_ being gay again? Your sister needs to get a grip."

"Thanks for pointing out the obvious. But yes, that exact thing, then Jenny made me put her father on the phone so that she could get him to end the argument. So they're both happy, or something," she grumbled, and he frowned at her, intrigued by her annoyance at Jenny and Eleven.

"What's wrong?" he asked, "Why are you dead-set against those two being on good terms?"

"I just don't like him, he's overrated."

"The Doctor is _overrated_?"

"Yes!" she argued, "Very! What's so great about him?"

"He's got a really cool spaceship," Adam shrugged.

"Oh, I didn't realise you base peoples' value on their material possessions, Mitchell," she snapped, and he gave her a flat stare on the sofa. She looked away from him and back at his fancy, black, acoustic guitar. "Let me play with your guitar."

"No, definitely not," he said guardedly, and she gave him a pleading look, "Don't do that. You're not touching her."

" _Her_?" Oswin's jaw dropped.

"Yes. She's called Caroline."

"Oh my god. You have a guitar who is a _girl_ called _Caroline_?"

"Well I'm not going to name it after a boy, am I?" he questioned. She shrugged.

"Far be it from _me_ to judge if you swing both ways. Who do you love more? Me or Caroline?" she questioned.

" _You_ didn't cost me almost four grand," he commented.

"Oi! You're supposed to say me!"

"But I don't pay for you."

"If you take that tone anymore then the only way you'll have anything to do with me will be if you pay," she snapped.

"And what are _you_ going to do with _money_?"

"Maybe I don't mean pay with money. Maybe I mean… sexual favours, or something."

"Okay, so, I pay for sex with sex?"

"Yes."

"And that makes sense to you, does it?"

"Perfect sense."

"Sure."

"More sense than naming a guitar _Caroline_ ," she retorted.

"Jenny names all of her guns!" Adam protested in defence of himself.

"Yeah, so what? I'm not defending her for it, I think _that's_ weird, too. Why would you name it? It's inanimate. I haven't named my leg," she said, nodding at her prosthetic appendage.

"But if you _did_ name it, I wouldn't judge you for it."

"I'm just a very judgemental person, you ought to be used to it by now. Who's it named after? An old flame of yours?"

"No. A song. By another rock band you tell me you hate."

"Aw. That's nowhere near as interesting as a mysterious ex-girlfriend," Oswin said, "Why do you never tell me anything about your exes?"

"Because, Oswin, they all pale in comparison to you." She would have liked not to blush at that, but she did, and she despised her hologramatic programming for allowing such a crass display of – blech – _emotion_. God, she hated being in love.

* _chapter 730_


	21. The Girl for the Debt

**DAY 18,200**

 _The Girl for the Debt_

 _Clara_

"This is _not_ how I wanted to spend Valentine's Day," Clara grumbled, on her knees, scrubbing the bathroom tiles clean. It was nearly midnight, they had been cleaning for hours; they both had work to do, as well, marking due for the following day, but no doubt that had been shot in the foot. She was exhausted.

"I wasn't under the impression you wanted to spend Valentine's Day doing anything at all, Clara, considering you didn't make any other plans until you set me up with a vindictive tentacle monster," the Doctor snapped at her, trying to scrape green goop off of their skirting boards a couple of feet away.

"This isn't my fault!" Clara protested, stopping what she was doing, straightening up and then leaning back so that she was still kneeling but sitting on her feet. Thirteen looked back at her with her mouth hanging open, but Clara remained firm in her belief that it was not, in fact, her fault.

"How is it _not_ your fault!? This is _all_ your fault!"

" _You're_ the one who threw the stuff on him and made him explode," Clara said, then her eyes widened when she remembered, "We've got an old jousting rod in the loft from that tournament you won forty-something years ago. You know, the gold-coated one that was a present from the king."

"So!?"

"We could have stabbed him with it!"

"Yeah, if you remembered earlier."

"Or if _you_ remembered," Clara countered.

"It wasn't _my_ idea to invite him into our home in the first place," Thirteen argued, sitting up herself.

"What else were we supposed to do!? He was an alien trying to kill you!" Clara shouted.

"Lots of aliens try to kill me! You don't have to go bringing them into the house like a cat dragging in a mouse it just killed!"

"Oh, so now you're comparing me to a stupid pet? I'm up there with Captain Nemo, am I!?"

"Well at the moment you didn't think it through enough for me to notice the difference," Thirteen said coldly, "All day you've just been acting so impulsively-" And _that_ was the last straw for Clara. She had thought it through, of course she had, she had been thinking of the safety of the other people in the school – who had known earlier on if Campbell meant to harm the kids or not? _Fine_ , Clara thought to herself, _if you want impulsive, I'll give you impulsive_ ; because, truthfully, Clara had a lot of very carnal and particular impulses at that moment as far as her wife was concerned. And so Clara interrupted the Doctor's rant by lunging at her across the soapy, gory bathroom tiles, and kissing her.

The Doctor was so startled she fell backwards, against their bath, and Clara just followed her lead, their lips still connected, her rubber-gloved hands firmly on the floor either side of Thirteen. With equal zeal, the Doctor kissed her back, and didn't even try to bring back up their pointless, cyclical argument that wouldn't really end if it continued (just like the one about the weekend's car crash.)

And they didn't really do a lot of anything else for a while, until, to the Doctor's great disgruntlement, Clara broke away to ask, "Do you still love me?"

"Of course I do," the Doctor whispered from the bathroom floor, leaning her forehead on Clara's, "I'll never stop." Clara kissed her again, for a few seconds, until Thirteen stopped them again, "Wait, wait, wait…"

"What?" she breathed, shamelessly trying to invade Thirteen's personal space in an attempt to entice her to continue.

"We're in a gross bathroom full of dead alien goo, it's not really the best place for a romantic encounter," Thirteen said.

"You have to play the hand that life deals you," Clara said, "If this is what the universe wants us to do-"

"It definitely isn't," Thirteen said. The moment had passed. Thirteen would say the moment had never existed, in hindsight, but only because she was ashamed of what she had been debating in the throes of lust, however briefly. "C'mon, control yourself."

"Life would be boring if I controlled myself, though," she complained, pouting.

"Our lives could never be boring, Coo, just take a look around you," Thirteen said. Clara sighed but finally sat up again, then she shuffled over and slumped down against the bath on the Doctor's right, Thirteen watching her the whole time.

"I suppose. I'll never be free from the intervention of extra-terrestrials."

"You're married to an extra-terrestrial."

"Exactly. I'm sick of you." The Doctor laughed a little. Clara slouched down further and rested her head on Thirteen's shoulder, neither of them cleaning anymore, before remembering something and sitting back up with a start. Thirteen frowned, puzzled.

"What's wrong?" she asked, watching Clara pull off the rubber glove on her left hand. She didn't see the point of the gloves, in the end, they were both covered in green stains rubbed right into their skin, so that they looked like guests at a _Shrek_ -themed fancy dress party. Clara showed the Doctor her hand, and those two scuffed, silver rings she was wearing, one on top of the other, the Doctor's still there after Clara had taken it for safekeeping, to maintain their ruse. The higher of the two she proceeded to remove, and the Doctor held out her right hand, palm up.

" _No_ , take the glove off," Clara ordered. Narrowing her eyes, Thirteen went to do so, "The left glove! Don't you know which hand you've been wearing your wedding ring on all this time?" In the end she took off both gloves, and Clara made a grab for her left hand, pulling it towards her and then sliding the ring herself back onto Thirteen's finger. "With this ring, I thee wed," she remarked.

"Cute." This ring had once read _COO_ inside, but after fifty years the inscription was worn down, just like _TED_ in Clara's. She had actually been meaning to ask the Doctor if she wanted to get them re-engraved at some point, but always forgot.

"Happy Valentine's Day," Clara said softly.

"It's not Valentine's Day anymore, it's been the Fifteenth for about twenty minutes," she said.

"You just had to go ruining my gesture, didn't you?"

"Time ruined it, Clara," the Doctor said dryly.

"You're a Time Lord, that's the same thing." Clara spared a glance for the bathroom around them, Thirteen following her gaze as she did. It was still a mess, and it was after midnight. "This is going to take hours to clean. We can't afford to be staying up all night, tomorrow's Tuesday."

"You're right. I was supposed to be sleeping tonight," the Doctor sighed, then changed tone completely, "But, you know, darling, we don't _have_ to go without sleep _or_ have a filthy bathroom."

"What…?"

"Jenny has the TARDIS," Thirteen reminded her, "I think we should call her. You should call her. I have no phone. And we could stay on there – just for the night."

"Doctor…"

"I need to talk to her," the Doctor said seriously, "I have to ask her about this. It's because of something she's done – be that by accident – that this has happened. Besides, I haven't seen her for a while, and I do like paying visits to my only daughter as often as possible, since I still have a hundred and fifty-eight years of bad parenting to make up for." And Clara really couldn't argue with that. She couldn't start being petty and trying to stop the Doctor from seeing Jenny – she had no desire to act that way.

"Then, alright, but we're not going on any… _adventures_. This was enough of one for the time being," Clara said.

"Oh, sure, because I'd really move here with you and live like this and then go spoiling everything we've worked for together by trying to drag you out to investigate some UFO sighting," Thirteen said sarcastically, but Clara raised her eyebrows in response. "Fine, I promise. _We_ won't go out on any outings together."

"Why did you put that emphasis on 'we'?" Clara asked.

" _Because_ … well, what if Jenny wants to go somewhere? Aren't I allowed to go somewhere with her? What if she's found some super-interesting, intriguing mystery somewhere?" Thirteen questioned, and Clara rolled her eyes.

"Oh my god, it's your life; just make sure you're safe and don't try and drag me along, and you can do what you like," Clara told her, " _I_ can spend the time with my sister. But you'd better try and get Jenny to come help clean up this mess, she's as responsible as the two of us are."

"You mean as you are. _I'm_ not responsible."

" _You_ mixed the potion."

"Because _you_ let him in the house."

"Am I going to have to kiss you again?"

"Please don't, not while we're still covered in his blood," she said, putting a necessary dampener on the mood. Clara's mood. The Doctor clearly wasn't in _that_ sort of mood. "I wish he'd explained. It didn't have to end this way."

"Sweetheart," Clara said, taking her hands, "There was no reasoning with him. He was going to kill you, then me, then try and get Jenny. And who else after that? Ravenwood? Adam Mitchell? My sister? Either of the other Doctors, wherever they are? If he found you, he could find them."

"Even _we_ can't find them, we only see them on Christmas, when everybody _has_ to see each other," Thirteen said, "And sometimes we still miss them."

"Like you're that bothered about not seeing Rose Tyler for another year." Thirteen shrugged.

"I don't know. I _did_ fall in love with her."

"Yeah, _ages_ ago."

"But still. Maybe I _should_ miss her?"

"Who cares about her? She's got another, inferior one of you. And you have a new wife now, anyway. Well, I suppose _you_ never married her, she was always more of a girlfriend. And I've _never_ been a girlfriend to you," Clara said.

"I mean… you kind of were."

"What?"

"We went out on a whole bunch of dates and then got married," Thirteen said.

"Yeah, but I wasn't your girlfriend," Clara said, aghast, "You do have to _ask_ people to be with you for them to, you know, be with you. Even drunk and in Las Vegas."

"You totally were!" Thirteen objected.

"I totally wasn't!" Clara mimicked, to the Doctor's annoyance. They were now just putting off the inevitable phone call to Jenny; Clara could tell that the Doctor wasn't too excited to find out what had happened to Campbell's mother that had led to the day's events, in case Jenny really _had_ done something abhorrent. Then again, perhaps, whatever it was, she hadn't even done it yet. It was always hard to tell with time travellers.

"Then what were you?"

Clara scoffed and said, "Not your girlfriend, that's for sure."

"Fiancée."

" _What_?"

"Unknowing fiancée?"

"Definitely not."

"Didn't I introduce you as my assistant before?"

"Yes, and I hated it," Clara muttered.

"Because you wanted me to say 'girlfriend,'" Thirteen said, and Clara hesitated before arguing, "Ah-ha! See?"

"See what?"

"You paused! I'm right; you wanted to be my girlfriend."

"Oh my god, I fell in love with you, idiot," Clara said, and the Doctor's grin dissipated.

" _Because_ you were my-"

"Shut up, you never asked me, so you weren't," Clara said definitively, even huffily, crossing her arms and making a point to look decisively away from her other half, them still leaning against the green-stained bath, thoroughly ignoring the cleaning they had to do. The Doctor reached up a hand to cup Clara's chin and gently pull her so that she would look at her again, which Clara only meekly fought against.

Meeting her eyes, Thirteen asked, "Will you be my girlfriend?" and she laughed.

"I'm your _wife_. That's _better_. I've been your wife for half a century."

"But we skipped a step."

"A very long time ago. I'm sure it hardly matters anymore."

"But what if I say it _does_ matter? To _me_? Me who's been under this deluded impression all this time that we _were_ an item even before we were, you know, _an item_. Sort of… tacitly. There was a mutual, silent, acknowledgement of girlfriend-hood."

"'Girlfriend-hood' isn't a thing, and certainly not between the two of us."

"Let's make it a thing." Clara giggled again. "C'mon." The Doctor was being very enticing, giving her those eyes, that smell like cinnamon clinging to her now pea-coloured hair. "Will you? Be my-"

"God, fine, if it shuts you up. Not that it matters," Clara said, not complaining about the kiss she promptly received in thanks for this validation of their (long-standing) status as a couple.

" _I_ think it matters."

"Well, that's your prerogative," Clara said, indifferent to the whole thing, truthfully. It didn't matter how old she/he was, the Doctor was always a weirdo. Clara could go the longest periods without noticing, and then Thirteen would do something peculiar and she would remember the quirks in her spouse that made her so, well, _alien_.

"Are you upset? Or angry?"

"About what?" Clara asked, perplexed.

"About this," the Doctor motioned with her hand at the mess.

"It's in the bathroom, it'll be simple enough to clean, I suppose," Clara said, and Thirteen frowned.

"No, I mean about the whole damn affair. We left the TARDIS because you wanted to escape from all this, and it's followed us."

"I'm not under any illusions that we'd ever fully leave that life behind. And we're not even _leaving it behind_ , anyway, this is just a brief sabbatical, until people start questioning why we look so young still and we have to cut and run," Clara said, "Anyway, you know that having the TARDIS is good for Jenny. Cole Campbell trying to kill you isn't your fault. I'm not angry at all."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure, don't worry about me; if I've got problems, I'll talk to you about them. God knows the last, and only, time I tried not to do that almost ruined our marriage," Clara remarked with a note of unpleasantness in her voice. The Doctor quietened, looked ahead at the opposite wall a little blankly, distracted, and Clara just watched for a few seconds. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

"You should call Jenny now, I reckon."

"What if…" she began, then stopped, then sighed, and began again, "What if I don't like what she has to say about this? What if…"

"Hey," Clara cooed, "Jenny wouldn't kill anybody without a _very_ good reason. Sometimes not even then. Whatever happened was either not her fault, or she had to do it. I promise." The Doctor looked at her languidly, and she tried to smile back comfortingly.

"I hope so."

 **AN: Yeah, I know you guys would just** ** _love_** **for Future Jenny to show up and shed light on everything, but I much prefer to write the Clarteen stories without the intervention of other main characters and just have them in their bubble. Anyway, predictably enough, I'm going on break again. But I'm gonna write** ** _Spook Watch_** **, the break is just so I can write more** ** _Spook Watch_** **. Once I do another storyline of that (I'm doing a ghost train, it should be pretty cool) I'll come back, hopefully, and will be able to start writing relatively regularly again.**


	22. Crazy Equals Genius

**DAY 141**

 _Crazy Equals Genius_

 _Martha_

It was five AM. Martha Jones was not asleep. She had gone to sleep at eleven and woken up at three, and since then had just been laying there in bed staring at the ceiling, aching but fining it wholly impossible to return to unconsciousness. Either she stared at the ceiling, or she stared at the clock and its angry, red, digital writing next to her. _5:14_ , it glared. There was no great issue on her mind to stop her from sleeping, she wasn't poring over some problem in her personal life. When she thought about it, she couldn't think of any problems at all, she couldn't think of _anything_ amiss, except for this newly-born insomnia and her new partiality to the sort of food Clara Oswald thought constituted a balanced diet. She knew, deep down, that Lucky Charms and Skittles-flavoured milkshake for dinner was appalling*, but it didn't stop her from being in awe of the dish itself, and it didn't stop Mickey from being disgusted.

Mickey was snoring. She was used to his soft snores by now, after years of them, and it didn't really bother her. In that moment, at least, they were somewhat of a comfort to her, that he was there, even if she didn't see it fit to wake him up. What would she say to him if she did? She couldn't sleep? She didn't know _why_ she couldn't sleep, and she didn't see the point in putting _him_ in a bad, exhausted mood as well. He would most likely tell her she was still subconsciously worrying about the wellbeing of the Time Lords, anyway. She wasn't worried about the Time Lords; all four of them were recovering quite adequately.

At 5:17AM, somebody knocked on the bedroom door. For a moment, she thought she had imagined it, perhaps she had fallen asleep after all and this was a dream, because who on Earth would be knocking on her door at five o'clock in the morning expecting her or Mickey to actually answer. However, it turned out it wasn't anybody from Earth at all, rather, from Titan. When they knocked again, louder, Martha decided she might as well answer, before Mickey got woken up.

When she saw that it was Oswin Oswald harassing her at that time of night, it all made sense. Oswin could probably do anything and people wouldn't question it, would just put her behaviour down to her damaged psyche. This occasion was no exception. Oswin was borderline delirious when Martha opened the door to talk to her, ravaged by a kind of excitement which rendered Martha uneasy. She didn't think anything that would get Oswin into this kind of fervent frenzy was entirely a good thing.

"Oswin?" she asked, confused, stepping out into the Bedroom Circle and leaving Mickey to his dreams behind her.

"Shh, shh," Oswin hissed, putting a finger to her lips. She was frantic, "Can't wake anybody up until I know for sure…"

"Know what…?" Martha asked carefully.

"I need your help with something," she said, and Martha narrowed her eyes, "Medical help. Specifically. Medical. Has to be… very… professional."

"Are you okay?"

" _Shhh_!" Oswin said, pacing frantically back and forth. Then she stopped and turned to Martha, grabbed her shoulders, "Martha," she breathed, "I'm a _genius_."

"Alright… do you think that maybe you and I should go speak to Clara…?"

Oswin's face fell. "Why?"

"You're behaving erratically," Martha told her. She laughed.

" _Erratically_ ," Oswin repeated, amused, "I told you. Medical help. You're perfect. I'm so clever. Come on, Dr Jones." She _was_ being erratic, and Martha thought they would both benefit from a visit to Clara or Adam Mitchell, perhaps. Even Flek.

"I was asleep," Martha lied, Oswin tugging on her arm to drag her out of the Bedroom Circle, away from their cohabiters, and into the empty Nerve Centre.

"No you weren't," Oswin said, "You would've asked me why I woke you up if you were asleep. I wonder what you've been up to, lying wide awake? Nothing so productive as _me_. Do you know I'm the smartest girl in the universe? The _whole_ universe?" Martha wanted to pull her wrist free of Oswin's steel grip, but she couldn't manage it, and wasn't sure trying to burn a hologram enough to make her flinch and let go was a valuable use of her time.

"Can't you just go get Flek? If you need medical help?" Martha asked.

"Flek? No. We're not talking. She'd be proud of me, though…" Oswin said vacantly. They _still_ weren't talking since that argument after the incident with Squidzilla? Really? "You don't get it yet. Wait until you see what I've done." Martha, while being pulled through the console room and past an unconscious, charging Nios, was very wary of this thing Oswin had done which she, of all people, needed to see. She hoped Oswin hadn't been building bombs again.

Martha was dragged all the way up the stairs and into Oswin's lab, Oswin fumbling to get a key-card out of the pocket of her boyfriend's borrowed, too-big dressing gown for a second. Martha didn't like this idea Oswin had that she didn't know how to walk in a straight line herself without being forced like a child, but really didn't know if arguing was the best course of action. She was not one of the people able to tell how to act around this girl at any given moment, she didn't know what state of mind she was presently witnessing, or what Oswin was liable to do.

"I've been at this for days – Mitchell's sick of it," Oswin began, finally relinquishing Martha to go and do something with a computer. She rarely saw the inside of Oswin's laboratory, but thought it might be messier than usual. She also thought she spied little splotches and stains of blood on this surface and that, a streak of red on the wall. There were chunks of complex machinery about the place, as usual, and the big blue screen of Helix's main interface looming from one of the bright walls.

"What's with the blood…?" Martha asked carefully. For a split-second she thought Oswin was going to kill her. Instead she clapped, made Martha jump, and grinned.

"The blood! Exactly! That's the question, isn't it? What's _with_ the blood?" While she said this, she picked up a little test-tube full of blood from the table in front of her, holding it up for Martha to see like this was the answer to the question. "I thought it would be futile, you know?" She didn't. "And Fyn's been going on about dad – but I don't want to think about that, had to do something, to take my mind off it all. And that's a hard thing to do, to take _my_ mind of something, but Martha. Martha, Martha, Martha, _Martha_! I'm a genius."

"I'm going to go get Clara," Martha decided.

"No! Not until you check," Oswin argued, "Come on, look – Helix! Show Martha, uh, recording, um…" she faltered, and thought, "Bio-recording Z-17, Experiment six-dash-four. Adrenal pathology inversion, K-Batch." Helix's mainframe began to load something up. "It's K-Batch, Marth – it's the answer we've been looking for."

"The answer to what?" Martha asked slowly, glancing between Oswin and Helix's screen.

"It's cellular, alright?" Oswin said, watching, yes, a load of cells on the screen, "Look, look, look," she implored. So Martha did, struggling for a few seconds to realise what she was seeing. But there it was, some third-party substance being introduced, which proceeded to warp the cells until they reformed. Observing, she winced a little, sensing that such a transformation would be very painful to go through. "That's after the jumpstart."

"Jumpstart?"

"Adrenaline, Marth. It's the key, the key to K-Batch, and K-Bath is the answer," Oswin said, "It's – you know – repairing, and-"

"You have to slow down," Martha told her, "I don't know what you're trying to tell me." It was almost as though Oswin had forgotten how to speak English.

"This is the cure," Oswin said after pausing and thinking, "That's Kent's blood. Liam Kent's blood. Before the Spooks handed him back to Elliott, I took samples, I've been analysing them for days, just on a whim – untainted, Manifest cells, the original mutation _without_ exposure to the time vortex. Not like you, you lot are… blech. Ew. That's what. But Kent? His cells are pure enough that this could be reversed."

"Oh my god…" Martha stared at it. Oswin was right, she _was_ a genius.

"But it's not ready."

"What do you mean?"

"It's untested," Oswin said, "I've tested all the samples, K-Batch works in every sample, and in Helix's simulations."

"Give it to Clara, she heals," Martha shrugged.

"No!" Oswin nearly shouted, "I just told you – exposure to the time vortex! Wouldn't work. You're too far gone. I need more blood samples, and a legitimate test subject. I need Liam Kent, and I need a doctor to observe, in case things… go south. But it has to go through a human testing phase, it _has_ to – this could end the Manifest Crisis, it could bring down Silverstorm, and-"

"Then you'd better call James Elliott and get us into Undercoll, hadn't you?"

* * *

The joys of living in a machine that existed simultaneously across all of time and space was that, when it was five o'clock in the morning and you desperately needed to go to the secret base of a clandestine government organisation to carry out genetic, blood-based experiments on unwilling serial killer participants, you could be right there within minutes. Martha had never met Detective Inspector James Elliott, or, _ex_ -Detective Inspector, she supposed. Not until then. Oswin was well enough acquainted with him, but all Martha really knew was that he was allegedly cute and that he had a _major_ thing for Sally Sparrow.

"Yeah," Oswin had been saying to her, "Esther told me he _totally_ kissed her after that whole thing with Kent the other week. Apparently she doesn't reciprocate. Maybe she's in love with my sister." Martha highly doubted that Sally was in love with Oswin's sister. At least Oswin had enough tact not to bring up Elliott's forlorn infatuation while the boy was actually _there_. Well, either that or she was just too excited about her 'K-Batch' to do so ('K-Batch' which Martha had been enlisted to carry, holding a box of samples and syringes in her arms.)

Undercoll's base was… fancy. There was Torchwood, operating out of an abandoned underground station which was almost always freezing cold and was a very crooked place to be in. Then Undercoll, which, while hidden underground in some industrial estate in an anonymous, London borough, was far, _far_ sleeker. It didn't even feel like the same thing at all, though, she supposed, it wasn't. Undercoll was not Torchwood. It appeared to be better funded, while equally short-staffed.

It was as though they were carrying out an inspection, she and Oswin, being shown around by James Elliott, led through a glass, automatic door into a very clean and well-lit space with a lot of funny lights. It reminded Martha of a spaceship. Maybe that was what they were going for, it might confuse the aliens they captured if they thought they were in orbit somewhere; some expensive, Earthling vessel drifting between the planet and the moon. Neither of them were all that fussed for introductions, and neither of them were properly dressed, but introductions were what they got. Though, one member of the small 'team' didn't need any introduction at all.

"Nice of your lot to finally send us over some ambassadors," a tall, broad-shouldered and all-round domineering woman commented, the tallest of all of them. She was wearing a funny hat not dissimilar to the sort of headgear Napoleon Bonaparte wore in portraits, and a long-ish coat that reminded Martha of pirates. She left her other four cohorts and came right over to shake hands. Martha had to try very hard not to accidentally burn her, and she grabbed Oswin's hand with such force Oswin nearly fell over (though, Oswin Oswald was generally a rather enfeebled person.) "Admiral Aurelia Darling is the name, I'm the leader here at Undercoll. But you can call me Darling." And then Admiral Aurelia Darling (was she a real admiral?) winked at Oswin. Martha didn't know whether to be offended or not that she hadn't received a wink from this woman.

"Oh my god, where did you find a female version of Jack?" Martha asked a semi-serious question, wishing they had brought Esther Drummond along to see this.

"Harkness? I spit on him," Darling said, and then she did spit. Or, she mimed it.

"Nice," Oswin commented, "We're not really ambassadors, we're just here to experiment on one of your prisoners. Wasn't any need to call your whole crew to arms."

"That's nonsense – and I hate nonsense. Of course there was need," Darling said. She held herself like she was military, but who knew for sure? Martha would definitely be enlisting somebody to run background checks on this lot, just out of curiosity; she wanted to know if Darling, too, was an immortal time traveller from the future. "You've met Elliott," Darling began introductions, motioning to Elliott, "Ex-detective, handpicked because of his run-in with the Doctor, and you, so I hear," she said to Oswin. She was focusing on Oswin quite a lot, but Oswin had not noticed. "This is Jacob Lowe, our computer expert; Dr Cohen, she practically lives in the morgue; and I believe you've already met-"

"We have," said the fifth and final member of their little team, none other than the Lady Christina de Souza herself, standing there in all her leather-clad, adrenaline-junkie glory, reminding Martha somewhat of Catwoman. Fitting, since she was a thief.

"Do the government employ thieves to work for them, now?" Oswin remarked, "And does Jack know what you're doing with your time?" Christina had a certain level of infamy aboard the TARDIS, with people blaming _her_ for Jack and Jenny's second breakup and subsequent 'divorce' (even if she _had_ kept his name.)

"Don't talk to me about Jack," Christina scoffed, "He keeps calling me when he's drunk hoping for a hook-up, and texting me the next morning saying I'm a homewrecker, regardless of the fact I never answer. I don't like being used to make _other_ girls feel angry. And in answer to your first question, yes – I'm no longer a wanted woman, as long as I stay with Undercoll."

"What an odd collective of experts," Oswin said. Clearly, she was unimpressed. So was Martha. Back in _her_ day, alien experts really _were_ alien experts, a ragtag group of crime fighters led by Captain Jack Harkness (or the Doctor, on one of those rare days he got involved in Torchwood's affairs and tried to steal command.) "Would you mind showing us to Liam Kent, now? I have to run some tests on him."

"Cohen!" Darling barked, making the young girl wearing a lab coat and some rather large glasses jump, "Take the lady to see the psycho." Cohen mumbled something that may have been a yes, and then motioned for them to follow her, tottering off down a staircase. "You're welcome here any time," Darling added as they followed Cohen. Darling, again, appeared to be addressing everything she said to Oswin. Elliott came with them, but the other three stayed behind. Good, Martha thought, they didn't need an audience. Seeing Oswin, one of Clara's Echoes, would most likely rile Kent up a great deal anyway. Did he not still deserve some privacy, even after his crimes?

"What's with the welcome banners being rolled out, then?" Martha inquired, glancing between Elliott and Cohen. Cohen, though, did not seem up for answering. "You'd think we were famous."

"You practically _are_ famous, to us," Elliott said in his Welsh accent, "We're just a load of phonies, compared to you. You _know_ I was only hired because of the stuff with those brain jars."

"If you're anything like Torchwood, I'm sure you'll do fine," Martha assured him.

"I thought almost every Torchwood agent died?" Oswin asked, and Martha gave her a look, and she realised, "Not – not died in a _bad_ way… there's nothing wrong with being dead. Esther's dead, and she gets along just fine. In fact, she was just telling me earlier about-"

Undercoll's cellblock was not dissimilar to Torchwood's. It was just six, glass-fronted rooms in a corridor, and Cohen had buzzed them into it. But Oswin had been too preoccupied trying to make up for her own tactlessness about mortality to notice where they were, so she was interrupted halfway through her sentence and startled by a body throwing itself against the glass wall behind her, shoulder first. She actually shrieked.

"How is my creation doing?" Kent drawled, leaning his full weight on the glass, forehead pressed against it. The man was a mess. Blond hair unkempt and straggly, wearing a dirty straightjacket, padded walls surrounding him on three sides. Martha was shocked, even appalled, at the state he was in, chained by his ankles to the soft floor.

"Oh my god – this is inhumane!" Martha exclaimed. Oswin didn't finish her sentence, nor did she answer Kent, she just stared.

"What do you suppose we do?" Elliott challenged her, "He used to scratch off his skin and bang his head on the walls."

"Drummond was my greatest failure, you know," Kent continued, grinning maniacally, "I'd love for one of you to ask me what my greatest success is."

"Shut it," Elliott ordered him, but Elliott didn't really command a lot of authority. He was too sweet-sounding. Oswin couldn't bring herself to say a single word, she just stared at Liam Kent in his cell.

"Success?" Martha frowned, and Kent laughed.

"I wonder what's the matter with Clara's hidden favourite?" he jeered, eyeing Oswin, who looked strangely as though she was going to be sick. She didn't even meet Martha's eyes, but was staring into space for a few seconds until turning and leaving the room, muttering something unintelligible. Kent laughed as Martha watched her go.

"Is somethin wrong with her?" Cohen asked quietly. She flinched when Kent cackled a moment later.

"Too many things to count," Martha said, then she forced the box of K-Batch into Cohen's hands, "You're the doctor here, right? It's this vial, he needs to be injected with it." She pointed out the compound to the girl, who was taken aback.

"But what if it doesnae work?" she asked.

"It'll work, Oswin wouldn't ever risk killing anybody," Martha assured her. While Oswin's mental stability might be constantly brought into question, the one thing about her that _wasn't_ was her intellect. Oswin was clever, and she was not reckless. Even Liam Kent, who had mercilessly slaughtered Clara's Echoes, her 'sisters', would not perish by Oswin's hand. Martha's, maybe, if he didn't shut up raving about his success.

" _Under the name of Jo-ones_ ," Kent called after Martha in a singsong voice as she left to follow Oswin. No doubt he was just taunting her, so she ignored him. A success under the name of Jones? And Esther was the failure? But she didn't have time to go solving the riddles of a lunatic. She just trusted that Elliott and Cohen would do well enough injecting him with the cure for Manifesthood.

"What's wrong?" Martha asked Oswin urgently when she found her, lingering by the door, out of earshot of Undercoll's other three members. It was nearing six in the morning. Oswin didn't say anything, she stared emptily into space, looking very gaunt. Martha hoped she hadn't just been forced into one of her 'slumps' by Kent's mockery, especially not when Clara wasn't there. "Oswin," Martha waved a hand in front of her eyes and, to her relief, Oswin blinked.

"It's nothing," she said stiffly. They could hear Kent yelling, presumably as Elliott restrained him, through the door, "It's just… that was me."

"Sorry?"

"Chained up in a padded cell, totally insane," she said, "Locked up in the Dalek Asylum. A murderer."

"You're not a murderer," Martha said, even though she knew the words would have no effect. Nothing ever had any lasting effect on Oswin and her moods.

"I ought to be locked up, too. Or at least stop pretending. I'm sick of this leg."

"I'm sure it's hard being an amputee, but-"

"Not that one."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Martha asked seriously, Oswin crossing her arms, very involved in whatever she was thinking about. Her good leg, she meant, she was sick of?

"Nothing. You wouldn't like it if I told you. Forget about it. Focus on Kent. I should call Flek later…"

* _chapter 986_

 **AN: So, I sort of have time to write, so I'm coming off break, but I don't know how regular updates will be. I'm gonna aim for 2-3 a week, but my Christmas holidays are right from the start of December and are like six weeks long, so expect regular, daily updates again within the month. Also, remember to review and to read and review the new chapter of _Spook Watch_ as well, please.**


	23. Great Responsibility

_Great Responsibility_

 _Adam_

"So, would you rather have toes for fingers or fingers for toes?" Amy Pond read the question from her phone screen just as Adam Mitchell entered Nerve Centre that morning, everyone huddled around her at one of the tables, listening intently. And 'everyone' consisted of eight entire people, _nine_ now he had arrived, all of them eating breakfast in various stages.

"Fingers for toes," Clara said _immediately_ , through a mouthful of Coco Pops. She didn't even have to think about it. "You can never have too many fingers." Unanimous groans from everyone else, except Nios, who almost found that funny. Could it really be that of all the people _Nios_ the Killer Synth would choose to be fond of, Clara Oswald was one of them? Maybe Clara really just didn't mesh that well with humans. Synths and aliens, perhaps, were her sort of people. She was the one he was looking for, anyway, to ask if she had seen her sister about that morning, because Oswin was not in their rooms and had left her phone behind.

"Would the big toe be a thumb?" Rose inquired, "Or would they _all_ be fingers?" There were no Time Lords in the room at that point, and there was no River or Jack, either. God knew what Jack was doing, but he assumed River was with Nine and that Nine, like Ten, Eleven and Jenny, was still sick with their 'deathly disease' (flu.)

"God, imagine what you could do with four thumbs…" Clara said wistfully.

"I'd hate to know what you're imagining," Rory muttered, but Clara was too lost in her own fantasises to defend herself to him. She snapped out of it when Adam, radiating cold, sat down next to her in an empty seat.

"What about you?" Donna asked him right away, while he had been about to address Clara and see if she would talk to him elsewhere, out of earshot of the group. She went back to her cereal, everyone else now listening to hear Adam's answer.

"Huh? Well, I… what can you really _do_ with toes for fingers?"

"Fingers for toes would look _so_ creepy though," Mickey pointed out. That was true, they really _would_.

"Do you think it would be harder to walk?" Donna mused, "Like walking on your hands?"

"No, it's all to do with body strength," Rory said.

"Yeah, Jenny can walk on her hands," Clara pointed out.

"Can I talk to you?" Adam interrupted to address Clara, before somebody there brought up Jenny in conversation with her. No doubt somebody (probably Rose) was about to imply something unsavoury about Alpha Clara and Jenny Harkness, and he couldn't be bothered having to hear it.

"Sure," Clara said, munching more of her chocolate cereal.

"Here's a good one," Amy spoke to the group again, still reading from her phone, a mischievous look in her eye now, "Would you rather have the ability to rewind to a previous time in your life, or the ability to fast forward to a future time in your life?"

Adam was about to ask Clara about Oswin when she turned around and was, again, the first to answer, "Future," very shortly, and he rolled his eyes. Of course she would say the future. The future was where Thirteen was. He didn't know _what_ he might do, perhaps go back and prevent himself from getting kicked off the TARDIS the first time? He wasn't all that interested in his future. As long as Oswin was still in it, that was all that mattered. And thinking about her reminded him that he _had_ to speak to Clara, rather than just listening to Rory and Amy mutually agreeing that they would go and stop themselves getting captured by Weeping Angels and sent back to the 1930s to live out their days. Not that they _were_ living out their days in the 1930s.

"Whatever – have you seen Oswin this morning?" Adam asked Clara.

She frowned and asked, "Oswin?" not looking at him but rather looking at Donna, who was, aloud, wondering about the ramifications of if she stopped herself becoming the Doctor-Donna.

"Clara," Adam said firmly, and she glanced at him, and realised he was actually wanting something out of her.

" _Oh_ , Oswin?" she asked again, like she hadn't heard the first time, "Right. Um, no. Are you saying she's not with you?"

"Obviously. Why?"

"She's been in a funny mood," Clara answered, "But I thought she was with _you_ , and _you'd_ be talking to her, so I didn't ask her about it…"

"Wait, what do you mean 'funny mood?'"

Mickey, in the background, was saying how he would like to go to the future to see how he and Martha were doing, which was fair enough, Adam thought. Not all of them had the liberty of receiving a letter from everyone's favourite female Time Lord about what they would be up to in forty-nine years' time. Clara didn't answer Adam right away, she was mulling something over, holding a spoonful of milky cereal in front of her face.

"Hard to explain," Clara answered. She was being cryptic on purpose.

"Are you trying not to worry me?" he asked quietly. Donna was now listening in, because she was just nosey like that, but Amy was in the middle of asking the group if they would rather be fed to a Rancor or a Sarlacc. Then asking what a Rancor and a Sarlacc was. "It's _Star Wars_ ," he just _had_ to answer immediately, "You know, in _Return of the Jedi_? The Rancor is the big lizard he keeps in the basement, the Sarlacc is the one in the pit with the tentacles that eats Boba Fett."

"Definitely the Sarlacc," Mickey answered.

"I would kill them both," Nios said flatly.

"That's not the point of the question," Amy said.

"Then I'll kill you as well." In response, Amy just shook her head.

"I'm sure she's fine," Clara, speaking about Oswin, said to him, bringing his attention away from the game again. Why was he suddenly involved in this? And why were they even playing it, and over breakfast? Wasn't it better suited to a drinking game? Then again, in a time machine, the phrase _it's always five o'clock somewhere_ simultaneously had even more meaning and no meaning at all. Every hour could be happy hour if they wanted it to be.

"You're only 'sure'?"

"She said she's fine," Clara said, "She's with Martha." So when she had zoned out a moment ago she had been speaking to Oswin telepathically, with that damn mind path of theirs that caused so much grief at odd hours of the night when Clara was 'up to things' with the Doctor. But Mickey overheard what Clara had just said; he hadn't been paying attention, but perked up when Martha's name was mentioned.

"What was that about Martha?" he asked, and the collective conversation of the group about _Star Wars_ monsters ended. Like Clara and Jenny, Clara and Martha was an equally loaded topic within certain groups of people – this group, incidentally, being one of them. Rose got a look on her face like she might be watching a spectator sport, and even Nios' usual disinterested expression slipped away to one of intrigue.

"She's with my sister," Clara answered him.

"Why?" he asked.

Clara paused, looked into the middle distance, then answered, "She won't tell me."

"Text her," Amy said, and Clara scrunched her face up at the suggestion of _texting_ Oswin, looking at Amy like she was some kind of heathen for even entertaining the idea.

"I don't _need_ to text her, I have a direct line to her in my brain," Clara said, pointing to her head when she did so to enforce this.

"So – what? She went wandering off in the middle of the night and took Martha with her?" Rose asked, "Sounds like a kidnapping."

"Oswin has not kidnapped Martha," Clara argued. Rose shrugged.

"Who knows what she's liable to do?" Was Rose trying to agitate Clara on purpose? Well, to be completely honest, Adam wouldn't put it past her. It was certainly working. Clara would let them make fun of _her_ – her and her bedroom habits, narcissism, and shamelessness – but Oswin was crossing a line. Of course, it crossed a line with _him_ , too, but in that moment it was nearly as though the rest of them had forgotten he was actually fond of his girlfriend. Or that he even _had_ a girlfriend.

It surprised all of them that it was actually Nios who came to Oswin's defence.

"She isn't liable to do anything," Nios said coolly, meeting Rose's eyes dead-on to stare her down. It was half-true. Oswin wasn't liable to do anything to anyone except herself – she was her own worst enemy, as much as that pained Adam Mitchell to admit. Martha would be fine regardless.

"Speak of the devil," Rory muttered, to ensuing silence. It took a while for them to figure out what he meant by that, but when Oswin Oswald came crashing into the room (though, how she managed to _crash_ through automatic doors, he didn't know, but it was a rather dramatic entrance nonetheless) it made perfect sense. She had the elusive Dr Jones in tow, as well, and plonked a big, silver box holding an assortment of glass bottles filled with some sort of viscous, clear liquid down on the table between the lot of them. Amy, distracted by her phone again, jumped when she did so.

"Look at this," Oswin declared proudly, indicating her bottles. She looked deliriously happy, almost, in a slightly unnerving way. Martha, behind her, was quite dishevelled. They were both still in pyjamas; so they really _had_ just wandered off somewhere in the middle of the night?

"What?" Oswin was asked by a few different people. She pointed. Martha sighed.

"It's-" Martha was apparently about to explain, but Oswin aggressively shushed her.

"It's the answer," Oswin said, "The cure."

"The cure for what?" Clara asked her carefully.

"Didn't you already make cure-all Miracle Medicine?" Rory frowned.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" Clara continued. Clara cared more about Oswin herself than Oswin's latest, translucent creation.

"I've been trying to fix it, ever since Kent," Oswin began, Adam watching her carefully, "I've been in my lab for days, but I've cracked it, finally! And I had to, really, because the whole thing is my fault! Because _I_ figured it out and _I_ released them from UNIT and caused the crisis, months and months ago-"

"Hang on, what crisis?" Donna interrupted, and Oswin looked at her like she was shocked Donna didn't immediately know what she was talking about. She had that issue a lot, though, like she forgot that the whole world wasn't privy to her faster-than-light thinking process, that she actually had to explain herself properly sometimes rather than just speaking in hyper-intelligent tongues (even if he _did_ find Oswin Oswald's hyper-intelligent tongue to be _very_ appealing.)

"The Manifest Crisis," she answered. Blank faces surrounded her, aside from Adam, who had actually had to listen to her go on for days about how she was busy burying herself in analyses of Liam Kent's stolen blood samples. "Did you all forget that was a thing? Silverstorm? You were all incarcerated in – for god's sake, it's – you know – it's still there! Right there! Haven't stopped anything, we just… learnt things. But _now_? With _this_?" she motioned to the bottles on the table again.

"Hold on – that stuff can cure superpowers? It can get rid of them?" Rory, who hated his superpowers more than most, asked urgently.

"No. Well, yes. _Well_ , no. Depends. It would cure a, uh, _pure_ Manifest. Doesn't work on the mutated strain," Oswin said, running a hand through her hair and leaving it a (hot) mess. He might be staring at her.

"Who has the mutated strain?" Rory pressed.

"You do. All of you lot do."

"'Mutated' doesn't make it sound very nice," Donna complained.

"Alright, how's 'corrupted' sound?" There was more objection to 'corrupted' than 'mutated,' but Oswin didn't care (he kind of thought it was cool.) It didn't bothered Adam, because it wasn't like _he_ wanted a cure to his cryostasis; the longer he was alive, the longer he could be with Oswin. "It cured Kent. That's where Martha and I went, to Undercoll."

"You wouldn't _guess_ who they have working for them," Martha began, like she was about to bestow some great piece of gossip onto them. No doubt she was. Everyone picked up on this tone and a few of the nosier girls leant in so as to listen better. "Jenny's not here, is she?"

"She's still with Ravenwood," Adam said. No doubt if Jenny was back, Oswin would be the first to know, and she would promptly tell him as soon as possible because she would be that excited.

"Who works for them?" Rose implored.

"Christina," Martha answered, "Christina de Souza. And you should see their leader – calls herself Admiral and wears a funny hat."

"Seriously?"

"Yes, seriously," Oswin interrupted, "But you can go visit Undercoll on your own time, alright? You have to help me with this, all of you. It was an injectable, but I've reformulated it so that now it's an _ingest_ ible. Meaning if the water supply in Silverstorm were to be contaminated with it, it would slowly cure _all_ of them. We have to go to 2029, and finally stop this. And I know exactly the people to help us."

 **AN: Do you want a summary of the entirety of the Manifest lore at the beginning of the next chapter? Because I think I'm changing some of it and this storyline has been going on for nearly three full years (seriously, the original one started late December 2013.)**


	24. The Inner Sanctum

[ _Manifest Lore Recap: December 2013, Rose and Tentoo and other members of the crew are briefed on the new superpowers crisis by Brigadier Kate Stewart and UNIT. They decide to go around UNIT and instead work with Sarah-Jane's gang for help, where they discovered the superpowers are because of a mutation to the adrenal gland caused by drinking spiked coffee from one, particular, shop. The formula for superpowers was created by one naturally-occurring Manifest, teenage genius Rian Simmonds. Simmonds was detained and given to UNIT like the rest of the Manifests after Clara and Rose 'contract' superpowers._

 _Oswin Oswald and Adam Mitchell's first 'date' revolved around them going and collecting blood samples from the Manifests in holding at UNIT, in the process release ALL the captive Manifests due to Oswin deeming the conditions inhumane. Sarah-Jane's gang were allegedly also involved, which led to them disliking Oswin (and Adam by association.) All of this happened 'off-page.' Later, Oswin, paranoid, drugs her own boyfriend with the Manifest coffee to give him superpowers, causing him to nearly die in Rapture of pneumonia._

 _By 2017, UNIT are trying to weaponise the Manifest formula and in the process create artificial 'werewolves.' London is separated into different zones to keep the Manifests locked up, especially the wolf-shapeshifters. Rose and Martha are captured by UNIT and in the process Martha gains her superpowers. Sarah-Jane's gang are, again, involved. Clyde and Rani are Manifests, but their powers have never been canonically established._

 _After the Beta TARDIS gets infested by a Xenomorph hive because a Queen accidentally got on board, the Beta Twelfth Doctor and Beta Clara have to stay on the Alpha TARDIS, during which time Beta Clara is enlisted as the ship's tea and coffee girl. For a joke, Twelve convinces her to use the coffee labelled "DO NOT USE UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES", which leads to all eight of the humans on the TARDIS becoming Manifests, but not ordinary manifests, the strain corrupted by exposure to the Time Vortex, meaning they have extra, third mutations._

 _Later, the TARDIS Manifests find themselves trapped in Silverstorm Penitentiary for the Terminally Deranged in 2028, after being captured by the Hazard Control Corps on a visit to London and injected with a drug that identifies Manifests by making their eyes glow silver when they attempt to use their powers – a drug which (for convenience) no longer affects the corrupted strain, only pure Manifests. Silverstorm is a city evacuated after a Manifest accidentally turned the water supply into acid, converted into a prison with an impervious forcefield around it and with no running water. It is home to a vicious gang war between the Apexes and the Conduits, who are equally matched and equally amoral. The TARDIS crew escape and resolve to enlist Sarah-Jane's gang for help by the time they actually get around to resolving the Manifest Crisis._

 _Because of a failure to handle the Manifest Crisis, Kate Stewart was fired from command of UNIT and UNIT's authority on British soil was revoked by order of the Crown, UNIT's duties instead being divided between the Hazard Control Corps (specifically designed to tackle the Manifest Crisis and headed up by the illusive Dr Klein) and Undercoll, formed in lieu of Torchwood. As early as 2016, UNIT has next to no power in the United Kingdom anymore._

 _In 2029, Sarah-Jane's gang run a railroad for fugitive Manifests, helping them stay safe and hidden, operating out of an abandoned power station on the outskirts of London, nicknamed "the Sanctum" because of the sanctity it offers those escapees they harbour._

 _The TARDIS Manifests' powers are:_

 _Adam Mitchell: Cryokinesis + Aura Reading, Mutation = Cryostasis  
Amy Pond: Precognition + Persuasion, Mutation = Unspecified  
Clara Oswald:_ _Telekinesis + Intangibility, Mutation = Short-Range Teleportation_ _  
Donna Noble:_ _Sonic Scream + Interdimensional Portals, Mutation = Unspecified_ _  
Martha Jones:_ _Pyrokinesis + Super-Agility, Mutation = Causing Spontaneous Combustion_ _  
Mickey Smith:_ _Technopathy + Breathing Underwater, Mutation = Unspecified_ _  
Rory Williams:_ _Super-Hearing + Invisibility, Mutation = Unspecified_ _  
Rose Tyler:_ _Time Vortex Manipulation + Super-Strength, Mutation = Changing Eye Colour at Will_ ]

 _The Inner Sanctum_

 _2029 Esther_

"I still don't understand why you can't just tell us what you're doing here," Rani Chandra complained, "It's been two days, and nothing. You've got a house, and solitude, and safety; you're not in need of our help."

"I haven't asked for your help," Esther pointed out for the umpteenth time, but those days Rani had a real chip on her shoulder, especially when it came to the Sanctum. She didn't like Esther being able to get in and out of their secret stronghold in a flash or two, because it made her think there was a gap in their defences. There wasn't, Esther just happened to be phenomenal at infiltration.

"No, but you've helped yourself to our hospitality," she grumbled, glaring at the mug of hot tea Esther was holding out to her. A peace offering, because even if Rani _did_ have a bit of an attitude, Esther still thought she should be a good houseguest. Or, abandoned-power-plant-guest, as the case may be.

"And _you've_ helped yourselves to my electricity," she countered. She didn't mind giving up her overcharge for them, it was for a noble cause. Just because she wasn't a Manifest didn't mean she wouldn't do everything she could to help those of them on the run from the authorities. She knew about Silverstorm, she did still work in the business of intelligence, after all. She just provided information to less 'official' sources than the CIA, and had done for thirteen years.

"I thought I said coffee?" Rani questioned after finally, begrudgingly, taking the mug off Esther, who had a whole tray of them to hand out to Sarah-Jane's remnants. She didn't know an awful lot about Sarah-Jane Smith, just what she had dug up from UNIT's old files out of curiosity, but whenever the TARDIS crew mentioned Rani Chandra, Luke Smith and Clyde Langer, they were _always_ referred to as 'Sarah-Jane's gang.'

"Uh…" Esther faltered, until Luke, doing something with one of the many computers in the control hub of the Sanctum they were situated in, came to her rescue.

"I told her you're not allowed something with that much caffeine at this time of night," he said. Esther felt horribly like she was in the way of things, even if she _was_ supplying them with power. And they lived in a power station, for god's sake, so it was taking a lot out of her to do so. She was so drained she couldn't even flit. She didn't want to get involved with their operation and mess anything up, and knew that if she did anything without being asked first Rani would probably have her head, but simultaneously Rani was annoyed at her for not doing much of anything – except being the resident tea and coffee girl, apparently.

Rani glared at Luke, who wasn't even looking at her as he tried to fix something else Esther wasn't allowed to touch, and he proceeded to sneeze _very_ violently all over the intricate insides of the computer.

"Rani!" he exclaimed, "What was that for!?"

"I didn't do anything," she lied, turning away so that Luke didn't glimpse the sliver of a smile Esther saw, and Rani smiling didn't happen very often. She was normally brooding about this or that. Luke sniffed and scowled and Esther went to hand him the box of tissues from one of the many desks. The room they were in used to be some sort of important control room, and now it was just _full_ of computers and screens monitoring HCC comm feeds, CCTV, and police reports of potential Manifests. And Esther just sat there, useless, because Rani wouldn't let her help with anything at all.

"You're not allowed coffee," Luke just muttered, "Don't you remember when you had that espresso? You ran around the globe three times."

"Four times," she corrected him.

"How long'd it take?" Esther asked, and Rani met her eyes coldly. "What?"

"Didn't take as long as it would take you."

"Oh yeah? You know electricity travels at the speed of light," Esther pointed out.

"You're not electricity."

"Sometimes I am," Esther argued.

Luke, yet again, interrupted to try and diffuse things, "If you're angling for a race, Esther, there's no point. She'll never go for it."

"Only because she knows I'm faster," Esther joked, and Luke smiled, but Rani remained annoyed. She was very dedicated to being in a perpetually bad mood.

"I'll race you if you tell me what you're doing here," Rani offered an ultimatum, seizing an opportunity she thought she saw.

"I'd love to tell you what I'm doing here, but I don't know myself, I'm under orders," she explained. Rani narrowed her eyes and put down her mug of tea (but she didn't put it on a coaster, which bothered Esther; the tables were all covered in sticky old coffee rings.)

"Orders from who?"

"Above," Esther said cryptically. Of course, 'orders from above' could only mean one thing to all of them present. And it was something else Rani didn't like.

"God – what are we to them?" she asked resentfully, meaning the TARDIS crew, "Foot soldiers?" Esther didn't want to exacerbate anything, but she thought that was _exactly_ what they were to the TARDIS crew. That and informants. Although, combining both of those kind of made them spies, which sounded a whole lot snazzier. Really, though, she didn't know _why_ she was there, she had just been given instructions, courtesy of Oswin Oswald, that she had to be at that place at that time on that day, a good few years ago now.

Could there have been a worse moment for the three of them to hear that familiar, discordant thrumming sound coming from one of the empty hallways? Uh, probably not, come to think of it. Rani looked at Esther when they heard it as though the TARDIS showing up was _her_ fault, and Luke was the first one out of the three of them to actually get up and go look for the blue box in question.

"Don't go running to them," Rani told him, but he ignored her, reaching for the door handle. Then he touched it and flinched away immediately, like he'd been burned. To add insult to injury (well, mainly just further injury to injury) the door then smacked him in the face when it was thrown open by Clyde Langer in feverish excitement. He must have heated up the handle by accident with those microwaves of his. They were even more volatile than Esther's bolts.

"Guess who's here," he said, grinning. Rani didn't like the TARDIS crew; Luke picked and chose who he did and didn't like based on how helpful or mature they were – but Clyde? Clyde thought each and every one of them was wonderful. Esther knew that he just _loved_ getting visits from that ragtag group of elusive, time-travelling spacers. She didn't have anything against them, either, it was just tricky trying to figure out which point they were at in their lives.

Rani only met Clyde's eyes briefly before her whole shape became, for a split second, a blur of colour, and then she was gone from the room completely with wind billowing in her wake. And _that_ was why she wasn't allowed caffeine.

"Don't you love it when she does that?" Clyde said, looking over his shoulder at the empty corridor she had just whooshed down at just under the speed of sound (sonic booms in enclosed, populated places were never a good idea.)

"I thought you wanted to race her?" Luke asked Esther wryly, Clyde holding the door open for the two of them to follow.

"She has a head start – she'll be there already. Besides, I could get there so fast it would embarrass her," Esther shrugged, "I got from Yorkshire to _here_ in less than ten seconds," they were on the outskirts of London, "and I wasn't even rushing." Clyde seemed incredulous about that (but Esther _was_ faster than Rani, even if Rani was a speedster.)

They found the TARDIS, Rani standing and waiting outside of it, right as the doors were thrown open and out stepped the usual suspects. Some of the usual suspects, anyway – Oswin was definitely someone Esther would classify as a 'usual suspect' aboard the TARDIS, and as everybody filed out she did not see the smartest girl in the universe among them. Rani crossed her arms sternly, Clyde was bouncing off the walls, while Luke remained somewhat indifferent and Esther smiled warmly. They were _very_ surprised to see her, though.

"Esther?" Adam Mitchell, confused, asked. Asking about Esther apparently came before whatever the seven of them were _actually_ there for, "Why are you here?"

"Your better half invited me," she joked, "Gave me a cryptic message, years ago, that I had to be here on this day in 2029."

"Wait – you're from the future?" Donna Noble questioned her. It looked like just all the Manifests had come along. Well, all of them except for Martha Jones, that was.

"You're _in_ the future," Rani said coldly. Did Rani dislike all of them, or just a few? Maybe it was only Adam and Oswin she wasn't fond of. And Clara. A lot of people weren't very fond of Clara, who was hovering by Adam looking as ostracised as she always did.

Donna narrowed her eyes at Esther, studying her, "How come you look so young?"

"I've been dead for seventeen years," she shrugged. Then Donna scoffed indignantly.

"Does _anybody_ age anymore these days?"

"That's not important – what's important is what the hell are you all doing here?" Rani demanded of them sharply. The way she spoke those days, you'd think she was military, "This is a sensitive area, and you're putting everyone in even more danger than they're in already by bringing that box here."

"We're here about that, actually," Rose came right back at Rani with an equally cold tone, holding a box full of bottles with a funny-looking, semi-translucent liquid in it that reminded Esther of paracetamol syrup people gave to children who couldn't swallow tablets properly.

"Oswin's created the cure, the cure for Manifesthood," Clara revealed, indicating the bottles.

Rani looked at them, studied them, then said, "There's not a lot of it."

"You dilute it with water," Adam said.

"If it's Oswin's invention, why isn't she here?" Rani persisted, trying to find _some_ flaw with them to pick at. She appeared to think the TARDIS crew were remotely organised, when in actuality they were the least organised people Esther had ever met. Sally Sparrow knew what she was doing with her life more than any of them did – and _that_ was saying something.

It then fell upon Adam Mitchell to explain what had happened that morning, since he paid the most attention to his wife's (were they married yet? Esther had no clue, but she thought it best not to say anything about that out loud) actions out of all of them. Oswin had synthesised the cure for Manifesthood out of Liam Kent's blood, and Esther was glad to hear Kent was good for something, aside from brining dead Torchwood agents back to life – he was _very_ good at that, she thought angrily. When they had decided to come to find Sarah-Jane's gang in the Sanctum that day, Oswin had been persuaded to stay behind and get some rest, told she had done her bit to resolve the Manifest Crisis that they themselves had a fair few hands in creating. After he finished explaining, Esther proceeded to ask where Martha was.

"She stayed on the ship," Mickey said, the TARDIS still lingering behind them, making those funny, ambient sounds it always did, "Said she was tired, and she should stay to make sure the Time Lords are alright."

"What's wrong with them?" Clyde asked urgently, "Is the Doctor okay?"

"They'd just being drama queens, they've caught space flu," Clara said offhandedly. Wait – they were from _that_ long ago? An entire thirteen years? It was a good thing she hadn't referred to Oswin as Adam's wife aloud, then – they were nowhere _near_ that point if this lot were visiting from more than a decade back. Esther remembered having to help Ravenwood take care of Jenny when Jenny had been sick with her intergalactic cold.

"You can't just cure them," Luke began, getting them back on topic. Then he paused and thought, and resolved to say, "You'd better follow me, all of you…" he led them away from the TARDIS back towards the Sanctum's control hub, talking as they walked, Rani not whooshing off this time, "We're sure that Klein is making more Manifests, which means that you couldn't stop Silverstorm without stopping the HCC at the same time. Stop Silverstorm first and the HCC will be too well-armed and well-prepared to be infiltrated; stop the HCC first and the Silver Watch would hear about it and begin the Eradication Protocols. Think how they stop foot-and-mouth disease, only with more explosives."

"They'd just blow them up?" Rory asked in horror, "Prisons are one thing – but that's genocide."

"And they've got the authority to carry it out," Rani said.

"Do you have a plan already?" Amy questioned.

"We have lots of plans," Clyde explained, "But they'll be made a lot easier with you seven. And maybe it's a good thing you've got the Americans involved." He cast a wry look at Esther, who raised her eyebrows.

"Didn't see you guys complaining when we won World War One _and_ World War Two for you." Luke then opened the doors to the control hub, filled to the brim with computers, Mr Smith mounted on one of the walls (they had had to vacate the house in Ealing a long time ago, now they were actually _very_ wanted.)

"Both of these operations _have_ to happen simultaneously," Rani said, getting straight to the briefing, "Although we've never been banking on a cure coming about, since the government haven't been able to create one for sixteen years."

"Well, no offence, but the government aren't my Oswin," Clara said, speaking highly of her sister as always, even if Rani _did_ scoff in response. Although, Esther couldn't tell if Rani had scoffed because of the praise or because Clara had called her ' _my_ Oswin' (Rose Tyler had made a similar, irritated noise as well.)

"I don't know how you would get it into their water supply," Luke said, "Silverstorm doesn't have running water; all their provisions get dropped in through containers resistant to the forcefield-"

"Can't people use the material those containers are made of to escape?" Adam interrupted, frowning.

"Yeah, they do, and we try to help them here," Clyde boasted.

Luke resumed, "Silverstorm exists because the city was evacuated after all the water was accidentally turned into acid – but the reservoir will still collect plenty of water from the rain the forcefield lets in. If you managed to fix that, you'd be able to get water back to the whole city."

"Doesn't sound so tricky…" Clara commented. Esther thought she spoke too soon.

"Clyde knows his way around Silverstorm," Luke said, smirking, "The forcefields still let liquids in."

"Liquids?" Donna asked.

"I can turn into a puddle," Clyde said flatly, "Go on, go ahead and laugh, but it comes in useful. Sometimes. Maybe once."

"If some of you go with Clyde to Silverstorm, and some of you stay to help Luke try to crack the HCC servers, the rest can come with _me_ to get into the HCC itself," Rani said.

"You can't hack the HCC?" Adam asked incredulously, then he nodded at Mr Smith, "Even with _him_?"

"They have technopaths forced to create organic firewalls, you can't hack them, not _just_ with technology, and even with a Xylok," Luke explained, then addressed Mickey, "But another technopath might be what we need to break in."

"Not to mention the creator of the CIA's antivirus software," Esther added, speaking of Adam.

"And me and Mr Smith," Luke said, "We'd be able to help you through the HCC if we got in, we don't have any information on their facility."

"All we know comes from intel through Kate Stewart," Rani said.

"Didn't Kate Stewart get fired?" Rose puzzled.

"Most of UNIT were transferred straight to the HCC to work under Klein when UNIT's UK presence was downgraded," Rani explained, "There are loyalists there who feed Kate information, and Kate feeds _us_ information, too. The HCC are working on something called Project Crystal, and we want to find out what it is-"

"But because of the firewalls, we can't," Luke said.

"So we put in a team effort to get into the Hazard Control Corps and stop Project Crystal," Clyde continued.

"Which we think is the name given to the production process of new Manifests," Rani finished.

There was silence in the room, until Clara sighed, "And here I thought we might be back in time for lunch…"


	25. Infiltration and Investigation

**AN: This storyline kind of has two halves, the first half is a lot of these 'necessary evil' chapters with them actually having to make headway with the Manifest Crisis (which I find dull, which is why the chapters are probably dull.) The second half is the bit I'm excited about, and if my perfectionism has anything to say in the matter, there should be some** ** _very_** **good chapters coming up.**

 _Infiltration and Investigation_

 _Clara_

It was just adding insult to injury that the new Hazard Control Corps headquarters were built in the remains of UNIT's old base; the Tower of London facility gutted and refurbished to bear those glaring, yellow logos of the HCC on every pristine, clinical surface. Clara didn't like seeing one of London's oldest historical landmarks turned into a base for an immoral paramilitary organisation, not at all. She wasn't even keen on the idea of UNIT clinging to it – didn't the National Trust have anything to say on the matter?

They were dropped in London near the HCC, but not quite close enough that she didn't get a good look at London's once-bustling metropolitan centre. It wasn't bustling anymore, though. There were warning posts across all the walls, the old mantra _Silver Eyes Full of Lies_ plastered on most of them. Clara was glad that, when her teleportation had begun to manifest, that whole glowing-eyes business had stopped. The posters decayed and the walls decayed and the entire city had become a hub of fear-mongering anti-superpower propaganda. They didn't even see anyone out and about, Rani claiming that most citizens were too scared to leave their homes anymore, especially in London (the epicentre for the entire Manifest Crisis.) And it had been that way for sixteen years.

Walking along the edge of the Thames bank, Rani halted them. She was treating them as though they were children, and even if she _was_ now quite a few years older than Clara (which was giving her no end of internalised grief), there was still no need for it. Apparently Rani just didn't like them. Or possibly just her. Regardless, she was used to it – she got enough meaningless shit from Rose Tyler on a daily basis to be too offended. Oh, and the vast majority of everybody she had ever met. It was a wonder she had a husband (so said her Aunt Fiona, that spinster…)

"Wait here," Rani ordered them, then she glanced around carefully, "I'm going to scout the area." And she disappeared. Well, she didn't _disappear_ , she just ran off. But very _, very_ quickly, turning her entire self into a blur which promptly vanished in a whoosh of noise. The force of the speed of her dashing away nearly knocked Clara off her feet. It _did_ knock Rory off his feet, which Donna found amusing.

"Can you hear any people?" Clara asked Rory, now it was just the three of them, as he stood up. She didn't know how long it would take Rani to scout the Tower of London, or if she would get caught – but surely the HCC didn't quite have the means to catch someone so fast? Did they?

"No," Rory answered after a pause, "Doesn't mean anything, it's probably all soundproof. Especially if they're keeping people locked up inside." Rory had refused to wear an earpiece, saying that he could hear everybody else's earpieces just fine and he didn't need to be deafened. It was a good thing Adam Mitchell remembered that the earpieces even existed, courtesy of Oswin, of course, and went to fetch them out of her laboratory on the TARDIS for field use. No doubt she would be happy to hear about her inventions being legitimately utilised, for once – she'd been overjoyed when Eleven, Jenny and Amy had taken those spacesuits out for their first proper run three days ago.

"How much _do_ you hear at night?" Donna inquired.

Rory cast a scathing look at Clara, and said, "Everything."

"My sister made you special earplugs, stop whining," she rolled her eyes. She was getting really tired of Rory Williams having a bone to pick about _her_ sex life, and she was ninety percent sure the whole thing stemmed from an inherent bitterness he and his wife both shared about the notion Clara was, somehow, 'stealing' the Doctor from them. The Doctor was a thousand years old, he could spend time with whomever he liked. And it wasn't like they ever _asked_ him to do anything with them.

Rani shot back into their midst, coming right out of nowhere, making Clara jump.

"What did I miss? I move too fast to hear the comms properly," she said.

"The usual daily update on Clara's sex life the rest of us have to be subjected to," Donna said, annoyed, then to Rory, "I'm beginning to think you have a bit of an obsession."

"Right, whatever, I'm pretty sure nobody cares about that," Rani shook her head.

" _You'd be right,_ " Luke Smith interrupted over their comms. In the Sanctum it was just him, Adam and Mickey, " _Did you find anything while scouting?_ "

"No, it's weird," Rani answered, "I didn't see any guards. Have you bypassed the security yet?"

" _No, but Mickey's already made more progress than I ever did_ ," he said, and the comms cut. They were very fine-tuned now, Sarah-Jane's gang, didn't get distracted by saying more than what was necessary. Not like whenever Oswin was on comms and she spent the entire time eavesdropping, not letting you know crucial information until the most dramatic moment possible, when she would suddenly let slip that she had hacked all the doors in some anonymous facility at least half an hour ago and 'forgot to mention.'

"Which way is the way in, then?" Clara asked.

"I was hoping _you'd_ be able to sort that out," Rani remarked, and she narrowed her eyes, "Aren't you supposed to be infamously good at finding a 'way in'?"

" _Oh_ ," Clara began sarcastically, " _You_ mean that, because I can walk through walls, I'll be helpful – but you made an implication about _sex_. Very funny. But pointing out that I'm good at seducing people isn't _really_ very insulting," she turned cold at the end of that sentence.

"Do people actually say 'seduce' anymore?" Rory questioned.

" _I_ do, and _I'm_ the one who does it. Anyway, it's my job to get us in, is it?" Suffice it to say, it _was_ Clara's job to get them in, having to very awkwardly drag the lot of them through one of the walls, going backwards and forwards because she couldn't psychically project intangibility onto those around her. Well, actually, she didn't have to drag Rani, because that girl had learnt how to use her superspeed to just vibrate herself through solid objects (and then Clara had been caught up imagining the pleasures of being with a girl who could literally _vibrate_ her anatomy at will, until Donna had elbowed her in the ribs when she noticed Clara was _completely_ zoned out.)

They ended up in a room that might as well just be an office, rows of desks, but the odd thing was that the desks were empty. Clara was painfully reminded of the frozen, wintry office where Liam Kent had made his home, and felt a psychosomatic twinge in the bandaged burn across her left arm.

"This place should be full of people," Rani said.

"Maybe they close for the night?" Donna suggested, since it _was_ night out, "Or is it Sunday? Or a bank holiday?"

"The military don't get bank holidays," Rani said dismissively, to Donna's disappointment, "No, something's off. Look at this." She stooped down to pick something up from the floor, something which initially looked like a piece of paper, though she quickly showed it off to them and revealed it as being a large sticker with _FRAGILE_ emblazoned on it in red, one which movers used, which was now gathering dust on the back. "They've moved."

" _We'd know if the HCC moved, Rani_ ," Luke said.

"I'm telling you, they've moved. This place is cleaned out," Rani persisted, zipping over to the door and leaving the sticker fluttering down to the ground in her wake as she tried it and found it to be locked, much to her frustration. "That's why there aren't any soldiers around."

"What are you trying to hack, exactly?" Clara asked, "This facility or the entire Hazard Control Corps? Maybe they left their servers here." And then she got laughed at, and Donna and Rory gave her funny looks for having what _she_ thought was a legitimate suggestion about computers. Just because she had been banned from them for the better part of a hundred and forty days didn't mean the things downloaded into her brain from the Great Intelligence didn't still exist.

" _It's 2029_ ," Luke said, " _Their micro-servers won't be anywhere_ near _here, they'll be in an untraceable location – that's just the usual protocol now. They_ are _a maximum security organisation._ "

"Untraceable? Seriously?" Clara asked. Luke sighed.

" _Maybe not after we break through the firewalls_."

" _You're right,_ " Adam Mitchell interjected, " _We're trying to break into the whole HCC, not just the Tower of London._ "

" _We'll keep working on it_ ," Luke added.

"You'd better hurry up," Rani said, "As soon as Silver Watch get wind of what the others are up to, the HCC will scatter completely, and thousands of people will die."

" _We know. In the meantime, have a look around and see if there's anything left behind_ ," Luke suggested, and then the comms cut. Clara nearly wished that her little sister _wasn't_ confined to bedrest that day and that she had actually come with them, because no doubt she would be legitimately handy in this situation. Rani, the self-proclaimed leader, thought for a second, then looked to Rory.

"Can you still not hear anything?" she asked, "Well, apart from the noise of Clara's ego."

"What do you mean the 'noise of my ego?'" she questioned, "Oswin isn't here." Donna laughed.

"It's all quiet," Rory said, shrugging, "Like we're the only ones here."

"It's hard to keep a proper watch on this place," Rani began explaining after Clara was made to telekinetically break the door down (because of its fancy electronic lock, she couldn't just psychokinetically pick it, like she could with a Yale lock) and send it flying into the white wall on the opposite side of the corridor. "It's a bit of a blind spot."

"So, what _was_ your plan?" Donna asked, "If you don't know anything about this facility, you can't hack into it, and you expected it to be full of professional Manifest-hunters?"

"Well _I'm_ the fastest woman alive," Rani argued (though Clara sort of doubted that she was the _only_ speedster), "And if these two ran around holding hands they'd be invisible and able to walk through walls. And _you_ can make portals to anywhere, can't you?"

"It's complicated," Donna said.

"You could help us escape. It's much harder to get out of here than Silverstorm, that's why you needed to come with me instead of Clyde. Aren't you all used to walking into danger, anyway?"

"Fair point…" Rory mumbled, though he seemed annoyed that she was right. Again, Clara's mind was drawn to the burn on her arm. Yes, she thought, they did walk into danger a lot. And sometimes danger walked into _them_ , and pumped them full of a million volts of electricity. For god's sake – she was supposed to be an English teacher! And _this_ was what her life was now? Feeling a sudden nag of uneasiness, she fidgeted for a moment with her wedding ring, contemplating. She wanted a cigarette.

"Do you not know where we're going, then?" Clara asked Rani, whom she suspected was just leading them through random doors in search for _anything_ , but they just found a whole lot of empty rooms.

"I'm trying to find a way downstairs," she said, "Into the basement. We _know_ there's something big down there from when Esther looked around and figured out they were routing huge amounts of power into the cellar – she thinks they have their own private nuclear generator down there."

"Well, why don't _I_ go downstairs and look around? Scout, or something?" she suggested, and Rani frowned at her. "I'll just, you know, go through the floor."

" _It might be a good idea_?" Adam suggested down the comms. Clara kept forgetting he, Luke and Mickey were listening. She didn't remember if the other four, in Silverstorm, could hear, but she assumed not. The boys in the Sanctum probably kept switching between different lines. " _Think about it – if there's anything dangerous down there, she'll heal if she comes into contact with it_."

"I don't think your girlfriend would be happy about you risking my life like that," Clara remarked. Even though he was right. It didn't take much more than that to persuade Rani to just let Clara drop down, and so – to escape the somewhat hostile atmosphere – Clara slipped through the tiles.

It was a wholly bad idea. She thought that underneath them would be another corridor or office room, and she could just creep on through the rooms. Truthfully, she wasn't expecting to find much of anything, she just sort of wanted to smoke without them having a go at her. But, immediately, she was falling, tumbling through the air in a cavernous, dark room. She managed to slow her fall with telekinesis, but she still landed unpleasantly on her back with a thud.

" _What was that? I heard feedback_ ," Rani now spoke to her through the comms. Clara groaned.

"I fell. It's a long drop," Clara said, getting to her feet, her legs now aching a little, brushing off concrete dust from her tights. She went to the pockets of her jacket to get out her newest lighter and freshest pack of Marlboros before she even tried to look around, holding the lighter far away from her earpiece so that they wouldn't overhear what she was doing. Nobody ever just _let_ her smoke, there was _always_ a frequent and completely pointless argument.

Only when she took a long, relieving drag on the death-stick did Clara actually look around at the room and see it for what it was, and when she did she nearly dropped the stupid cigarette on the ground at her feet.

" _Can you see anything?_ " Rani asked.

"Uh… yep…" Clara said, "It's like cells. This huge room and just cells lining all the walls." It looked like a mechanical beehive, one made of glass and metal instead of syrupy honeycombs. It was empty, though; no soldiers, no Manifests, no anything except for some small, empty boxes. From the mysterious move, she wondered? "There's a lift down, I can see, if you can get it to work," she said, spying such a thing at the other end of the room. But she also spied a door, the only other door in the whole room, and she walked up to it to see it had the name _KLEIN_ written in silver letters across it. Silver – was that some sick joke? She found it was locked; typical. It didn't stop her from being able to phase through it in an instant though, to see that it was an office.

" _Have you found anything?_ "

"Oh, yeah. Klein's office is down here," Clara answered, biting her cigarette between her teeth to pull out all the drawers in the desk. And lo and behold, she actually managed to find something, some handwritten papers. Even in 2013, when she came from, it was still an unusual thing to find people working high-up in government organisations to write things _by hand_. But apparently, this enigmatic Dr Klein had done exactly that, and he hadn't covered his tracks. "What did you say that thing you want to find information on is called?"

" _Project Crystal_ ," Rani answered, " _Did you find out what it is?_ "

"No, but there are notes here about how Project Crystal is the 'final phase' of the Crisis," Clara was explaining as she skim-read, "It's apparently replaced Project Populace. That's what he calls the Tower of London facility," she flicked through the stray pages.

" _What were they doing here_?" Donna questioned.

"Making more Manifests, I think, just using Simmonds' formula, the coffee," Clara said, "I think these are journal entries, or something, rather than official documents… listen to this: ' _If the HCC is allowed to continue this way, the population will soon be entirely converted to Manifests, this cannot happen. Project Crystal is my new solution_.'"

" _But does he say what it is_?" Luke asked.

"No, but there's something here about, uh, 'Valiant Mark 2,'" Clara said, "Not much else."

" _Did you say Valiant? As in_ the Valiant _?_ " Mickey asked, " _The aircraft carrier UNIT used to use, about twenty years ago now?_ "

" _That makes sense, Kate Stewart told us her old colleagues informed her of plans to build a new one_ ," Rani, Kate Stewart's chief informer, said, " _After the Daleks destroyed it._ "

" _Oh, brilliant. So that's where they are?_ " Donna asked, annoyed, " _In the sky? The sky's massive_."

"Nice observation," Clara remarked dryly.

" _It's a huge, futuristic aircraft carrier_ ," Adam said, " _It can't be_ that _hard to find._ "

" _Right. I think we should leave, then, and wait for the others_ ," Rani said, " _We'll have to move quickly after they get out of Silverstorm. If we have to go for the_ Valiant _, the more of us, the better._ "


	26. Water, Mud, or Medicine

_Water, Mud, or Medicine_

 _Rose_

She tried not to take much note of the scenery. Silverstorm's TARDIS-proofing had become defunct right after their first visit, when Rose summoned the ship to materialise around the eight of them so that they could escape. Now it had dropped them off in the middle of the derelict old city, thankfully _not_ in the middle of a superpowered-brawl. Getting knocked unconscious and dragged to opposite ends of the complex (again) would _not_ be good, even if this time they hadn't been drugged with power-preventative serum. Silverstorm was the real embodiment of some of those dark images of the future people often explored, and she wasn't inclined to think about the injustice of it all. She would just make herself angry if she did, and were they not trying to end it all, anyway? It wasn't as though she was outright ignoring Silverstorm Penitentiary for the Terminally Deranged, not at all. She was sure some people did, though.

"What happens to us, in the future?" Amy asked Esther Drummond, for the third time. It was them and Clyde Langer, who had made a quip or two about not being so happy about how he was outnumbered by girls three to one (all jokes, of course) and was supposed to be some sort of expert when it came to getting around Silverstorm, thanks to this liquification ability he apparently possessed that allowed him to slip through the forcefield.

"I don't live with you guys," Esther answered shortly. She kept avoiding the question, for good reason. Rose experienced enough of the time vortex whispering cross-temporal secrets to her to know Amy probably didn't want to know whatever Esther did about the future. There was always _something_ people didn't want to hear; it was easier and better to just let fate take its course.

"Aren't you supposed to have premonitions? Visions, or something?" Rose asked Amy, stepping over a pile of rubble from a building by now so dilapidated she couldn't really tell what it had been before.

"I never have them about anything _useful_ ," Amy quipped, sounding like she was in a bad mood. She _always_ sounded like she was in a bad mood. But people (Clara, eurgh) often said the same thing about Rose. And she didn't like it.

"What makes you think _I'll_ tell you anything useful? You're seeing the future right now," Esther said, "You live in a time machine. You see more of the future than anybody." Amy narrowed her eyes at Esther as they walked.

"Have you grown an attitude?" she asked, and Esther looked surprised, then her expression relaxed into one of understanding, and she shrugged.

"I've been living with Sally Sparrow for thirteen years," she said. That was all she needed to say. God only knew what living with Sally Sparrow, of all people, for that long would do to somebody. Murder-suicide would be Rose's preferred fate in that situation.

"So you really can't tell us anything?" Amy asked, and Esther sighed. Clyde wasn't getting involved in their conversation, he (and Esther, to a lesser extent because she kept getting distracted by them) was the only one paying attention to their surroundings. Then again, he was also the only one who knew their way around.

"Maybe you should ask Oswin? She always knows more than she lets on," Esther remarked. Did she, Rose wondered? Then again, Rose also knew more than she could ever let on (she knew when Thirteen came from, for instance, and that at some point Laika, the dog who died in space, would live on the TARDIS.) _She_ wouldn't go asking Oswin anything, but Amy might, and Rose doubted Oswin would take too kindly to that.

"Shh," Clyde hushed them and they all paused to listen. They didn't have to listen for long until they heard what he had; shouting, lots of it, and other noises of general chaos and destruction. A fight, undoubtedly. Well, what had they expected going back into Silverstorm and its vicious gang war? It was as though the people living there didn't even remember who had imprisoned them, who the _real_ enemy was. Maybe they didn't.

A shape flew across the sky above them like a meteor, coming from the direction of the ruckus, and it took Rose a few seconds to discern that it was a person. Then it took her a few _more_ seconds to discern that this person was not flying. Well, they _were_ flying, but not _flying-_ flying. It looked to Rose like something had thrown them that distance, and their little blot of a body arced beneath the grey sky with their screams whistling behind them. And then Rose Tyler realised that this person was going to die, unless somebody did something.

The world turned beneath her feet to bring her to this body in an instant, the time vortex bending reality to her will in a brightness of gold light. She knew exactly where they were going to land, and she was there to use her superstrength to catch them right out of the sky and save their life, gripping the anonymous person's arm to try and steady them as they stumbled on the ground. They slipped from her grip and ended up falling onto their hands and knees, breathing deeply. They were a boy – a young boy, too. Couldn't even be thirteen years old. What was going on in Silverstorm was abhorrent. Who on Earth had just thrown a child halfway across the ruined city? Who had incarcerated a child in the first place?

"Are you alright!?" Rose asked, and he whimpered and tried to get away from her, but she appeared in front of him in a flurry of gold sparks, residual light shining behind her eyes like a sun. She crouched down to speak softly, "I'm not going to hurt you – I'm a friend. I just saved your life," she smiled. He softened. He wasn't in much of a state to try and run away from her, to be honest. She glanced around like she expected the others to still be there, but of course they weren't.

"What do you want from me? I don't know anything about the pump, alright!?" he exclaimed, trying to get away from her again.

"Pump? What pump?" Rose asked. The last time she had been in Silverstorm she hadn't heard anything about any 'pump.' Most of the fighting between the Apexes and the Conduits had just revolved around grabbing the best food supplies and resources. "I'm new here," she said, "I'm here to help."

"Help?" he asked. Her attempt to calm him down was ruined by a noise that tore through the air, accompanied by a vivid blue light. This light then, in an instant, turned into Esther Drummond, blueish-white streaks left burned into Rose's eyes in the air behind her.

"What was _that_!?" Rose exclaimed, "Did you teleport!? You can _teleport_!?" The boy was even more scared now two of them had showed up.

"No," Esther said, "Sally calls it flitting. I forgot that I haven't learnt how to do anything when you guys are coming from… she sometimes calls it 'going into hyperspace.' Or 'warpspace' but I told her 'warpspace' isn't scientifically accurate." Rose really didn't care what Sally Sparrow said about this or that (unless she was making fun of Clara, like she had been the other week.) "It's sort of like I can turn _into_ lightning, uh, in layman's terms, but it's dangerous for anybody nearby."

"I'm trying to talk to this kid – you scared him," Rose said, indicating the boy. Again, she had to teleport to get in front of him, which probably wasn't doing a whole lot to get him to trust her, this idea that he couldn't really escape. "It's okay, we're going to help here. How are they allowed to lock up a kid?" she asked Esther.

"Manifests don't have human rights anymore," Esther explained, "The HCC can do what they like."

"They _what?_ " Rose exclaimed the same time Clyde and Amy rounded the corner of a broken old house, both of them tired from having to run. Rose hadn't had to run anywhere for a long time.

"Told you I'm faster than your girlfriend," Esther remarked to Clyde.

"Whatever, ignore them," Rose addressed the boy, "I told you, we're here to help – we're not prisoners, we've broken in to try and put a stop to Silverstorm. What's this pump?" Clyde was coming over, though Esther and Amy kept their distance, and the boy deliberated for a few seconds before he finally decided that they were trustworthy.

"It's what they're fighting over, the gangs," he explained, "The Conduits have it right now, the Apexes are attacking."

"Which ones are the good ones, again?" Esther asked.

"They're both as bad as each other," Clyde answered, coming to crouch next to Rose, "What's the pump, though?"

"It's a way to get water."

* * *

"My god – you're soaking! What have you been doing!?" Rani Chandra demanded of Amy after Rose had teleported the four of them back into the Sanctum.

"Maybe she wanted to see what it's like to be a _real_ 'pond'?" Clara remarked from one of the chairs by the desk where she was sat, a mug between her hands. They all had mugs of something or other, in fact – how long had they been back, Rose wondered?

"I fell into a big silo full of water trying to put the cure in it," Amy said, unamused by Clara's sense of humour. Then again, who _was_ amused by Clara's sense of humour? Certainly not Rose.

"When did you lot get back? Is it over?" Rose asked.

"You tell us – is Silverstorm done?" Rani questioned them. Rose wanted a drink. Ironic, since they'd just been trying to spike a water supply. What Oswin hadn't told them was that the cure, when put into water, made the water glow bright blue. It took Amy's talent for persuasion to get anybody to drink it, but it had all been relatively smooth sailing. Not one god-awful brawl the entire time, mainly because Esther had some phenomenal ability to electrically incapacitate a dozen people at once. It had been welcomely anticlimactic, Rose thought. She'd never complain for _not_ having to be in a fight; there was only so far superstrength got you before you needed to actually know how to do things. Perhaps she should ask Jenny to teach her how to fight? But then again, Jenny was too busy running off becoming a lesbian recently.

"They're cured. Or in the process of being cured," Clyde answered her.

"Leave it a few days and I'll shut off the forcefield," Esther said, "We could go offer bottled water with the remains of the cure to everyone. It'll be easy now you guys have dismantled the HCC." There was an uneasy pause where the lot of them who had already been back at the Sanctum glanced between each other.

"What?" Amy asked, "I'm cold and soaked. Don't tell me you lot failed. Was it her fault?" she nodded at Clara.

"Why would it be _my_ fault!?" Clara exclaimed. Amy shrugged.

"She has a point," Rose agreed with Amy. Clara rolled her eyes and went back to whatever she had been doing before. A whole lot of nothing, it looked like. Daydreaming.

"It's complicated," Luke interjected, "The HCC have… moved… and we'd need a teleporter to get to them now."

"Where are they…?" Rose, sensing that by 'teleporter' he meant _her_ , asked carefully.

"On the _Valiant_. Mark 2. They built another one."

"Did you at least find out what Project Crystal is?" Clyde asked after he groaned, annoyed that they weren't really making much progress at all. Well, half of them _were_ making progress, but the others had proven themselves to be nothing short of useless.

"Uh…" Luke faltered, and nobody else spoke.

"Seriously? Then what _did_ you do?" Rose asked.

"They found out what Project Populace is," Adam Mitchell answered, "Klein _was_ making more Manifests artificially, using Simmonds' original formula."

"They were keeping them in these sort of tanks, or cells," Clara answered. Sounded to Rose like how that hospital on New Earth had been run, keeping people locked up and drugged in the cellar.

"This Project Crystal sounds like stage two, so we need to find away onto the _Valiant_ to stop Klein. It's over the Atlantic right now," Luke explained.

"Oh great. The sea," Amy commented dryly, unamused with this turn of events, "Is there even any point in asking if you'll let me dry off a bit first?"

 **AN: Full disclosure, this chapter was awful to write, I do not care. Next ones should be better. One of the upcoming ones I've already mostly written and it IS better, it's just because this stuff is so tedious and painstakingly necessary, so just bear with. Anyway. All my lectures are over now until like January 13** **th** **(for real), I just have a 2500 word essay to do for the 2** **nd** **on** ** _Ulysses_** **(end my life.) SO, I'm gonna try and start legitimately regularly updating again, and try and keep it up for at least the next five weeks when all I have to do is read books. But I have TWO questions for you to please answer: First of all, I'm thinking of doing an all-girls (well, all five major female companions) storyline, but would you guys like to see Future Clara join them in place of Present Clara? Not sure how far in the future, probably before Thirteen goes back in time, but yeah what do you think? Like, dislike, indifferent? (There would be no Thirteen or other Futures, it would just be Clara, though you'll be pleased to know I added another Future Clarteen storyline and a Future Clarenny storyline to my roster when I revamped my whole Day Plan.) Second question is would you all be averse to some Oswin stuff coming up? I'm thinking of fleshing out her current arc a bit more since she has stuff going on, but she's one of the characters who's always dangerously overused (though she actually hasn't been recently if I look at my statistics.) Answers would be appreciated ASAP.**


	27. Old Habits Die Hard

_Old Habits Die Hard_

 _Oswin_

It was raining on Eslilia. The green sky was buried beneath black storm clouds, and Oswin could see the glistening, jade leaves bouncing in the bad weather, blanketing out below the crashed spaceship in the treetops of Skybound, the Spore Remnant colony.

"Have you learnt to appreciate nature yet, Oswin?" asked Flek Phisj's familiar but cool voice behind her. Oswin had arrived without announcing she was coming, on a whim, and somebody had been sent to drag Flek away from whatever she had been doing. Tending to Squidzilla, presumably. That was, if the thing wasn't dead. Oswin wasn't inclined to ask. Oswin herself was supposed to be sleeping, resting, but she hadn't been.

"If nature made us, then isn't everything we make natural, too?" Oswin challenged, still looking out of the small porthole in the shipwreck's bridge, then she turned around to smile somewhat meekly at Flek to indicate she was kidding. She had not, in fact, come there to argue philosophy with her ex. She had come waving a white flag of surrender, wanting the _Desdemona_ incident to be laid to rest finally. How long had it been? Nearly three weeks, she thought. Though, she had never been very good at keeping time. "Hi…"

" _Hi_?" Flek questioned, "You remember that the last things you said to me were that I'm stupid, that you hate me, and that you never want me to call you again?" Oswin looked away, gripping a cane tightly in her right hand, leaning most of her weight on it for support.

"I was angry. I'd been eaten by a squid that day, and nearly drowned the day before," she defended herself a little, "I'm sorry. It's none of my business and I shan't mention it." The genuineness of that apology was something Oswin couldn't verify. Apologising was just something she had to do to get Flek to actually speak to her, and she cared so little for that squid that she didn't even think her integrity was called into question if she said sorry for the whole thing.

"You're right. It isn't any of your business what I'm doing with my life. What do you want?"

Oswin awkwardly deliberated for a few seconds before finally confessing, "To talk to you." She had been spiralling a bit more than usual without Flek to talk to, considering they did used to message a fair amount before their latest big fight. Seeing that Oswin came in peace and wasn't looking to argue – and considering Flek wasn't usually the arguing type at all – she stepped in and let the door close behind her, sealing them off from the sound of the rainstorm. Oswin wondered if it was dangerous for the ship, but supposed it must have weathered dozens of storms in Eslilia's treetops. "How's Ressy? And how's the wedding planning going?"

"She's good," Flek answered, "She's not here right now."

"Obviously – if she was here she wouldn't let me speak to you," Oswin said, "Have you set a date yet? Clara's dying to know and Eyeball usually ignores her." Things were going fine, Oswin assumed. Flek still had her engagement ring on, at any rate (it was made of very thin branches woven together like twine, exactly the sort of thing she'd expect from a bunch of space hippies.)

"Not yet," then she paused and continued, "To be honest, she's not very excited about planning anything. It's more of a gesture."

"An engagement is more than a gesture," Oswin told her, leaning back on the wall to take some of the weight off her cane and her leg.

"Says you – I never saw _you_ proposing to me," Flek remarked, and Oswin jokingly pretended to be offended.

"There was a war on!" she exclaimed, and Flek smiled. "Anyway. This is me we're talking about. As if I could ever marry somebody. I'm a mess." And she was, as well, because there she was, faintly green from the light outside, dressed all in black, her usual sunken eyes and perpetual haggard air.

"I'm sure you'll find someone one day," Flek said, and Oswin frowned for a few seconds until Flek realised, "Wait – don't you have that boyfriend?"

"I do indeed have 'that boyfriend.' Adam Mitchell. You know his name," Oswin reminded her. God only knew what Adam Mitchell saw in her recently.

"I've never spoken to him," Flek shrugged, "I think he avoids me."

"He does – he's jealous."

"Is he?" Flek asked disapprovingly, and Oswin stammered her following defence of him.

"Well – no – it's just – he's insecure. He's very insecure. He worries I'm going to leave him and go back to you. I keep telling him there's not a chance in hell that'll ever happen. In fact, I actually came here to talk to you about him-"

"Oh, no, Os, I'm not giving you any relationship advice," Flek declared, looking alarmed, and Oswin stopped dead.

"Um… I wasn't going to ask you for any relationship advice… I'm pretty good at relationships, if you cared to remember. I was only going to ask you if you might make me some schematics for an ankle brace for him. He's got a bad foot after this plant stung his ankle, _ages_ ago, and it won't heal because of the cryostasis," Oswin explained, "I've been meaning to ask for your help with it."

"Oh. Right. Sure. I'll do that. How is your, um, relationship, though?" Flek asked awkwardly. She was asking out of courtesy. Funnily enough, she had never been the biggest fan of boyfriends.

"It's great, thanks. Well, _he's_ great. He's scared of Fyn." Flek laughed.

"Really?"

"Fyn _is_ six-foot-three, to be fair. Adam's only five-nine. He can't tell when Fyn's joking," Oswin exclaimed, then changed the subject away from Adam Mitchell, "Is Zalur still living here? How's he doing?"

"Maybe a little better than usual? You should go see him while you're here."

"Better?" she asked, then she laughed a little sharply, "Funny. That's funny. _He's_ doing better, of course he is… do you think it's genetic? Martha thinks it's genetic…" Oswin shifted her weight about, leaning on the cane again, thinking.

"Wait…" Flek began, puzzled, "Didn't you…? How many times have we seen each other? Since you… you know…" Died, was what she meant, Oswin assumed. Flek's eyes were on the cane now.

"Four. Excluding Quadrant Twelve. This is the fifth."

"You didn't… Oswin," she said her name very seriously now, because Flek was not stupid. Far from it. A medical doctor, a genius in her own right. "You didn't have your cane those times." Oswin shrugged. She used to have a cane. Before the Asylum.

"I suppose not."

"Have you hurt yourself? What have you done?" Flek asked her.

"I blew myself up, don't you remember?" Oswin snapped, "Maybe that's too long ago for you to manage , living your-" Pain shot through her right leg and she winced and fell into the wall, Flek automatically coming to try and help her. "Don't touch me, I'm fine…"

"You're not fine, you're an idiot," Flek told her, not listening and taking her arm to steady her anyway, "Don't think I've ever met someone so stupid and pig-headed in my entire life, you know. Come and sit down."

"I don't need to sit-"

"Be quiet, Oswin, yes you do," Flek ordered her.

"When did you get so bossy?" Oswin, submitting and letting Flek drag her over to the shoddy, skeletal chair in the corner, muttered. It did feel better to sit, though. But she didn't want it to feel better. That was the point.

"I've been in charge of the Spore Remnants for thirteen years, and I'm a doctor. At some point everyone has to learn how to tell other people what to do," she explained, "Show me your leg. Show me what you've done."

"It's nothing," Oswin said. She wouldn't show Flek anything, "You've seen it hundreds of times before. It looks just the way you remember." Flek met her eyes for a moment, frowned slightly, and then realised what that meant. If one of Oswin's legs had healed upon digital resurrection, then the other one will have done. Flek crossed her arms now.

"Why give yourself your injuries back?"

"Why should I pretend I don't have them? Do those people who died on Horizon get to pretend they're not dead? No. And there's me – why am I more 'valuable' than any of them, Flek?" Oswin questioned her, "I shouldn't be able to act like nothing happened to me. I shouldn't have that privilege."

"None of us from the Dust War have that privilege, Oswin," Flek said, touching her cheek for a moment, "Visible scars aren't the only ones that count, you have to look after yourself. Don't you talk to people on the ship? What's triggered this? Are you having one of your bad times?" Flek moved her hand and remained crouched on the floor in front of her.

"I'm broken, aren't I?"

"You're not broken," Flek said softly.

"Of course I am. I'm a wreck," she complained, "Don't look at me like you pity me."

"I'm _worried_ , Os, why wouldn't I be? You're…" she stopped.

"I'm what?"

"I don't know – how about my best friend? We're not together anymore but that doesn't mean we're not close," Flek said. Oswin sighed. "You ought to talk to Clara, you know. Isn't she the one who helps you now? Can't you talk to Fyn? Adam?"

"I didn't come here about me," Oswin said.

"Then why did you? You said to speak to me-"

"Yeah, about Clara. You got sidetracked. You're obsessed with me." Flek clenched her jaw in an attempt not to laugh. She finally got up from where she was crouched on the floor and went to sit on the bed opposite. The whole bridge living-space was very small and compact, and it didn't look like Flek and Eyeball ate there. Thinking about it, she was sure they didn't – Flek Phisj would eat with the rest of the Spores. "I've got this-" she glanced around but didn't spy the bag she had brought next to her. For a moment she was frightened she had forgotten to bring it, the real reason for her visit to Flek, but she saw it slumped against the wall where she'd been stood earlier. Flek followed her gaze. "Let me just-" she made to get up.

"You stay right there," Flek said, standing herself to go fetch Oswin's things. God. It was like when they were dating again. Before her prosthesis had been built, but after the explosion that had outright torn off one leg and splintered apart the other.

"I can walk," Oswin mumbled.

"Barely! Make your mind up – do you or do you not want the damage on your other leg, too? It barely holds your weight," Flek argued. True enough.

"You were the one who saved it," Oswin reminded her. The doctors who had worked on her had all been Spores back then, back when the legitimate hospital was overrun and decaying with the other casualties of the Dust War. Flek had refused to let them amputate the other, instead Oswin's right leg had been 'repaired,' rather horrifically with haphazard plates of metal to replace the shattered bones. The thing was mangled to look at now. Just like it should be, she thought. Martha Jones would not be happy with her for doing this…

Flek brought the bag over and handed it to Oswin, reprising her old role of girlfriend-slash-carer. She wondered if Flek had been glad of her leaving, dying, so that she didn't have to look after her anymore. She even thought Fyn may have been growing weary of it eventually… but she wasn't speaking to Fyn right now. They had had a falling out about this quest of his to locate their father's ghost on Venus. Oswin took the bag, an old leather thing she had just found lying around somewhere she assumed the TARDIS had conjured for when it sensed her need, and opened it to pull something out.

"What's _that_?" Flek asked, intrigued. It was a kind of orb, big shards of mirror uncurling themselves from behind it, the spherical segment set in a curved basin to make it easier to hold. It had been tricky to get the centre of balance correct, though, to make the thing stand on its own without falling over from the weight of the mirrors.

"It's for Clara," Oswin began, showing it to Flek (but she didn't let her touch it.) Cogs and bolts and wheels ticked around within its glass casing, "It's her birthday in two days. She probably thinks I don't know, but I do. I remember everything. I thought I should get her something – or, build her something."

"But what _is_ it? What does it _do_?" Flek continued to ask.

"I'll show you," Oswin said wryly. She offered Flek this demonstration because she had heard in the last few moments the sound of somebody climbing the rungs of the wooden ladders outside. And through the thin, psychic web that kept she and all of the other Clechoes (and Clara herself) so ethereally interlinked, she knew _exactly_ which of her 'sisters' was approaching. Flek was confused when Oswin paused to wait, and stayed quite confused throughout everything that happened in the next thirty seconds or so, a series of events leaving Oswin nursing her cheek after being struck around the face.

For it was Eyeball, of course, Claressa, who came in through that door.

"Flek? Who are you…" Eyeball saw Oswin, and Oswin just beamed in that annoying way she was so proud of.

"Hi, Ressy!" she exclaimed, then her smile disappeared in an instant, "I've got some grave news; Flek's decided she's going to leave you for me. We're eloping. I'm sorry she has to break your heart like this." Flek was aghast, as was Claressa, her cybernetic eye going haywire. Oswin wasn't paying attention to either of them, though, as Eyeball marched towards her; no, she was looking at the device cradled in her hand, because the mirrors had all unfurled themselves automatically and the lights within were flashing bright red. "It works!" she declared, overjoyed. And then Eyeball slapped her, _hard_ , around the side of her face, and she nearly dropped it.

"She's lying! You didn't have to hit her," Flek scolded her fiancée. Oswin rubbed her cheek.

"I deserved it," she admitted. She did, too. "Sorry. Should've seen the look on your face – reminded me of myself." Eyeball scowled. "That look does, too. I wonder what it is about you that's so familiar?"

"Os, be quiet," Flek told her.

"It's just a thing designed to be sensitive to Clecho mood swings, but much more significantly sensitive than Clara is herself," Oswin said. She didn't need the machine there to tell her that Eyeball was seething. The issue was that the empathy bond Clara shared with her Echoes was largely based on proximity. This thing she was building would hopefully surpass that gap, so that it could detect emotional changes in _every_ Echo, not just the ones Clara had met and spent time with. Let her act out her guardian angel complex more efficiently. "She's been weird about it lately, almost got herself killed over them. Us. Well, she did, actually. Now she has a huge electrical burn down her arm and she won't let me heal it, kept saying she has to 'suffer' so that she can 'remember her responsibilities.'" She caught Flek looking at her. "What?"

"I wonder who _that_ reminds me of," she commented, looking at Oswin very disapprovingly. Oswin didn't say a word now that she had been made aware of her own hypocrisy. She cleared her throat and went to put her device back in the back she had brought it in.

"Anyway. I suppose I'd best be off now your trophy wife has showed up…"

"You're not even going to tell Zalur you were here?"

"No. Why should I? He hasn't tried to speak to me for months," Oswin said, hobbling to her feet with her cane in hand, "I'm glad to hear he's happy, though. Suppose he's not the only one who feels some sort of relief with the shadow of mother's death looming over-" She was abruptly cut off by the feeling that she had just been slugged around the side of her head and a shrill descant ringing in her ears. She fell right back down into the chair and wondered briefly if Eyeball might have hit her again. When she saw Eyeball clutching her head in a similar but albeit less severe manner, Flek going to see if _she_ was already rather than Oswin, she knew that couldn't be right.

"What's happened?" Flek asked either of them.

"Something's wrong with Clara," Oswin said shortly, feeling a sense of fear and desperation which did not belong to her. And it took a lot to make Clara Oswald so scared when she died on a semi-daily basis. "Just give me a…" Oswin didn't finish her sentence, she slipped out of that reality partway through and found herself elsewhere.

Oftentimes the astral projection ability the mind-patch enabled between she and Clara wasn't utilised, only in dire situations. When she saw what was going on in what appeared to be a very large and practically ancient (by Fifty-Second Century standards) aircraft hangar, the back hanging open to reveal a blue sky and a bluer sea behind them, she knew this situation was _definitely_ dire. Clara was lying on the floor, a mess of other people scurrying about around her. Oswin took a moment to see exactly what was going on, but it looked to be some kind of skirmish between about fifteen people. Even weirder was that five of the fifteen were the _exact same_ unfamiliar man.

"What did you do to them, Klein!?" somebody, Clyde Langer, yelled, dodging a punch from one of these duplicates.

"Clara!" Oswin exclaimed, sounding muffled. The entire scene to her was distorted, like she was looking at them through a bubble. Clara was the only clear thing in her field of vision, because she was the one Oswin was connected to. Clara looked up, blood on the side of her face from where someone must have clouted her, and met Oswin's gaze.

"You're not getting away from me so easily," Rose Tyler said angrily. Oswin thought Rose was talking to Klein – whose name she recalled as being attached to the enigmatic persona in charge of the Hazard Control Corps, this elusive 'Dr Klein' nobody had ever seen – and was stunned when Rose grabbed Clara by her ankle. At least Clara manged to phase through it, though.

"You wanted to know what Project Crystal was," Klein's voice said six times over, all of his doppelgangers speaking at the same time.

"God, and here I thought _you_ were the only one with a thing for cloning yourself, Clars," Oswin remarked, wishing she could help Clara to her feet. She couldn't though. She tried. Her hands went seamlessly through her sister's arms, rendering her a ghost, numb to her perceived surroundings.

"It's the next step," Klein explained, the Klein-in-charge who wasn't in the scrum in the centre of the hangar. His clones were slipping away, too, leaving Oswin perplexed as to who was fighting who – because there were an awful lot of fists flying here and there, not _just_ from Rose. These clones were also carrying guns, but not firearms, they were jet injectors, just like the one that had been used to neutralise Liam Kent that very morning. "A chemical that makes your type frenzy, attack anyone and everyone. It's all a question of supply and demand…"

Oh. _That_ was what had happened. Ten allies of theirs in the room (Adam, Amy, Clara, Donna, Mickey, Rory, Rose, Clyde, Rani and _Esther Drummond_ of all people), and five Kleins with injectors. That meant five of them must have received these potent shots. Obviously Rose was one of them, going by the tenacity with which she was trying to murder Clara.

"Stop trying to freeze me!" Clyde shouted, dodging blasts of ice from-

"Adam?" Oswin asked hollowly, even though her boyfriend could not hear her.

"Klein got him," Clara answered her, going to her side like she would offer some protection against Rose, who was advancing, "He got Rose, too."

"I can see that, honey," Oswin remarked. She did not have her injuries in this spectral state. Good. No need to bother Clara with trivial things like old shrapnel wounds…

"Technically I was only joking about being the fastest woman alive," Esther was saying (again – why the hell was Esther there? How much had she missed by being made to stay behind that morning?) "I'm not even alive! I'm the fastest woman dead!" Oswin would have disagreed and made a quip were she legitimately present. Esther was backing away nervously from an advancing Rani Chandra, holding her arms up in defence.

"I finally know what I have to do to get you to finally shut up," Rose said darkly to Clara, her eyes glowing with all the golden fury of the Bad Wolf.

"I didn't say anything!" Clara protested, looking at Oswin like she could help.

"It's a drug," Oswin said quickly, _very_ quickly, listening to Rory hurl undue abuse at his wife nearby, "It'll wear off, like any other intoxicant. This stuff's not complicated – the complicated part is getting it to only affect Manifests. Uh. Aircraft carrier. That's what this is, isn't it? Isn't it. It'll be gas distributed to the masses, weed them out – but it'll wear off. With time."

"Oswin says the affects will wear off with time!" Clara shouted.

"Where's Oswin!?" Esther exclaimed.

"Tell Esther I said hi and that she looks good in those boots," Oswin said. Clara glared at her.

"Then I suppose I haven't go long to kill you," Rose said to Clara.

"Just keep them busy, or something. Distracted, I don't know. Exhaust them," Oswin was saying to Clara, who quickly relayed all this information back to the others.

"Exhaust them?" Esther asked, then she turned to Rani, "Hey. Betcha can't beat me in a race, Fastest Woman Alive." Oswin glimpsed Esther wink at Rani (it was _totally_ hot), and then she glimpsed something far more _shocking_ when Esther shot off out of the back of the hanger in a storm of blue lightning, like a thunderbolt itself, ripping away in the space of a second. And Rani, roaring with anger, followed suit, zipping off, a reddish blur, making waves in the grey sea outside in hot pursuit.

"That was literally the sexiest thing I've ever seen in my life," Oswin commented, staring at where Esther had just been. When did she learn how to do _that_? God, she was hot. And so, so unattainable. "Why is she here, again?" Clara was about to tell Oswin what the deal with Esther Drummond was, when Rose finally got sick of all the lollygagging.

"You're going to die tonight, Clara Oswald, and I bet the Doctor won't even miss you," Rose said, and then she lunged for Clara, and Clara had been distracted by Oswin, and Rose grabbed her by her shoulders and took her off her feet until the both of them were wrapped in golden, atomic sparks and they disappeared out of time and space. With that, Oswin, too, was disconnected from the scene in the hangar and the fighting, 'awakening' with the green sky of Eslilia peering through the windows at her. Flek was shaking her shoulders. Oswin's head was pounding now. Where had Rose just taken Clara? And what the hell was happening with the rest of them? And _why_ did Esther Drummond continue to be so damn persistently attractive?


	28. Lightning Girl vs The Blur

_Lightning Girl vs. The Blur_

 _2029 Esther_

"Hey," Esther addressed the newly psycho'd-up Rani Chandra (courtesy of Dr Klein and his Project Crystal formula) in the hangar of the _Valiant Mk.2_ , "Betcha can't beat me in a race, Fastest Woman Alive." And then, for added measure, she winked, and blasted away in a haze of blue colour, in a form that was neither purely electric nor purely human. Normally, Esther and water didn't mix, but at this velocity she tore across it, hardly touching the surface. Immediately, though, Rani was on her. Good. That was her plan. Rani had to be exhausted, and exhausting a speedster was something only Esther (perhaps out of everyone on the planet) was capable of doing in that moment. Because she _was_ faster than Rani, she _was_ more powerful; she had a bigger arsenal of abilities under her belt than Rani could ever dream of.

Esther tore across the Irish Sea at thousands of miles per hour, Rani right behind her the whole time. Esther was slowing down, for her sake. She underestimated her though. Esther's speed didn't rely on the surface she was on, she was hardly on a surface at all, she was more spectral than solid – but Rani's did. As soon as they hit the Scottish coast Rani was propelled even faster, and she hit Esther sideways-on like a pelt from a slingshot. Esther veered off course towards the Highlands, tripped on something inconsequential in one of the brief moments part of her form reassembled itself from the static cloud she had had become, and practically flew off the edge of a mountain and out of the sky. Electricity building around her as she tumbled, launched from the top of some anonymous fell, she looked like something Zeus himself had flung out of the heavens. When she hit the ground it was pulverised beneath her, and she felt the shockwave rush through her body. She groaned and rolled over as Rani appeared almost from nowhere and delivered a kick to her gut that sent her flying again, spinning in the air until she landed and rolled. The air was chilly and foggy around her.

"Is that all you've got, _Lightning Girl_?" Rani mocked. Esther staggered to her feet and tried to 'go into hyperspace' again, half-shimmering as she attempted to rush off. She was dazed, though, and Rani was quicker again, and ended up standing in front of her with a fist held out to catch her in her middle and knock her back to the ground. "Oh, come on. I wanted a fight! You're pathetic, Esther – and to think everyone is so impressed with you!" Rani whooshed away in one direction and a moment later was back, speeding towards her. A normal human wouldn't be able to perceive what Rani was going to do, but Esther wasn't normal, she saw Rani's balled-up fist ready to strike at a thousand miles an hour. It would take her head off if it hit her.

Esther held up her hand and emitted from her palm a fuzzy blurry-looking thing, sparky around the edges and curving around her protectively. Oswin called it a polarity field, Sally Sparrow called it a 'shock bubble.' The fact remained that it absorbed impacts, and Rani had never seen it before as it rippled in front of Esther, distorting everything it passed over like a pane of glass in a rainstorm. Rani's fist came for the shock bubble. Esther was knocked back by the force of it, but she didn't get hit directly. Instead, Rani's momentum flung her over the top of Esther and the now-dissolving forcefield, and she rocketed through the air right into the side of another mountain. Now Esther had enough time to get back to her feet properly and reaffirm herself.

It didn't take much longer for Rani to do the same thing, though, and in an instant the blur came straight for her, coming down the mountain even faster than she had moved so far. Esther, woozy from her crash-landing after being thrown from the sea, barely managed to flit out of the way. Rani stopped dead when she did and turned to find her again.

"What did you do?" she asked. 'Flitting' – another nickname Sally had given to her abilities. It was Sally who named all of them, really; flitting, hyperspeed, shock bubble, cable-jumping. It was very nearly teleportation – turning into living electricity and zipping at light-speed from one point to the next – but she couldn't go very far with it. Just a few metres, enough to get out of danger. Rani ran back at her and she flitted away again and staggered when she came out of it, just a blue flash in the air for a split-second.

"Told you I was faster," Esther said, catching her breath again. Rani narrowed her eyes, glowing bright silver and full of unjust fury, and paid attention to Esther's struggle to regain herself. She wasn't used to fighting – she wasn't actually a superhero, despite all the dumb nicknames Sally Sparrow gave to everything she did. She didn't so much as have a costume, or a MySpace profile (it really was a miracle that MySpace had made a comeback as the biggest social media in 2020.)

"You won't be much faster than me if you can't breathe," Rani said, smirking evilly, holding up a hand towards Esther, who frowned.

"What are you-" her words were caught in throat and she found herself unable to speak, and what ensued was probably the grossest few minutes of her entire life – even more than when she had been a decomposing corpse freshly dug out of the ground and all her fingernails had fallen off, her skin pulling apart like wet paper. She didn't really like to remember the sensation of nearly choking to death on her own rapidly-producing mucus, but she found herself gasping for air and coughing up streams of the stuff onto the grass.

"Ha! And they say nasalkinesis is a useless power! Well, we'll see about that, won't we? How would you like to drown in your own snot?" _Well_ , Esther thought, _I definitely_ wouldn't _like to drown in my own snot, not one bit_. One death was enough for her, and if she _was_ going to ultimately perish, she'd rather have it be on her own terms. Not like this. The thought of the horrid jokes Sally would make in her eulogy (because who else would give it?) were enough of a motivator for Esther to fight against this and use another of her powers. One that Sally called a 'thunderbolt' – even if Esther did tell her that thunderbolt was technically incorrect.

When she fell to her knees, her head beginning to throb from her inability to breathe, her desperation summoned a bolt of lightning down from the sky. And in all its wrath it struck Rani Chandra dead-on and she was blasted from where she stood, losing her nasalkinetic hold on Esther. Esther sucked in a whole lungful of air and spat (she _hated_ spitting, it was disgusting) the leftover phlegm onto the grass. That was the thing about electrocuting a speedster, though. It wasn't a good idea. With a bolt of lightning coursing through her Rani was just as fast as Esther ordinarily, and she left a trail of dark red sparks in the air for Esther to follow. And follow – though she was still very much struggling to breathe – Esther did.

She tracked the red trail at such a high speed the sparks hardly went to dissipate into the air at all, rushing through them and through Scotland and down roads and up hills, heading east. It was when Rani, forgetting herself, located the nearest set of train tracks, that Esther was able to catch her back up. Cable-jumping was how she generally got from point A to point B, syphoning herself through the wires and the conductive agents of the central grid, causing blips of blackouts on her journey nobody gave a second thought to. When Esther was in the train lines she was almost as fast as light, and she exploded out of the other end when the red sparks reached a train station.

Fizzing into corporeality Esther stared around, nobody noticing her appear like this because they were all too focused on what else was going on. And what was going on was Rani zipping through the huge room, across all the stations, people falling to the ground in her wake. Not that they knew it was Rani, all any of them saw was a glowing-red shape of horror taking them all down. Esther had to do something; Rani was taking the tiled floor to pieces through the sheer speed of her movement, let alone the damage she could do to these people going so fast.

Hating herself for adding to the carnage, but knowing that if she was going to have any chance of stopping Rani, she _ran_ for her (hyperspeed style again) and leapt, crashing into Rani and taking her down, both of them rolling through the room as Esther shocked Rani with as much electricity as she could gather. Again, it didn't have the same effect on a speedster that it would have on anybody else, but Esther needed her to go _faster_ , needed her muscles to be worn down _quicker_. It was a quick fix for an age of withdrawal afterwards. And then they hit terminal velocity – which didn't make any scientific sense in the slightest but was, yet again, one of Sally Sparrow's stupid nicknames Esther had just got used to using after so many years.

"You don't want to do this," Esther said. To Rani, any above-average speed was imperceptible. To both of them, in fact. She had to bring Rani up to her level, so that she could talk to her properly. Around them people stood, their images shifting and flickering in timespace, all of them frozen. Clearly, Rani had never moved quite this fast before. Esther was already having to drain energy out of every light fixture and mobile phone and power line nearby to maintain this state. Around Rani, bright red slivers of lightning crackled.

"You'll never win if you keep making me go faster," Rani jeered, silver eyes ablaze.

"This is as fast as you'll ever move," Esther assured her. In the atmosphere of Earth, they were both moving now just a smidgen under the speed of light, everybody around them probably only seeing flashes of colour where they stood in stasis. "I don't want to win – I want you to stop." She was getting tired already, but she couldn't do a whole lot of anything while exerting this much energy to keep them both stopped. The charge would run down inside Rani in a matter of seconds, anyway, and she'd go haring off again.

"And what if I don't want to? I feel more alive than I've ever felt!"

"Yeah, because you're high," Esther pointed out, "That's all that stuff is – just another narcotic." And maybe it was also a little because she was running on almost as much power at that moment as Esther was the rest of the time. Which was about two billion joules of electricity, in fact. Or so she was told by Oswin, but it was sort of impossible to get an accurate reading because, understandably so, electroencephalograms didn't react well with Esther Drummond. "Your brain isn't right – it's going to wear off."

"I don't want it to wear off!" Rani shouted at her, "I've never felt this powerful! I could kill everyone in this room in the blink of an eye."

"Why would you do that!? You've dedicated decades of your life to helping people! Helping everyone you could!"

"And maybe I'm sick of people persecuting Manifests! Sick of the government hunting us all as fugitives! Sick of that lot from the TARDIS thinking they're so high and mighty because they live in a spaceship! They can come and go, they haven't had to live in their mess for sixteen years!" she yelled.

"This drug was designed to make people hate Manifests even more! Don't prove Klein right, don't give him what he wants!" Esther argued.

"Klein's a Manifest too! He's working on the inside, he supports us. He wants to build a utopia – that was the real aim of Silverstorm," Rani said.

" _What_? Where do you get _that_ idea? He's a lunatic who hates his own kind!"

Rani screamed in frustration and then marched right over to the nearest person, Esther almost getting woozy. The people around them had not moved one jot. Rani held up her hand and pointed her finger at his head.

"What would happen if I touched him at this speed? It would be like a sniper rifle, a fifty-calibre bullet," Rani said.

"Don't you dare."

"Like sinking my hand into custard. It'd go straight through his brain." Esther saw something that Rani didn't, though. As she tired from stasis, Rani did, too, but she didn't notice the effects of her speed-boost wearing off. The people around them began to twitch and tremble, slowly began to thaw out of this subspace they were in.

"Don't touch him, don't touch any of them," Esther said.

"And what are you going to do to stop me?" Rani questioned, "You who doesn't kill? Doesn't hurt? Ha! If you even _tried_ to hurt me you'd just make me even stronger, _even faster_."

"Oh, you wanna go faster, then?" Esther said, "Then your wish is my command, slowpoke." Calling Rani a slowpoke bothered her more than anything else Esther had said so far, and in her anger she went to force her hand through that man's skull. Because she was right, at their speed he would be dead on impact.

It had only lasted for nanoseconds to the outside world, but the stasis ended and Rani couldn't sustain it with just herself. She was too slow now. Esther took all the electricity she could out of the train station and all the lights went out, leaving the place illuminated only by red and blue flashes of lightning in the midst of the crowd. Esther went for her, immediately going thousands and thousands of miles per hour. At those speeds she didn't need much strength at all to drag Rani Chandra along behind her, but it was only a few seconds before Rani phased free of her grip. In just moments they were already miles away from the train station, Esther trying to keep her away from built up areas.

"YOU KNOW I'M THE ONE YOU WANT!" Esther shouted, Rani hardly being able to hear her but staying close on her heels as they tore through the country, "C'MON! SHOW ME HOW FAST YOU CAN GO!" Rani might have shouted something back, but truthfully, she didn't know. She was too focused on trying to figure out where she was going, how fast she should run.

The world around them became a plane of colour, no shapes or places, just blurs of grey to green to blue to gold to white before Esther realised they were tearing across the planet, too fast to discern any landmarks at all, but she knew they were going over oceans and deserts, down rivers and highways and past villages and jungles. As long as they kept whizzing by power sources, though, Esther could leech her way through circumnavigation, she barely had to pause for breath. Rani, though? Rani didn't usually go this fast. Her limits were being pushed as Esther, in an effort to exhaust her, led her to the ends of the Earth and back again maybe a dozen times before Rani disappeared from Esther's heels when the scenery was all ivory and blue.

Esther stopped abruptly and staggered a few steps forwards from the residual force of how fast she had been travelling. She went back to her non-electrical form again for a moment, just long enough to see that Rani wasn't there, and to then shoot off back the way she had come to retrace her steps and find her, which she did. There was Rani, on her hands and knees, lying on a sheet of ice in what must be the Arctic.

"That's the thing about me," Esther said, her breath hanging in front of her. Neither of them were dressed for the cold – they would only be able to stay for minutes, at least. Maybe even less for Rani. "I'm not a speedster. My powers don't come from my ability to move."

"There's n-no elect-t-tricity out h-h-here," Rani stammered, her eyes still glowing vivid silver as Project Crystal continued to affect her.

"There's electricity everywhere – I can pull it out of the air, or down from the sky, if I have to," Esther said. Blue sparks flew around her and crackled; she used the lightning to keep her warm. Why not? If Rani was frozen, Rani couldn't run. Esther could see her flickering, sort of, trying to vibrate her molecules enough to heat up. But she was too tired. That was the trick all along, rile her up so that she would pursue Esther anywhere she led her, even to somewhere much colder than she could function in. "Project Crystal doesn't do a lot for your intelligence, obviously… See, this is why Killer Frost is such a big adversary to the Flash. Well, technically, in the comics Killer Frost's biggest rival is Firestorm, that show from years ago is kind of canonically inaccurate in that way… or, in I think the second season of _Heroes_ where they lock the British speedster up in the freezer so that he can't kill them. He was not very fast at all though, I gotta say…" she was talking to fill up the time, for something to do as she waited.

Then it happened. Rani took a huge gasp of air like she'd been choking and when she opened her eyes they were no longer silver, they were back to brown, and she was very confused.

"Where is this?" she asked.

"Uh, the Arctic, sorry I had to bring you here," Esther said.

"What happened?"

"Okay – quick recap, but we really have to go because you're useless in this cold… we went to the _Valiant_ , all ten of us, except Luke, and then it turned out that Dr Klein has been a Manifest this entire time! He can clone himself, I don't know what else he can do, and he used jet injectors to drug you, Adam Mitchell, Rose, Rory and Donna. I had to tire you out to make it wear off, that's what Project Crystal is. It makes Manifests frenzy, it'll create mass hysteria and will ensure the HCC are always needed and that Klein has the power to do whatever he wants, unrestricted."

"If he wiped out every Manifest except for himself, and then built an army in the process, he'd be the most powerful man in the world," Rani said, struggling to get to her feet, "We have some of the cure left. Come on. Let's go back there." She turned and tried to run off, but only blurred for a second and then collapsed again.

"I'll take us both," Esther said, "Back via the Sanctum. Hold on."


	29. Techno-Boy vs Screech

**AN: Funny thing - I actually asked my friend Matt who writes for me on occasion to write this. And he did, props to him, but I sort of perhaps butchered his work in my editorials. So this is probably 20% Matt and 80% me? Or even more me? Anyway, though, like I said - the latter chapters of this last Manifest arc would be way better. And would you look at that, they totally are.**

 _Techno-Boy vs. Screech_

 _Mickey_

Mickey had been listening to Dr Klein drone on and on about his new Project Crystal formula just like everyone else on the _Valiant_. He'd been pretty damn impressed when Esther Drummond had blasted off with Rani Chandra in hot pursuit, his attention first on those two and then pulled away again when Rose decided to yell that it was time for Clara Oswald to (finally) die. He'd turned in time to see the motes of golden light residue left in the air from when Rose tackled Clara out of spacetime. And that was _all_ he saw until he was knocked clean off his feet by a knuckled blow to then side of his head. Imagine Mickey Smith's surprise when there was Donna Noble, maniacal and deranged, looming over him.

"Donna!?" he exclaimed. She laughed – well, more kind of cackled – at him, sprawled out on the metal floor, shaking his ringing head. Where the hell did Donna learn to punch so hard.

"Mickey!" she shouted his name mockingly right back at him, copying his own tone of voice. Then she laughed again and delivered a kick straight to his gut, winding him. "Blimey, you're pathetic. Then again, what should I have expected from a computer nerd like you?" Mickey was a bit offended by that – if Donna wanted to punch out a computer nerd, she'd do better going for Adam Mitchell. Adam Mitchell appeared to be trying to freeze Clyde Langer in a block of ice at present, though; he could see them sparring a few metres away from where he lay at Donna's feet.

Donna went to give him another kick for good measure, but he finally came back to himself enough to remember how to fight (of course he knew how to fight – he'd been hunting dangerous aliens for years), and he grabbed Donna's foot and ankle and wrenched. She came tumbling down, and that took some of the amusement out of her as he struggled to stand back up again.

"We don't have to do this, Donna," Mickey coughed, rolling his shoulders and settling into a low, defensive position. But he'd pissed her off by bettering her momentarily, and even if he hadn't he wasn't sure letting her pummel him would be the best way to nullify the effects of Project Crystal.

"No," she said, the smile wiped from her face, "But I really want to."

"You don't have to be slave to whatever he's done to you," Mickey said, jerking his head to the very surreal looking row of Kleins, the lot of them just watching the dismay they'd created instead of joining in. Probably hoping they'd all kill each other off. Hell – maybe they _would_. "The Doctor!" Mickey exclaimed, getting a brainwave, "He's your best friend – how would he feel if he saw you like this?"

"The Doctor's never liked you much anyway," Donna shrugged, "Besides, why fight what feels _good_ when I could just fight you, instead?"

Mickey braced himself for another physical assault, forgetting completely what Donna's superpowers actually were. Boy was he surprised when he was hit by Donna's scream. It was like he'd had his whole body shoved by a battering ram; the sheer power of her voice was almost visible, waves of pure vocal energy rippling through the air and tearing metal fragments from the _Valiant_ 's floor.

For a split second only, he thought he might – _might_ – be able to endure the piercing wail. He was wrong. He didn't stand a chance. With a force so strong entire panels were lifting up from the aircraft's floor and flying away, Mickey was blown off the flying fortress with everything else the screech destroyed in its path.

He blacked out for a moment, the pressure of the scream forcing blood to flow from his ears and nose. When he awoke, he was falling, falling through a mess of metallic debris through the cold sea air to the even colder ocean below, spinning out of control with no way of seeing how much longer he had until he hit the water. He really didn't have time to do anything other than limit how much of him hit the water at once – and it was a good thing he knew how to dive. Sort of. Knew the _theory_ of diving. At any rate, he didn't die, he held his hands in front of himself and hit the Irish Sea like a Mickey-shaped torpedo, punching through the foamy waves into the briny.

Disorientated, it took him a second to figure out which way the light was coming from, but when he did he swam up quickly to surface. There was the _Valiant_ , hanging in the sky nearby, but the current was already taking him away from it. How close to shore were they? Could he make it to Ireland or Scotland from where they were easily? He couldn't see any land at all. These waves, in their funny, streaking pattern, must have been made by Esther and Rani as they zoomed across it not a few minutes earlier. Like how small tremors in the ocean caused tsunamis on other sides of the world.

He saw nearby ripples in the water from where Donna must have landed. Did she think nothing through? He hoped she could swim. They taught swimming in schools, though – but maybe not when Donna was in school. How old was she, again? He watched bubbles burst above the point of impact, paddling quite easily. Despite her minor, psychotic intoxication, he was glad to see her emerge from the sea and cough, spitting out a little fountain of seawater.

"See what you've done?" Mickey said, "We're both in the sea now – are you happy? How are we supposed to get back to the _Valiant_?"

"I don't care where we are – as long as you die!" she shouted, making his bleeding ears smart a little. Then she unleashed another trademark howl which gouged a trench out of the water, hitting Mickey in the chest and sending him rolling back under the water, much too dizzy to do a lot of anything.

Okay. So. Talking to Donna was, obviously, futile. He'd learnt that by now. The only thing left – aside from trying to knock her out, but knocking somebody out when they were in the sea and you were not actually a trained lifeguard wasn't a good idea at all – was evasion tactics. He thought he heard her shout something very loud about how he was a 'typical man' who 'didn't even know how to die right.' Possibly she mentioned Shaun, but he had water in his ears. Eventually, she'd get tired trying to keep afloat for so long, and hopefully by that point one of the others might come to lend their assistance.

Perhaps, if Mickey remembered what Donna's _other_ , newer power was, he may have hoped for the Project Crystal to wear off enough for her to use it to rescue them. Of course, he didn't remember, so when she used it, it came as a huge surprise. He'd never been attacked by a plane before.

There was Donna, he could see her swimming nearby, him lurking, glad of the ability to breathe underwater. And there, above him, something grew. A portal began to stretch itself into existence, bridging the gap between one place and another, a flickering hole breaching reality itself under the sea. He couldn't see much more than black-and-white movement on the other side, crackling like it was drowned in static, until a hulking mass of metal and flame and propeller crashed into the present. Mickey had never swum so fast and so desperately in his life than when Donna Noble opened a doorway to a downed Spitfire, cockpit vacated by its ejecting pilot, and sent it hurtling for him. If it hit him, at its velocity, it would take him down into the depths of the ocean so pressurised his head would burst.

The current the plane created still tried to suck him down into the sea with it, and it was a long while of struggling until it sank far enough away into the Atlantic's opaque belly. Just before it disappeared completely, it exploded, the orange flames put out almost immediately. Mickey barely felt the shockwave. Good thing the plane had been empty. He didn't know what Donna would do when she was freed from her stupor if she'd become a murderer. He was beginning to think that the best thing to do would just be drag her under the water until she lost consciousness. He saw her take a lungful of air and duck below the surface to get a look and see if she'd been successful in her latest attempt on his life.

" _I don't want to have to hurt you_!" he shouted, muffled, wondering how well he could hear her. He saw her grin, hold in a laugh that might choke her. In the water she leant back, and he wondered what she was doing. He didn't think she would risk opening her mouth and risk drowning, but Mickey underestimated the dampening affect Project Crystal clearly had on her brain functions, because that was exactly what she did. He also underestimated the effect that one of her screams would have down there. He couldn't really hear it, but it still packed a powerful punch and made the water feel as though it were humming. He was knocked wildly backwards, rolling over and over in a very dizzying way.

And then Mickey felt his body tingle and he fell, hard, onto a wonky, damp surface, tonnes of water cascading down on top of him. Habitually he still gasped for air, but the air was freezing cold, colder than the Irish Sea had been seconds earlier. The fact he was soaked didn't do much for him, and the panicked screaming didn't do much for his burst eardrums.

Wait.

Panicked screaming?

Had he mentioned how disorientated he was…?

Mickey saw behind him one of those shimmering portals of Donna's, the other side blurred and impossible to discern, the edges crackling and indigo. Whatever he was standing on was moving. It wasn't level. It was very _un_ -level, in fact, crooked, and only getting worse and worse and worse. He glanced to his right and saw there dozens of lifeboats and hundreds of people with chunks of bright white ice floating through them. And in front of him was the sea, because they were sinking. He and all the people dressed in their old-fashioned, upper-class clothes, they were all heading down together.

"Oh my god," he murmured to himself, "This is the _Titanic_." And not the good, fake _Titanic_ with Leo and Kate, the bad, _real_ one, where thousands of people had drowned. Donna _had_ to take them back to the _Valiant_ , and she had to do it soon, or the April Atlantic would freeze the _both_ of them en route to New York City. Except that Donna wasn't there yet.

Suddenly he was struck with the horrifying thought that Donna Noble might be trying to strand him there to die – since that was what any _sane_ evil person would do. Maybe not sane. Clever? Somebody knocked right into his shoulder and nearly pushed him over, turning him to face the portal again. Through it he could just about make out the blurry outline of his pursuer swimming to greet him. So hopefully he wouldn't _quite_ get stranded. Now it was going to become a battle between what happened first – the wearing off of Project Crystal or the sinking of the unsinkable ship.

He ran and scrambled away from the portal with the stern slowly lifting and lifting and lifting underneath his feet. The further it lifted the faster the boat would sink, so now he wasn't only fighting against Donna – who'd nearly appeared on deck with him – he was fighting against time itself. Every bit more water the ship took on was every bit closer to the both of them freezing to death in it. He heard a scream from behind him and felt the whole structure of the boat literally shudder; it was a wonder that he had survived as long as he had.

By the time Donna came flopping out of her portal (obviously forgetting that gravity was a thing) with gushes of cold water following behind, the stern of the boat had nearly risen to his peak. It was like trying to climb a mountain, keeping level on that, and Mickey hid behind a metal staircase as best he could. After Donna came through, he just saw the portal vanish behind her. Their exit route was gone. She had better be able to do the same thing twice, or they were doomed.

"I've finally got you, Mickey!" Donna shouted, making him wince. He wondered what Martha would say about Donna wrecking her husband's hearing when they got back to the TARDIS. Because they would definitely get back to the TARDIS. He wasn't going to even begin to think of an alternative outcome for this rather damning situation. "You've nowhere else to run now!" She didn't know where he was, though. He was still relatively safe. How was she not scared for her life!?

Anger taking Donna over, she screamed again, and it made his ears ring and the earpiece he had in buzz with feedback. Hold on. That earpiece. It was still working? He had forgotten about it, or assumed it had died when he'd hit the water. Of course, though, Oswin Oswald wouldn't let something as arbitrary as waterproofing disrupt her inventions. And Mickey Smith would be damned if, along with being a water-breather, he wasn't also a technopath.

He pulled it out of his ear, the thing red with blood, and held it in the middle of his clenched fist.

"Come on, Mickey. We all have to die one day, and today's yours. Are you upset you'll never see Martha again? She's too good for you, anyway. Best let her live her life without you – move on to somebody new," Donna taunted. If Mickey hadn't already seen blatant evidence that Donna was completely off her face (like, hello, _bringing them onto the most famous sunk ship in Earth's history and getting rid of their escape route_ ), he may have been annoyed by her talking down about his marriage. " _Come out!_ " she bellowed, dazing him. He was numb to all sounds except for Donna's yelling, and felt himself wobbling as the ship rose and rose and rose.

He was done fiddling with the earpiece, though. Thank god _one_ of them wasn't being a complete idiot. There was no point reasoning with her anymore, he only hoped that a sudden scare was enough to sober Donna up. Or was he thinking about hiccups? Nevertheless, it was too late. He balled up his fist and lobbed the earpiece, newly converted into a very ingenious micro-bomb he actually kind of wanted to tell Oswin about later (if he didn't die), sending it rolling along the deck. He nearly fell and had to grab the railings of the staircase so that he didn't just fall off into the ocean.

"What the hell is-" Donna said as the little white object rolled past her on its way down to the sea. It blew up before it could go too far though, right at her feet, and sent her flying. Luckily she landed on the base of one of the enormous, black and red funnels, of which there were only two left now above the surface of the water. People hardly even noticed what they were up to, too busy trying to save themselves. He heard a clang, barely, like she'd hit her head on the funnel, and he had to slide carefully down the wooden deck to get to her.

"Donna!?" he shouted, his own voice making his ears hurt. No response. "DONNA!?" He noticed her, very blearily, open her eyes. In that moment it was a fifty-fifty chance whether she would murder him on sight (one more scream from her and he would be thrown into the iceberg's wake to be submerged there forever) or whether she would actually help him. Or panic so much they both died anyway.

"What's going on?" she asked wearily.

"Oh, thank god… bloody hell – you have to do something!" Mickey shouted. Donna, not realising quite how precarious her position was, sat up on her hands. And then she looked around. And she noticed. And – how smart of her – she screamed again. It wasn't so bad because she wasn't directing it, this one was out of pure terror rather than being weaponised against him, but it made him wobble so much that he fell down onto the funnel as well, behind her.

"WHERE THE HELL IS THIS!?"

"It's the _Titanic_!"

"WHY THE _HELL_ ARE WE ON THE FLIPPING _TITANIC_!?"

"You brought us here!"

"WELL _WHY_ WOULD I DO _THAT_!?"

"Klein drugged you! You've been trying to kill me!"

"I've _what_!?"

"You brought us through a portal – you have to do it again," Mickey pleaded, "We'll both drown if you don't, or freeze first!" She screamed again in panic and he nearly fell off the round funnel.

That was when the stern reached tipping point. There was a brief second where it stopped moving, stopping rising, as though the entire world was trapped in a frozen moment. That was when it began to properly sink, _very_ quickly. They were nearly falling. Donna was wailing. So was Mickey, come to think of it. Something in the water, or the engines, or who knew at that point, made the entire vessel jerk. The jerk was not too big, but it was enough to throw Donna from the funnel.

"DONNA!" Mickey yelled, and without even thinking that he couldn't do a single damned thing to stop the pair of them just falling into the sea and becoming Mickey Smith and Donna Noble flavoured ice lollies, he jumped after her, and it was like being in slow motion. They fell in bullet time and Martha's face swam into his head, one last look at his wife before he was sure his life would be over.

Then he saw it, behind Donna. She must have done it by accident, but it was there, that was for damn sure; a static-y rip in the fabric of the universe, purpling at the edges and twitching like it was made of time itself, opening to catch them both in its arms. And catch them it did. He had thought he would die in those moments, he had been absolutely sure of it, when he crashed onto the metal floor of the _Valiant_ 's hangar.

And if you were to ask Mickey Smith after that day if, when he fell off the deck of the _Titanic_ 's doomed stern, did he maybe pee himself (just a little), he would outright refuse to answer and skulk away awkwardly without a single word in his own defence.


	30. Clairvoyante vs Captain Vanish

**AN: Totally should have called Donna "Soundwave." Totally cooler than "Screech." Oh well. Thinking of these superhero names has been really fun. And, sorry about the lack of action in this chapter, I hope it's still good. Also I know in previous chapters I said that** ** _Amy_** **was the one who got drugged, but I changed my mind because I think it's better this way.**

 _Clairvoyante vs. Captain Vanish_

 _Amy_

Rose Tyler tackled Clara Oswald and took her away in a golden shimmer; Esther Drummond zoomed away, a ball of lightning, the blurred Rani Chandra on her heels; with a painful shriek Donna Noble launched Mickey Smith out of the back of the _Valiant_ into the Irish Sea, quick to follow him into the water; after being frozen, Clyde Langer had melted the floor beneath his feet and taken both he and Adam Mitchell through a hole to the lower decks. And throughout all of this Amy Pond was just a spectator; she couldn't help in any way and was left to observe the carnage as they all turned against each other. At least, though, nobody had turned against _her_. She only had the Kleins to worry about, a conglomerate of them observing from a raised platform nearby.

Or so she thought. Until she was sucker-punched right in her face by an invisible fist, that was. And she'd not really been punched in the face a great many times during her life, not at all – sure, she might have punched _Clara_ in the face at least twice, but _everybody_ had done that at some point. It wasn't quite a punch hard enough to throw her to the ground though, not like when Rose had right-hooked Clara and sent her crashing down with what was probably a brain haemorrhage, but it still hurt.

"What the-?" Another punch got her squarely in her noise and she swore loudly, eyes watering right away.

Amy wasn't a fan of her 'premonitions', those visions she had where she saw snippets of the future. Usually because they were somewhat unpleasant (after all, who liked losing complete control over their body for a handful of seconds?), but mostly because they scarcely ever let her see anything _useful_. She _vividly_ remembered being put on trial for witchcraft after accidentally foreseeing that they were having pizza for dinner in the middle of Salem. But now she saw in her mind's eye – for just a split-second – that another punch was going to hit her in her gut if she didn't quickly get out of the way. She dodged left and heard a frustrated, familiar grunt in mid-air.

"Rory!?" she shouted, "Did you just punch me!?"

"You deserve to be hurt," Rory – because it really _was_ him invisibly hitting her in the face – growled. For a second there was a ripple in the air as he struggled to remain unseen, and she saw a blurry foot coming her direction. She managed to grab it and hold it though, and then he definitely slipped and crashed down, regaining visibility when he did.

"What are you doing!?" She had not seen Klein get her husband with the jet injectors, but realised that he must have done. So this couldn't be Rory, not _really_ him. But after they'd been through so much together… the Project Crystal wearing Rory's face was probably the most upsetting thing of all.

"What I should have done centuries ago – put an end to you," Rory said, disappearing from right in front of her again. The melted hole in the metal nearby smoked, and there was debris from Donna's screams lying about the place. "You've been the bane of my whole life, Amy Pond," she heard him say, whirling around to look in another direction, praying that those premonitions would keep coming to save her from being bludgeoned by the man she loved. "Stringing me along, running off with the Doctor – you're probably still having an affair with him now!"

" _Still_? What do you mean 'still'!? I never had an affair with him!" she exclaimed, shocked. She would _never_ do that. Except when she kissed him and possibly tried to get him to sleep with her that time – but that was only the _once_. And it had been before she and Rory were married, before they'd really gone through a whole lot of anything together. Perhaps that didn't justify it, but… it was water under the bridge! "How could I be having an affair with him when you spend all-night every-night giving me a running commentary of he and Clara sleeping together?"

"And that's _your_ fault," Rory said. Another punch came flying for the back of her head, she saw in her mind's eye (which was a pretty cliché thing to call it, but she couldn't think of any interesting, catchy nicknames at a moment's notice.) She ducked down and got the top of her head clipped, and staggered forwards to get away from the space where Rory had been. He was just pacing around her, shouting things, trying to get to her. But the Project Crystal had dumbed him down a bit too much for her to be all that bothered by the things he was saying, they mostly just didn't make sense. It was the punching she wasn't a fan of.

"Why would it be _my_ fault that _you_ refuse to wear your earplugs?" she questioned. He _still_ wouldn't wear them, kept saying they were 'bad for your ears.' And she told him that her not being able to sleep was bad for her lack of desire to get a divorce – and they'd already come close enough to that before that she didn't fancy entertaining the prospect again. But if he didn't shut up in the middle of the night, she might not have to.

" _You_ made him fall in love with you! And you love him back – that's why we're on the TARDIS in the first place," Rory said, "You, him and Clara are probably having threeways non-stop." They were _what_!?

"Can I interrupt?" Klein, interrupting, asked.

"You just did," Amy said. Rory kicked her in her ankle when she wasn't paying attention and she flinched and stepped away. He wasn't very good at fighting, though. He _was_ a nurse, after all. He was terrible on offence. Not like her – she knew her way around a sword pretty well. At least, she _used_ to think she knew her way around a sword. Then she'd seen Jenny Harkness go toe-to-toe with Iveanne the psychotic space pirate captain with only one working hand, after doing a bunch of fancy tricks on a makeshift tightrope, and nowadays she thought maybe she was less skilled than she initially presumed…

"What's a TARDIS?" Klein asked. The main Klein. Commander Klein.

"Don't you have files on us all?" Amy asked him. He was just watching, he and his duplicates. None of them had ever guessed that Dr Klein, the big bad, was a Manifest himself. Maybe Amy could get some information out of him, since Rory was just being… well, stupid. He was going to lose his mind with guilt as soon as this stuff wore off. Klein didn't say anything. "It's a time-and-space machine we all live in – god, don't you know who we are?"

"I don't have any files on you," a different Klein said. Amy thought that this would be the perfect opportunity for the Shadow to show up and just eat them all – get a good meal out of it, too. In fact, she even glanced around the room for any moving shapes. All she saw was another shimmer of Rory before he hit her in her jaw.

"Stop hitting me!" she shouted, "I'm ordering you! _Stop hitting me_!" Her persuasion never worked. It was basically useless. It only worked on humans, and only humans from the Alphaverse (just as Rose's powers were also restricted to the Alphaverse-only, while Donna had free-run of the whole multiverse), and even _then_ she'd still not figured out how to bend people to her will all the time. She couldn't say she practiced an awful lot.

But there must have been some desperation within her – some panic at the fact her _actual husband_ was trying to beat her to a pulp (if rather ineffectually) – that made it, this time, work. The shimmery blur that was Rory Williams stopped. Amy frowned. "… _Turn visible_ ," she ordered. And lo and behold, he _did_. She nearly laughed she was so thrilled with herself. Rory just stood there. She wasn't going to manipulate him any further, just let him wait out the end of Project Crystal's control.

"Did you say 'time-and-space machine'?" Klein asked, one of him, incredulously. The six of them stood in a line. They looked a little nervous now they'd seen Amy show off her persuasive abilities. If she had mastery over it, she could order the Kleins to turn on each other just like Klein had made the ten of them do. Where were Esther and Rani? Clara and Rose? Had Adam frozen Clyde to death yet? Had Donna drowned in the ocean outside, Mickey swept away by the current? And Rory was still possessed.

"…Luke?" she asked unsurely, putting a hand to the implement in her ear. Luke Smith was still in the Sanctum. She figured her earpiece might be the only one that still worked somewhat.

" _Amy!? Are you alright? I can't reach any of the others_ ," Luke spoke in her ear. She was relieved, though she didn't know how much he could help her from back on land in Greater London.

"They've been drugged. Rose took Clara somewhere – I don't know where. Clyde and Adam are downstairs, I think. Rory's… uh, subdued. Donna and Mickey fell in the sea."

" _They 'fell in'_?"

"Sort of – she blasted him into the water. Do the HCC have files on us?"

" _No, Kate Stewart saw to it that Klein wouldn't find out who you are_ ," Luke explained.

"That makes sense," Amy said, moving her hand, speaking to the Kleins again, "She gave us the element of surprise. So you don't know us? Don't know the TARDIS? The Doctor? Because let me tell you a few things about the Doctor, if you've never heard of him, Klein. He's destroyed whole planets before. Whole armies turn and run the other direction at the mention of his name. And you've mind-warped his fiancée to attack his wife. His best friends to fight each other." It did sound a bit odd talking about his fiancée and wife in the same sentence, but she really didn't have the motivation to explain everything about the Doctor and his multiple regenerations to a lunatic.

"Sounds like a lot of empty threats," Klein shrugged, "You've only seen one of my powers, after all. None of you scare me."

"Maybe not the pair of us – we're not really the most, well, _super_ ," Amy said, glancing at Rory to make sure he wasn't trying to hit her again. She didn't know how long the persuasion would keep its hold over him. "You do know that Rose Tyler can control the entire universe? Can make people cease to exist just by thinking about it? And Donna can make portals into other universes? Mickey could touch the _Valiant_ and make it crash into the sea? Adam Mitchell could freeze you all where you stand? Even _I_ could order you to execute yourselves if I wanted. You have no _clue_ what you're in for when they get back here."

"What makes you think any of them _will_ get back here, hmm?" Klein questioned her. He didn't believe a word she said, which either meant he was stupid, or his second power was _very_ powerful. And however powerful it was, it would also be multiplied by however many clones he made of himself on a whim. "If they're as good as you make them sound, half of them will be dead. Nothing can stop Project Crystal. It will create chaos, and then I'll have all I need to build myself an army, the most powerful army in the world. You think I care about the destruction of Manifests? I don't. _I'm_ the only who can see the potential. The rest of the government want eradication, but as soon as I release Project Crystal, every Manifest will be under my thumb. I'll turn my soldiers into super-soldiers, do what the military have been trying to do for decades. How hard do you think it would be for me to take over the world with resources like _those_ at my disposal?"

"That's all this is about, then? Really? World domination? It's such a tacky ideology," Amy insulted. He wasn't going to kill her though, because she was amusing him. That was why he made them fight each other, instead of drugging all ten of them, getting them 'under his thumb,' as he put it. He was using them for entertainment, like Roman gladiators. It was sick. "I bet you were bullied as a kid or something, weren't you?" Klein glared. He totally had been. These big evil freaks weren't all that complicated.

"I hope you're having fun mocking the man who's going to end your life today."

"Ooh, edgy," Amy continued, "If you were a supervillain, they'd call you 'Edgelord.'" He didn't like that one bit. Rory gasped and his eyes rolled back a little, collapsing to the floor next to his wife. She hoped that meant what she thought it did – that Project Crystal had worn off. She knelt down next to him immediately. "Rory!? Bloody hell, are you okay?"

Rory blinked and looked at her with confused eyes, then saw the reddening marks on her face where he clearly remembered hitting her.

"Oh my god… oh my god, Amy, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, was that me who did that!? It was _me_!? It can't have been real…"

"Of course it wasn't you, it was him and his victim complex over there," Amy nodded at Klein, "Thinks he's scary when he's clearly just into himself."

"Don't taunt him!"

"Why not? What's he going to do? Kill us? I hope he does so that we don't have to be in his company anymore," she said, looking at Klein darkly as she talked, "And he'd better hurry up about it, too, because he's not going to last ten seconds when everybody else gets back, that I can promise."


	31. Nuke vs Cryolator

_Nuke vs. Cryolator_

 _Clyde Langer_

In all the excitement aboard the _Valiant Mk.2_ , Clyde Langer didn't manage to dodge the razor-sharp icicle that breezed past his ear and sliced open a segment of the cartilage with its tip. It didn't immediately hurt because the ice came that quickly, but it stung and bled a second later so that he looked like Clara Oswald did when Rose had slugged her round the side of her skull. Confused, he turned around to look for his assailant, and grew disoriented when Donna Noble wailed in Mickey's direction and sent him flying backwards out of the hangar they were bunched together in. Clyde clamped his hands over his ears, the bleeding one getting red all over his palms, and was then knocked right off his feet by some cold protrusion coming out of the floor.

"What the-?" he began, and saw big shards of ice sticking out of the metal in front of him, chunks that had just thrown him backwards onto the floor. These shards had a sparkling trail of frost leading from Clyde to a figure standing opposite; none other than Adam Mitchell, the boy genius and multimillionaire. Not to mention cryokinetic. There he was, radiating cold from his pale hands, his glasses frozen around the edges, looming towards Clyde. "What are you doing!?"

"Ending your life," Adam declared.

"But – why?" All around, similar scenes were playing out. Friends became foes and turned on each other – even Rani, the love of his life, had turned psychotic and had tried to race Esther Drummond. And the thing was, even though he _did_ love Rani Chandra more than anything in the world, he _knew_ that Esther was miles faster, could flit around at light-speed if she wanted (he knew this because yesterday, when she'd arrived, he'd asked her to show off her powers every time she complained about being bored.) The only one who didn't accept Esther's superior speed was Rani herself, and now she'd gone haring away in a race she would never win. God – he hoped she was okay. Esther wouldn't do anything to hurt her, would she?

"Because I'm not stupid," Adam shrugged. Really, Clyde thought? Wasn't this Project Crystal making people go a bit, uh, _funny_? In the head? He couldn't think of a world where anyone in their right mind would jump into the Irish Sea in pursuit of a man who could breathe underwater, but that was exactly what Donna had done just minutes ago. "You're the closest, and one of the weakest. By the time I'm done with you, I'll just be able to freeze everybody who comes back solid. _If_ they come back. And then Klein's masterplan will come to fruition."

"Oh, great – what did _I_ do to get stuck with the only evil doppelgänger who hasn't been reduced to having the IQ of a toddler?" Clyde said. Of course. Adam Mitchell was some sort of genius – his intelligence, no doubt, _had_ diminished. It just hadn't diminished to a point of legitimate stupidity yet. Adam laughed and threw another icicle in his direction he had to dodge. It shattered to pieces on the metal floor, them surrounded by debris from Donna's attack on Mickey. Nearby, Amy Pond appeared to be having an argument with thin air, but Clyde didn't have time to pay attention to that.

He tried to roll over onto his side to get up and scramble away, but as he had his foot on the floor to push himself back to his feet, he found his toes ice-cold and stuck fast. When he glanced behind him he saw what had happened; a thick casing of ice had clamped around his ankle and kept his right foot attached to the floor. Too quickly for him to react, the other foot was frozen solid, too, Clyde now rooted to the spot and struggling.

"I'm warning you," Clyde threatened, "Stop this right now, or I'll… I'll…"

"What? Microwave me?" Adam remarked. Clyde didn't know what to say. He didn't say anything in the end.

Adam was right. He wasn't stupid, and he could freeze people solid. Rather than 'playing with his food' as the saying went, this was what he did to Clyde. He almost wished he'd had Rose tackle him and take him off to whatever exotic place she'd dragged Clara. It had to be better than the _Valiant_ , right? Well, unless she'd just dumped her in the vacuum of space. Then again, while outer space was cold, so was being not-so-steadily being turned into a novelty ice cube. And maybe dying in a vacuum wasn't as painful as it sounded…?

The ice was creeping up Clyde Langer. Feet, ankles, legs, hips; it rose all the way up his torso as he struggled to try and break free.

"You can't just _freeze_ me!" he protested, his teeth chattering already. He couldn't feel anything below his knees at all. Funny, he'd never had frostbite before. He flailed his top half quite uselessly, Adam Mitchell looking highly amused and holding out his hand to entice the ice encasing Clyde to grow.

"I mean, I _am_ just freezing you," Adam said indifferently.

"But you can't."

"I am, though. Obviously."

"Morally – it's morally wrong," Clyde argued.

Adam shrugged, "Don't really care."

"What would your girlfriend say if she saw you freezing me?" Clyde countered, hoping he might strike a nerve. Clearly Adam knew what he was trying to do, though, and the Project Crystal was making him too psychotic to care what Oswin may or may not think about his actions.

"She'd probably say something funny," Adam said. _Damn it_ , Clyde thought, _he's right_. Oswin _would_ say something funny. Didn't really matter, anyway, because the ice had reached Clyde's neck and was crawling down his arms, locking his shoulders and his elbows and his head into position.

"I never thought death by Frozone would be the way I'd go out…" Clyde croaked out dramatically as the ice slipped around his mouth, ears, and finally sealed him away in a chilling tomb as it closed around the top of his head.

Okay. Perhaps he wasn't taking this as seriously as someone else might take being locked away in ice like Walt Disney, wasn't pleading for his life and begging for Adam Mitchell to spare him. Adam Mitchell wasn't going to do anything of the sort, and it also figured that Adam – while, yes, being very clever – was stupid. Well, possibly not stupid, but he didn't know what Clyde's powers were. He thought Clyde could only shoot microwaves, and while, yes, Clyde _could_ , and was great at heating up cold tea again with his bare hands, he could do a lot more than _just_ shoot microwaves.

Infrared radiation, for instance. For a split-second, he could see through the sheets of ice against his eyes. Adam Mitchell looked victorious, smug, he being the first one to 'defeat' his rival. And while Clyde probably could manage to wait it out until Esther got back – because he didn't really think that when it came to tiring somebody out Esther Drummond would ever fail – so that she could thaw him out with a bolt of lightning five times hotter than the surface of the sun, he also didn't need to.

It was probably hard to tell at first that the ice wasn't lasting very long, that water was dripping off of Clyde's arms and outstretched, panicked fingertips. Adam Mitchell's cockiness was stopping him from noticing that the ice, as Clyde forced reams of infrared out of his body, was melting. But he wasn't dumb enough to just look away and pay attention to Amy's argument with nobody.

"What are you doing?" Adam asked him, the ice melting away from his head enough to let him hear and speak again.

"You und-d-derest-timat-ted m-m-me," Clyde's teeth chattered. Adam grew angry.

"No, no, no. You're not breaking out that easily." Again he held up his hands and tried to re-freeze the ice, and then it became a battle between hot and cold. Could Adam freeze faster than Clyde could melt? The answer was, actually, no. It was the floor that was the real thing ending their duel. It kept being heated up and frozen and heated up and frozen, melting and hardening and melting and hardening until it was damp and saggy and then, when Adam in all his rage tried to stamp forwards to send even more cold in Clyde's direction, it shattered. They both crashed through the metal and into darkness below, the ice keeping Clyde solid crashing apart around him. In the light pouring down from above he saw Adam Mitchell swearing and gripping his right foot. Didn't he have some old injury there? Clyde could have sworn he recalled Adam mentioning it earlier in the day, or at some other point in their lives when he and Oswin 'dropped in' to wreak havoc.

Adam's injury gave Clyde all the opportunity he needed to run away. Could he just dodge and avoid Adam Mitchell down there until Project Crystal wore off? But then, how long would _that_ take, exactly? It could take hours. He didn't think he could evade anybody for that long, even down in the dark, hot belly of the _Valiant_. Where they were there was a whole lot of piping, a whole lot of hissing and other mechanical sounds. They were probably near bits of the engines, the things keeping the _Valiant_ afloat (well, a-hover) above the Atlantic.

"You can't hide from Cryolator forever, Clyde," Adam called out, Clyde ducking behind some high rows of pipes in the shadows. He frowned.

" _What_ did you just call yourself?" he called, trying to keep moving, stay out of sight. Retorting probably wasn't the best course of action, but he couldn't help himself when he heard a nickname so stupid as _Cryolator_ , especially when someone called themselves it in the third-person.

"Cryolator," Adam answered, then there was a funny noise and Clyde glanced back to see a patch of ice growing on the wall where he had just been. He crouched down to crawl through a gap in all the machinery, coming out the other side to see Adam there, but Adam was facing the other way and glancing at where Clyde had just been.

"Cryolator? Is that because you'll be crying later?" Clyde remarked, Adam whirling around and throwing five small, sharp icicles right at Clyde. Funnily enough though, they were way off the mark, missing wildly and just bursting into pieces against the wall as Clyde ran sideways to get away from Adam, whom he now noticed was limping.

"Of course I won't be crying – and neither will you, because you'll be dead."

"Hilarious."

"What sort of a name do _you_ call yourself by?"

"Nuke," Clyde answered immediately. What? As if Clyde Langer, who'd been working to run a railroad for fugitive Manifests for more than a decade and possessed unnatural powers himself, wouldn't have thought of his own superhero name already.

" _Nuke_? It doesn't even make any sense, you shoot microwaves. Microwaves aren't radioactive. You should call yourself Ready Meal." He knew microwaves weren't radioactive, because Luke told him so constantly. But Clyde _could_ shoot proper, deadly gamma radiation when he tried really, _really_ hard. Plus 'Nuke' was just a cool name.

"They should call you Aura Boy," Clyde remarked. Adam got annoyed by that, Clyde knowing he'd never been a fan of his frankly useless power to see peoples' auras, what with him being colour blind. Another icicle struck the pipes right in front of Clyde, breaking into fragments sharp enough to tear away at the metal of the pipe. Out of the tiny cracks in it, boiling steam hissed out at Clyde, who jumped away when his skin stung. It gave him an idea, though. He had a few ideas, in fact, looking around at the smooth floor and the steam valves… he just had to try not to die for a couple more minutes, at least. "You're a rubbish throw, you know."

"I throw just fine!" Adam argued. Adam knew exactly where Clyde was, but couldn't move fast enough on his obviously injured foot to pursue him, and so ended up stuck in the middle of the room just pivoting in a circle. Clyde stuck his head up from behind his barricades and smiled, waving. Adam, furious, hurled another icicle for him, but it completely missed and hit somewhere up and to Clyde's left, leaving condensation dripping down the wall.

"Did you never do PE, or were you too much of a geek for that?" Clyde said, as though he himself had not been pulled deep into the recesses of nerdhood by his friendship with Luke Smith.

"Shut up!"

"You're clearly insecure about how bad you were at PE."

"Nobody likes PE!" he argued.

"It's alright if you're good at it. Not like you."

"I _was_!"

Clyde didn't believe him, and thought it was funny how worked up he got about something so unimportant.

Some bits of metal debris from Donna's attack on Mickey had fallen down into the lower levels with them, and slinking around the room Clyde found one of these and grabbed it when Adam Mitchell couldn't see him. He'd stopped talking for a few moments, tiptoeing around, and Adam appeared to have lost track of where he was. This lump of debris, probably just a part of the floor that had been torn up, Clyde took in his hand and threw towards the other end of the room.

Adam didn't see the projectile arc along behind him, Clyde ducking into the shadows again, but he did hear the noise and turned (as best he could) to see where it had landed. That was when Clyde seized his opportunity and, still crouching, moved as quickly as he could to get near Adam. Adam still distracted but too close for comfort, Clyde jumped to his feet to grab one of the steam valves on the many, snaking pipes underneath the _Valiant_ 's main hangar. Heating up his hand as hot as he could, he melted the whole pipe and the valve clean off. Adam heard the ruckus, turned around to see what it was, and got blasted in the face by boiling hot steam.

As Adam Mitchell screamed, Clyde utilised his _other_ power, the one that only benefitted him when it came to getting in and out of Silverstorm. It was tricky to describe the sensation of going from a solid man to a puddle of flesh-coloured goop, and even trickier to describe the sensation of actually _being_ said puddle of flesh-coloured goop, but oddly enough it nearly felt like floating. The transformation itself even felt like those moments when you were almost asleep and were jolted away by the sensation of falling, as his entire body liquefied.

Adam, stunned from the steam and vapour in his face, staggered backwards, and Clyde didn't have to do anything more than simmer there on the floor to make Adam slip, falling right over and thwacking the side of his head on another of the myriad of pipes down there. Liquid or solid, being stepped on still wasn't a pleasant feeling, and Clyde had to pry himself off the bottom of Adam's shoes before he could suck his whole self back into a proper form.

Clyde reformed and Adam stayed there on the floor, and for a moment Clyde was horrified he might have inadvertently killed Adam Mitchell, merely trying to knock him out to see if a concussion might be the solution to being taken over by a malevolent chemical compound. Remarkably, going by the incoherent way Adam slurred his girlfriend's name, it worked. It was kind of sweet how Oswin was what he thought of, but there was noise coming from the hangar above them now, shouting again – it couldn't be that some of the others were back, could it?

"Adam? Adam – wake up," Clyde said. Adam was just woozy. "Mitchell!" Clyde said sharply. The name only Oswin, the object of Adam's affections, called him by. Of course it was _that_ , Clyde thought with an eye roll, that made him regain awareness.

"What's going on…?" Adam dazedly asked.

"Had to bump you on the head, mate, sorry," Clyde apologised, "Klein's drug took you over, you tried to freeze me." Adam frowned.

"How'd you get out?"

"Magic. Come on, you have to help me find a way back upstairs, because we can't go up the way we came," Clyde said, trying to haul Adam Mitchell back to his feet. He yelped with pain when any weight was put on his right foot, though; he must have really damaged it in the fall.

"Where was that?" he asked.

"Through there," Clyde said, and he pointed for the big, gaping hole in the roof where he could _definitely_ hear the other members of their group returning from where they had been. Unfortunately, though, neither of them could fly, and it had been quite a long drop. So Clyde Langer and Adam Mitchell ended up a little bit stuck below deck on the _Valiant Mk.2_.


	32. The Phantom vs Bad Wolf

**AN: Here it is, the big one (literally, it's 4700 words), the one we've all been waiting for. Or at least that I'VE been waiting for. Review and let me know which of these five fight chapters is your fave, I'm curious.**

 _The Phantom vs. Bad Wolf_

 _Clara_

She was punched through the air and thrown into oblivion in a blinding flash of gold light, trying to limit the damage of a tackle from Rose Tyler one minute and soaring through cool air the next, until she landed with a whistling thud into a bed of soft plants and leaves. Her ears rang sharply; the bright lights of the _Valiant Mk.2_ interior had evaporated into a starry, night sky, and there was an overwhelming, sticky sense of humidity leeching around her immediately. Oswin's ghostly shape had vanished along with everything else familiar.

It took her a little longer than it maybe should have done to realise she'd been teleported – she was too used to her own sickeningly painful teleportations, like she was being dragged by a fishhook wedged into her skull to and fro. Being teleported by Rose was nothing like that, it was as smooth as blinking. The only thing she could deduce was that she was now in a jungle, dense thickets of greens upon greens upon greens, and that Rose Tyler herself was nowhere in sight. Perhaps she wasn't there? Maybe she had just wanted rid of Clara so badly she'd decided to fling her into an anonymous bit of reality and let her be somebody else's problem.

Clara was able to move quickly through the underbrush of the thick jungle, the heat slowly building on her. She supposed they were in some tropical climate, but who knew what planet? For all she knew, Rose could have thrown her back down onto Eslilia. And even if it _was_ on Earth, there were thousands of places she could be. A desert island, potentially, one which had never seen a human before, and then she would be living her own retelling of _Robinson Crusoe_.

When she heard familiar sounds, though, she became even more confused. The absence of information was far simpler than the providing of clues, clues required analysis, but a lack thereof required nothing but imagination. Phasing, she stumbled through the trees to follow the noise of a car engine – for that was what it sounded like – and picked up the other intelligible sound of a radio coming in crisply above it. She staggered out of the jungle to the bank of a muddy road as a camouflaged jeep trundled past, half a dozen green-clad men in the back, with guns. Over the radio she could hear _Wild Thing_ playing out with its messy, garage-sounding guitar chords.

She stepped out into the road to look after it, the path too shadowy for the men on the back of the jeep to see her, putting the pieces together in her mind. It had a US flag on its rear bumper, muddy and metallic, a similar size to the vehicle's license plate. When did _Wild Thing_ come out? The late Sixties? If she was seeing American soldiers, hearing Sixties music, and stumbling around in the jungle, it _had_ to be Vietnam. Good thing Clara knew her history.

When she heard rustling in the trees she went intangible again, letting herself sink into the darkness, trying to go unseen.

"I know you're here," Rose Tyler said mockingly, an invisible presence now stalking her through the hot countryside. Clara was sweating quite a bit already. She held her breath, kept melting through the trees. "I can find you with the time vortex, you know." Rose's voice now came from a completely different place, somewhere behind her, making her jump and whirl around. But she was still faced with nothing.

Footsteps to her left, the ghost of a shadow, Rose spoke from the opposite direction: "This game of cat and mouse is quite fun." Clara turned to look and saw her, eyes gold, image burning brightly, and whirled around to try and run the other way. But Rose was there, as well, teleporting instantaneously, and she swung her fist through the air and Clara barely managed to duck in time. Behind her head, Rose's knuckles tore a tree apart and sent the trunk falling down. Clara side-stepped it and realised she wasn't phasing, she tripped over a branch. Rose noticed and immediately she was grabbed from behind, one hand on the top of her head and one on her chin, like Rose might break her neck.

The panic of being about to die (again) meant Clara's teleportation finally came into play, and she was dragged by her own volition into the clearing that had just been made by the fallen tree. Rose wasn't happy about Clara escaping.

"Why do you want to kill me?" Clara asked.

"Because I hate you."

"I've never done anything to you!" she protested, seeing if, against all odds, reasoning with Rose might actually work.

"You've done enough!" Rose shouted, running to punch Clara again. But Clara wasn't so lucky with her teleporting this time, and Rose's fist connected with her face and she was blinded by dazzling lights again, and thrown into water and mud and sharp objects, drenched from a rainstorm immediately.

Teleported again, undoubtedly, and now it felt like she had been shot in the side of her head. Somebody lifted her up out of the mud, and for a split-second she saw it was Rose, who threw her across whatever plane they were on until she landed in more mud. To her right there was an explosion, and she could hear gunfire, and men yelling, and could see smoke and hear shrill shells. The explosion's force pushed her enough so that she could get back to her feet as Rose, yelling, came for her again.

This time she managed to teleport herself, was wrenched across a muddy battlefield, stumbling when she arrived somewhere behind Rose Tyler. Rose was furious that Clara kept evading her, and truthfully Clara had no idea how she was managing it with the pain in the side of her head, like her skull had been split. Hell, maybe her skull _had_ been split. Her left ear still rang from the punch, so much she barely noticed a rifle bullet whoosh past her. Another explosion nearby and she saw silhouetted bodies thrown up from the g. Somewhere, someone yelled that they were stuck in barbed wire. Clara thought it must be World War One.

"Rose, I think you need to calm down – you don't really want me dead," Clara said, wobbly on her feet.

"The more you run away the more I really _do_ want you dead," Rose said angrily, through gritted teeth. She looked like she was about to run at Clara, when a volley of machine gun fire ripped between them, the shock sending Clara staggering backwards. That was when she decided her best course of action was to just run, try and run through No Man's Land, an unknown battleground presumably somewhere in France. So she turned the other way and tried to sprint, but was bogged down in the deep mud and the heavy rain from above; Clara was soaked to her skin, going from much too hot to practically freezing in a matter of seconds.

In a gold shimmer, Rose appeared in front of her, eyes ablaze, and Clara barely managed to sidestep, diverting her course to be running elsewhere. Towards the British side or the German side, she hadn't a clue, but she'd take enemy soldiers over the Bad Wolf any day.

But she tripped, again, caught her whole ankle in a barbed wire knotted together in the dirt, a dead body tangled among it and torn into at least a dozen pieces. She phased right through it, dragged herself along the floor, but when she got back to her feet and once again made herself tangible so that she wouldn't just sink through the mud, her arm was grabbed from behind. Rose.

She was flung around in a circle and thrown slap-bang into a solid wall, in a completely different room, in the daytime. Nor were they alone when they appeared now, or ignored by soldiers with more important things to pay attention to. There was a whole host of regal-looking people as Rose went for Clara again and Clara ducked her arm after getting up from where she had been on the floor, blasting Rose from behind with telekinesis and sending _her_ crashing somewhere for a change. A woman screamed.

"I demand to know who these people are! They are perhaps trying to commit treason!"

Clara was startled, " _Treason_?" she exclaimed. Rose's head had been forced through the plaster, and she appeared to be – at least for the moment – stuck. Clara was panting, and she was filthy and damp.

"You are ghastly people," said the woman who had spoken before, a very short woman perched on what _must_ be a throne, with an oversized crown on and everything. A familiar looking woman. Clara had to squint.

"Holy shit," Clara said, and practically everyone in their present company gasped.

"What kind of vagabonds are you who will utter profanities and appear, so unkempt, in front of the Queen?" Rose freed her head from the wall.

"Are you Queen Victoria?" Clara, star-struck asked. Could it be? She had been transported now right into the middle of Queen Victoria's throne room? A young Victoria, too. Rose ran at her again and, predictably, caught her off-guard. She grabbed Clara by the neck and lifted her off her feet, then slammed her against the wall. It took all of Clara's reserves of telekinesis to battle Rose's superstrength as Rose tried to tighten her hand around Clara's neck, holding her nearly a foot off the ground.

"You could kill me in a second," Rose said, "Just look how you're managing to stop me from crushing you."

"I'm not going to kill you," Clara said slowly, hoarsely. _Kill_ Rose? The thought hadn't even crossed her mind. She hadn't even tried to really _injure_ Rose; she was just trying to escape this whole time.

"Who speaks of murder in my throne room!?" the Queen demanded, actually getting up off her throne (which didn't do much for her height at all) to object.

"Then you're going to die, Clara," Rose said, "The only reason I haven't made you cease to exist is to make you suffer first."

"Do you think Her Majesty over there looks a bit like me?" Clara asked.

"When will you stop being so in love with yourself!?" Rose used all of her strength, apparently made furious by Clara being overt about her sexuality (which always seemed to get on Rose's nerves a bit, how she sometimes, _occasionally_ , hardly _ever_ , talked about girls), to draw back her free hand and curl it into a fatal fist. The world slipping into bullet time, Clara had a long moment to react and felt herself being pulled elsewhere by her reflexive teleportation. But Rose saw the black wisps begin to curl off her shoulders, and as Clara teleported, as Rose's hand sailed through the space where Clara's head had just been, Rose did, too.

The result was another quick flit through time and space, but this time, a bit like the first time, they materialised separately. Some of the quaintness of the environment stayed, but the daylight had turned, again, to darkness, and Clara landed on something soft that she soon recognised as a four poster bed. Scrambling around, she saw no telling traces of gold dust in the air, no sign of Rose Tyler appearing in that small room. She was still breathing deeply, her heartbeat wild in her ears after nearly being crushed to death in front of the Queen, when she realised this bed was not unoccupied.

Clara glanced over her shoulder and saw there was some random girl in the bed, while Clara was just on top of it and getting mud and moisture and mess all over the crisp linen. Fearing that the girl would scream and alert Rose to where she was, if Rose had not accidentally landed herself elsewhere, Clara made a lunge and covered this woman's mouth with her dirty hand.

"Shh," she breathed, kneeling on the sheets, trying to listen out for London-accented jeering coming her way. "I'm not going to hurt you," she said, still looking about the room, desperate to figure out how close Rose was. She spied a whole lot of paper and empty ink bottles on a nearby writing desk in the corner. The girl mumbled underneath Clara's hand. "I said shh! You can't make any noise, okay? Someone's trying to kill me." And then this woman, whoever she was, proceeded to shamelessly lick Clara's muddy palm, and Clara reeled away in disgust.

"Who's trying to kill you?" they asked urgently, apparently unfazed, "How did you get here?"

"It's complicated," Clara whispered, wiping her hand on the muddied hem of her skirt, surprised this unknown didn't scream. The woman said something else, but Clara was too busy trying to somehow locate Rose, wishing she had Rory's super-hearing. How long was this chase to go on for? This 'fight?'

"Clara?" the stranger interrupted her thoughts by addressing her by name, reaching up a hand to touch her cheek and make her meet their gaze. But Clara, still alert and full of adrenaline, didn't like this woman knowing her name when she hadn't told her, and grabbed her hand out of the air.

"How do you know my name?" she hissed, and the woman's brow creased, a look of hurt in her face.

"You're being ridiculous. It's me."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Clara demanded under her breath, and they didn't speak, "I'm running for my life here, so the least you could do is explain who the hell you are." The woman pulled her hand free of Clara's grip.

"I haven't seen you for months, and this is the greeting I get?" she questioned, "This isn't one of your 'pranks' is it?" She said the word 'pranks' as though it was unfamiliar.

" _What_?" The woman glared. "I'm sorry, but I don't know who you are, alright? What year is this?"

"It's 1805," she answered stiffly, "Didn't you come to see me?"

"How many times do I have to-"

She gasped and her eyes widened at Clara's left arm.

"What's that monstrosity!?" she exclaimed, speaking of the bandages, presumably. Clara frowned.

"Nothing, an electrical burn – do you have electricity in-"

"No, _that_ ," she surprised Clara by grabbing her hand, in a way like she may have taken Clara's hand a hundred times before, and pointing out to Clara her own wedding ring.

"My wedding ring is not a monstrosity!"

"You got _married_? It can't have been that long – you still look so young! Why do you always look so young? You're not…" she paused, and Clara didn't speak, still paying more attention to listening for Rose, "…not to _me_ , are you?" It took Clara a moment to realise that this stranger was asking if they were married. She stared. "You're always telling me that it's ordinary when you come from-"

"Sorry, 'when?' And what's ordinary – a girl and… I'm confused. Who are you?"

"My word – how can you still pretend not to know me? This joke isn't very funny, Clara. I can't be from your future because you would have told me about a marriage before, but if I was from your past you would recognise me right away – your Jane," she said. This woman knew she was a time traveller!?

" _My_ Jane? Jane who?"

"Jane _Austen_ , of course, Clara Oswald," she said, smiling. And in a whirlwind Clara was being kissed, and she was more taken aback by this moment than the shells in the First World War and the machine guns trying to take off her head, even running into Queen Victoria – because who _cared_ about Rose Tyler anymore when _Jane-freaking-Austen_ had her mouth pressed on Clara's? Clara was so stunned that she didn't even remember she was married, despite it _just_ being pointed out. Not until there was a crash and she was wrenched away from Jane Austen (seriously! _Jane Austen_! THE Jane Austen!) with somebody's fingers clasped around her throat, half lifting her off the bed. Jane shrieked with fright and Clara's eyes found Rose's, golden and furious, glowering at her from a hole in the wall above the bed she had just made with her fist. And now she was trying to choke Clara (again.)

"You don't deserve the Doctor if you're going to cheat with every slag who throws herself at you," Rose said. Now, insulting Clara was one thing, if she had called _Clara_ a slag, Clara wouldn't care in the slightest. But _Jane Austen_? That wasn't on.

" _She_ kissed _me_ ," Clara struggled to defend herself, clawing at Rose's arm to try and pull her off.

"I'll _crush_ you," Rose said through gritted teeth, and Clara felt Rose using all of her strength, more strength than she had used so far at all, _really_ trying to kill her now. Clara scrunched up her face as she attempted to resist with her telekinesis, using more of her psychic powers than she had ever had to before.

"Your nose!" Jane Austen exclaimed as Clara felt her face grow hot and wet, and tasted blood on her lips (though she would rather taste Jane Austen.) Her nose was bleeding through the effort of keeping herself alive; she felt like her eyes might explode out of their sockets. Rose made a roaring noise with anger and dragged Clara so that she slammed into the wall.

But rather than feel her whole body tear through it she instead found herself floating just before impact. Rose had teleported them again, to another new place, and Clara could hardly keep all these locations straight in her mind (but Clara couldn't keep much of anything straight in _her_ mind.) It was very bright though, by comparison to Jane Austen's boudoir in the middle of the night. She saw Rose before she paid attention to much else, but Rose hadn't really thought through what she was doing enough and was drifting away, flailing, down a corridor. An odd corridor, though – every single wall was covered with machinery and gadgets and devices; it was like being in her sister's laboratory.

"Who the hell are you!?" somebody demanded of her, and she looked the other way, kind of rolling forwards very slowly. At the other end, Rose Tyler still struggled. Clara turned and saw two people there floating, like they'd just been using two of the oddly-placed laptops fastened to wall brackets, hair everywhere. Blots of red floated around in the air around her.

"Uh…" Clara said, finally putting together in her jarred state that she was in zero gravity. Rose's momentum trying to drag Clara through a wall must have thrown her off down the other end of the ship.

"You just appeared!" the second of the two people asked. The first who had spoken was a woman, the second was a man, and she didn't really have enough time to pick out details aside from that. They were astronauts, she assumed – she wasn't too big on spaceships, but whatever this was, it wasn't quite as state of the art as she was generally used to being the Doctor's wife.

"I'll murder you for this!" Rose yelled

"I didn't bloody do anything!" Clara yelled, 'bloody' being the right word; she was bleeding from her head where Rose had punched her when they'd still been on the _Valiant_ , bleeding from muddy wounds on her ankle from barbed wire that hadn't had a chance to heal yet, and still bleeding from her nose. She must look a mess.

"How the _fuck_ did you two get onto the ISS!?" the woman shouted. Oh, so that was where they were, the International Space Station. Her head hurt even more being dragged into this oxygenated environment where she didn't know which way was up. To say she lived in space, she didn't spend an awful lot of time in 0G.

"Didn't NASA ever teach you that the F word is bad?" Clara questioned. They just stared at her. Rose kind of roared and tore some probably very important piece of apparatus from the wall in her fury, and then threw it at Clara. She didn't know a lot about gravity, but she knew that when there wasn't any of it, you couldn't really throw stuff very aptly. Unless you were the kind of person with enough strength in your little finger to crush a speeding bullet. Then you definitely could, and Clara phased at the last moment so that the machine (whatever it was) sailed through her head. One of the astronauts screamed. "You can't rip a spacestation apart!"

"Watch me!" Rose said, pulling something else off the wall and throwing it even harder. It was here, when everything was floating, that telekinesis gave Clara the advantage. She shot across the corridor out of the way and crashed into the opposite wall, moving _herself_ psychically rather than the objects around her. "Why won't you die!?"

"You're just not doing a very good job of trying to kill me," Clara said. Definitely the worst thing she could have said in that situation. In fact, Rose was _still_ drifting off away from her. If she was just going to keep throwing things, Clara was sure she could very easily dodge them and wait for Project Crystal to wear off. But there were the two astronauts behind her, two very confused astronauts. She thought it was funny how they'd trained and trained for years to get into space, while all _she_ had to do was bat her eyelashes at a floppy-haired extra-terrestrial with a penchant for tweed. But despite all their training, they probably couldn't turn intangible and avoid Rose's missiles. "Rose, this place is too fragile! You could break it and kill everyone inside!" Rose finally reached the back wall of the ISS, before Clara assumed there was some other corridor leading elsewhere. Though her eyes were still golden and angry, she appeared to be thinking.

"You're right. I only want _you_ to die. These people haven't done nearly as much to wrong me as you have."

"What _have_ I done to wrong you!?"

" _Everything!_ " apparently, was what Rose thought to be a good answer. Clara actually rolled her eyes. Why should she not have a sense of humour in the face of death? She'd rather go out on a sarcastic note than a terrified one. Rose kicked herself off the wall, like she was in 100-metre dash in a swimming pool, and came at Clara with as much superstrength-force as she could manage. And Clara knew that when Rose hit her she was going to teleport them again, and that to try and save the ISS and the astronauts within from destruction, she had to let her do it. So she didn't move out of the way at all, she was immediately winded as Rose grabbed her at sixty miles an hour in the confines of a space-pod, and then she was falling.

Daylight spilled out of the world, and she definitely wasn't in space anymore. Clara was in a clear, blue sky, falling like a rock, flailing wildly in the air. Rose had thrown her upon their arrival in this new locale, and now she was looking around to see that she had a long way to go until she hit tarmac and a busy road full of halted cars.

Rose Tyler appeared like a mirage above her, dove with all her strength so that Clara had to teleport up about ten metres to elongate her fall. Rose wasn't the only airborne hazard, though, there were hundreds upon hundreds of Daleks (yes, _Daleks_ ) flying through the air, a scene which she could have sworn she recognised from practically-ancient breaking-news bulletins. One of them tried to shoot her, as well, but she phased through the laser, still tumbling out of the sky.

Rose's teleporting was far more refined than Clara's, though. Clara just got vaguely out of the way of danger, Rose could pick exactly where she was going. Like a torpedo she crashed right into Clara, grabbing her and wrenching her out of the air with enough force that they shot through the window of the nearby skyscraper, shattering the glass. She rolled across the pristine floor, getting it covered in mud and blood. She had to duck out of the way of another punch.

"Where the hell are we!?" Clara demanded, " _When_ the hell are we!?"

"Canary Wharf, 2006," Rose actually answered, "And you're going to die." Wait – this couldn't be the Battle of Canary Wharf? _The_ Battle of Canary Wharf?

"Didn't _you_ die here?" Clara asked, and Rose, about to clip her jaw with her knuckles, stopped, "Isn't this the day the Doctor lost you?" Clara was holding her hands up in a meek surrender type of pose, but Rose had stopped mid-punch. Had she struck a nerve? Rose turned her gold, burning eyes to the outside world, to the platoons of Daleks flying through the sky. "…I remember this," Clara said carefully, watching Rose, "This is the year after my mother died."

"What?" Rose asked hoarsely.

"She, um… it was March… 2005… a year ago," Clara said. She didn't like talking about that. It was a hard thing to do. "Why would you bring us here, Rose? You want me to die the same place you did? You want the Doctor to lose somebody else here, on this day?" The sound of Daleks rang outside. And hadn't the Bad Wolf, this being Rose was emulating, been created out of a desire to destroy the Daleks? "We could still die here! They could shoot both of us – or the Cybermen. Or you could run into yourself, change history, cause a paradox! And what if we _did_ both die? Your desire to kill _me_ will devastate two Doctors all over again. Don't you care about him enough not to let that happen?"

"Shut up," Rose mumbled, hardly a whisper. Clara did, but Rose continued, holding her hands to her head like she had a migraine, closing her eyes and hunching over, "Shut up, shut up, shut up!" And then she gasped and fell to her knees. When Rose opened her eyes again they were brown.

"Are you okay!?" Clara asked her urgently, crouching down opposite, getting only as close as she dared. Rose stared around, saw the Daleks, recognised the time and the place.

"Oh my god… oh my god, we can't be here – how did we get here?"

" _You_ brought us here."

"Why is your nose bleeding? And the side of your head – blimey, you look like someone's hit you with a cricket bat," Rose said.

"Because you've been trying to kill me for about fifteen minutes!" Clara said.

"I've _what_?"

"Klein drugged you, made you go crazy, come on, get up, we have to go," Clara said, standing up herself, "You have to teleport us back to the _Valiant_ so we can stop him."

"Right… right, yeah… yeah. Were you saying something before? I thought you said something about… 2005?"

"Nothing, doesn't matter. What matters is Klein, so hurry up and get us out of here."


	33. Heroes & Cons: Curtain Call

**AN: And here it is! The LAST chapter of the Manifest arc that's been ongoing for almost the entire fic, since December 2013. Thank god.**

 _Heroes & Cons: Curtain Call_

The hangar of the _Valiant Mk.2_ was a mess. Debris was scattered all over and an enormous hole had been melted through the floor. Amy and Rory Williams were there playing mind games with the enigmatic and evil Dr Klein and his five indistinguishable duplicates; Adam Mitchell and Clyde Langer were struggling to think of a way to crawl back out of the aircraft's bowels together. It was Donna Noble and Mickey Smith who returned first.

Bright blue light punctured a hole through the fabric of reality, spreading out into an opening big enough for Donna to fall straight out of, landing hard on the metal. The legion of Kleins and the Ponds all turned to see what all the fuss was about, as Donna saw something above her and shrieked, rolling out of the way just in time for Mickey to come tumbling out second. Both of them were soaking wet and fuzzy sounds of screams drifted out of the blue-edged portal hanging in the air, before it closed like the blink of an eye.

"What happened to you two!?" Amy exclaimed, Rory too confused still by Project Crystal and Amy manipulating his mind to do much other than stare. The Kleins became agitated by two people they obviously didn't intend to come back, well, _coming back._

"She threw a plane at me! And then we were on the _Titanic_ – we nearly drowned!" Mickey said, scrambling to get away from Donna, though Donna wasn't under the influence of Klein's drug anymore. It clearly didn't affect people for as long as he thought it would. Fifteen minutes would still be enough for plenty of chaos to be cause by the Manifests living in the cities, though, Manifests with powers far more damaging than water-breathing and seeing the immediate future and superhearing.

"Did he say _Titanic_!?" Clyde Langer shouted up from the hole in the ground. Below deck, Adam Mitchell's foot was so injured he could hardly manage to walk, let alone clamber up busted steam pipes to get back onto the main level. That was assuming there even _were_ pipes in good places to make footholds, and that they were cold enough to actually touch – which they were not.

They were joined then by more returners. Two golden shapes appeared like they were made from dust, stepping out of nowhere and into the present _Valiant_ again. It was less dramatic than how this pair had left, with Rose Tyler clean tackling Clara Oswald out of the air and out of spacetime, and they were both filthy. Rose was just muddy, but Clara had blood in her hair and around her nose, and was very gingerly putting weight on one of her feet, like it was stinging.

"Enough of this," Klein said.

"I told you – you underestimated us," Amy said, "You don't know who any of us are, and all that power you thought we unleashed on each other is gonna be unleashed on you in a minute." Klein, the Main Klein, laughed coldly.

"You think that scares me? I can make twice as many of me than the lot of you," Klein said, "Eight miscreants, sixteen Kleins."

Lightning struck the inside of the _Valiant_ – at least, that was what it looked like to people who didn't see in light-speed. A streak of horizontal electricity came zooming into their midst, closely followed by a blur of shape, both of which quickly reformed into humans – Esther Drummond and Rani Chandra.

"Did you say eight of us? Better make that ten," Rani said, looking around. Then she frowned. "Where's Clyde?"

"I'm down here!" Clyde shouted up from where he stood, supporting the enfeebled, chronic nerd Adam Mitchell, keeping him upright in case one of the others cared to come down and drag the pair of them back up so that they could actually _help_ in the fight that was going to break out any minute.

"What are you holding?" Clara asked Rani who, sure enough, was holding something that looked a little bit like a gun in one hand. After their earlier, shared, unpleasant experience with Klein's jet injectors, though, it only took a few seconds to figure out that that was what she was holding. Another injector. This one filled with bright blue liquid easily recognisable as Oswin's cure.

"It's the cure for Manifesthood," Rani said, speaking to Klein directly, "One shot from this and you're gone, Klein, no way for you to become the most powerful man in the world anymore." And now Klein _was_ getting worried.

"Only if you can find the right one," he said. A fair point. They had come too late to see him duplicate himself, when they had arrived on the scene there had already been six Kleins putting the finishing touches on their masterplan. And he just had to go and complicate things even more, when all six of him flickered like images on a television with bad reception. Then the Kleins split apart into twelve, multiplying like germs. Rani didn't have enough cure to zip around and give each of them a shot from the injector, it was all or nothing.

"Well then," Rose said, "I suppose we'll just have to pummel all of you until there's only one left."

"Good luck trying," one of the many Kleins said. And that was when he revealed his _second_ power. It was nothing fancy, but neither was Rose's superstrength or Rory's invisibility. It got the job done. He raised his hand straight at Rose and, before she knew what was coming, a blast of pure concussive energy shot from his palm and blasted straight into her. Rose was knocked off her feet and sent skidding back a few metres, and after that, the first blow had been struck. There was no room for peacekeeping. The Doctor would be ashamed. Good thing there weren't any Doctors there.

Down on the engine deck below, though, Clyde and Adam were still trapped, unable to do anything to aid their cohorts and just listening to punches and explosions and funny, whooshing sounds from above. While this was all happening though, something else was going on, elsewhere on the _Valiant_ , which was free of any HCC staff aside from Klein himself. He had cleared out all the Hazard Control Corps' personnel before taking the _Valiant_ up; aircraft were advanced enough that one hardly needed training to fly them. And half a dozen didn't needed training to fly them, either. Why hire an army of un-augmented humans when he could just spawn an army out of himself?

The _Valiant Mk.2_ had, until then, been hovering harmlessly just a few metres above the Irish Sea, but now it was beginning to journey on its pre-plotted course. A course which – though none of them, as of yet, knew it – went straight over London. And they were all too distracted fighting Klein to notice.

Rose was throwing punches at whatever enemy was closest, hitting the Klones so hard they exploded into bright nothingness. Who was to say the _real_ Klein was even in the room with them? Esther flitted left and right, surprising those who hadn't seen her pull off her electrical tricks before; Rani ran around hitting their adversaries at a hundred miles an hour and sending them flying around all over the place; Donna was screaming every which way, Clara was telekinetically blasting and turning intangible to avoid getting hit. Rory and Amy were, wisely, staying out of the action, while Mickey could do nothing except hope his Torchwood combat training was enough to battle off Klein's explosive blasts that kept throwing him onto the floor.

But the Kleins kept making more of themselves, all of them able to duplicate until the hangar was swarming with his doppelgängers (and they thought hanging out with Clara's Echoes was bad.) The _Valiant_ was getting higher and higher, escaping the notice of everybody there except for Adam and Clyde, who were acutely aware of the engines around them increasing their output. Above deck Mickey ducked a punch from a Klein, slugged him around the face until he fell to the floor and burst apart into smoke before he hit the metal. Then he glanced to his right and met Donna's eyes.

"LOOK OUT!" she yelled, but she yelled it a bit too much. Mickey saw a Klein about to hit him over the back of the head, but then the power of Donna's wail hit the both of them and he was taken off his feet. That Klein evaporated as well, so did all of them who got hit too hard, only for the smoke to collect around their feet and slide away to reform again into Klein and his concussive hive-mind.

Mickey was falling, and thought he would hit the deck, but he didn't, he just kept going. Adam and Clyde were taken hugely by surprise when Mickey came crashing into the engine room where they were stuck.

"What are you two doing hiding!?" Mickey demanded, scrambling to get back to his feet.

"We're not hiding, we just can't get back up, it's too high," Adam explained, "And I've hurt my foot."

The same time they were having this argument about how to return to the surface and the fight, Esther Drummond was speeding around, viewing everything in slow-motion to try and deduce which one of them was the _real_ Klein. She would be at one end of the room, then the other, then the middle, bringing up shock bubbles and flitting to safety at every opportunity, occasionally forced to zap one of the Klones. Rani was doing a similar thing, running between, popping Klein after Klein, but they just kept reforming and multiplying. By that point there must have been over thirty of him and now, with Mickey thrown elsewhere, only seven of them.

She thought of something else to do, and ran full-speed (not _full_ speed, of course, but much too fast for anybody to do anything about it) to grab one of the Kleins, electrocuting a few as she went past just by the amount of lightning spinning around her at her velocity. She tackled him around the middle like Rose had tackled Clara, all five-feet and one-inch of her, and knocked him down through the hole in the floor as well, joining Adam, Clyde and Mickey.

They were shocked – not literally – by her appearing there with the speed and power of a real-life thunderbolt, scorch marks on the floor where her feet had connected with the metal, a Klone in her grasp. She threw Klein against the wall, not knowing if he was real or not, and stood on tiptoes to threaten him with a fistful of lightning.

"Which one's the real one!?" Esther demanded, not knowing if he would tell her or not. Now it was just six people above fighting against the army of Klones, Rani still struggling to determine which was which, Donna still disorientating all of them with her screaming. Rose and Clara were actually working together, though, Clara throwing Kleins telekinetically in Rose's direction, Rose kicking them into smoke as they came towards her. But in the long run it was no good, like fighting ghosts. Ghosts who shot energy out of their hands that threw Clara to the other side of the room so she smacked against the wall and slumped down uselessly.

"Why should I tell you?" Klein said to Esther, then he laughed, "It doesn't matter what you do, anyway, haven't you noticed?"

"Noticed what?" Mickey, staying behind Esther and keeping his distance from her electricity, asked.

"The _Valiant_ is flying. It's locked into autopilot; you'll never stop me now. The government who control the HCC don't even _know_ I'm a Manifest, what difference would it make if I was 'cured'? I'd still have Project Crystal, I can still control them all," he explained.

And all of this Rory Williams could hear, him invisible and uselessly lurking at the side-lines of the fight, sometimes trying to hit any of the Kleins who strayed near him as they threw their concussive blasts this way and that. Clara was getting pummelled quite badly, but she was probably used to it. Rose grabbed two of them and smashed their heads together, reducing them both to dust. Rory looked out of the back of the hangar, still open from where Donna had lobbed Mickey earlier, where Rani had left to chase Esther to the ends of the Earth. But he couldn't see the ocean anymore, just the clouds. They were now miles off the ground, and clearly moving very quickly.

In the valve room Esther sent a thousand volts through the Klein at her fingertips, him exploding like the other Klones.

"He's right," Esther said, "We've been wrong this whole time – the real Klein probably isn't even up there! This is a distraction."

"You can't give up so easily," Adam said.

"Says you, Mr Gammy Foot," Clyde, still holding him up, remarked, "Or should I say, _Cryolator_?"

"Don't call me that…" Adam mumbled. Clyde was amused. They all winced when Donna screamed above.

"Cryolator? That's the name of the rare freeze gun in Vault 111 in _Fallout 4_ ," she said.

"Yeah, alright, you're both nerds, but that's really not important right now," Mickey said. He saw somebody get thrown across the hole they were trapped in, but whoever it was (it was Donna) landed on the other side, rather than within it. "What's the plan? Do we have a plan?"

"Crash the _Valiant_ ," Esther declared.

"We can't crash the _Valiant_ , we're _on_ the _Valiant_ ," Clyde argued.

"So we'll just let him cover London in his Project Crystal, then? We'll find a way out, but the _Valiant_ and all the Project Crystal has to be destroyed. I'm sure between the four of us we can figure out a way to blow something up."

Everything that had happened throughout the day was really taking its toll on those of them still in the hangar itself. Clara was woozy, vastly outnumbered, her head throbbing from the effort of using so much telekinesis. This was why she tried not to use it to do 'big' things, because it was dangerous and exhausting. But now she was having to try and make forcefields and throw people away from her, and her teleportation reserves had dried up.

Donna didn't know how to fight, and screaming again and again and again was becoming harder and harder and harder. She couldn't punch or kick well, could only try and turn around fast enough to yell in the general direction of all her assailants. She wished she had enough mastery over her portals to bring something _else_ through from another dimension. A second aeroplane would be good, perhaps. Just as she was thinking of trying to bring a meteorite through, but worrying about the state of the _Valiant_ if she did, there was an explosion from somewhere beneath them.

The whole _Valiant_ rocked and on the other side of the room Amy, who kept seeing blips of the future and was trying (and failing) to warn her friends about when they were going to get hit and where the hits would come from, nearly fell over. A Klein staggered towards her and in a panic she grabbed his arm, intending to push him away from her, or maybe even hit him. At her touch, though, he froze up, and his eyes rolled back into his head. In her panic, she realised she had used her power.

She quickly ordered, still holding onto his elbow, " _Fight against your other selves_." And lo and behold, he did, holding up both of his hands to shoot a tremendous force in the direction of two of his doppelgängers who were about to go after Rose, momentarily too distracted by another Klone to defend herself. Could Amy turn more of them? Even the odds now that they were apparently disappearing, since Mickey and Esther had apparently vanished?

A second explosion from below. The entire _Valiant_ tipped backwards. Some of them tripped and begin to slide towards the hangar's open rear, the Turned-Klein blasting three more of his duplicates right out into the sky as the ship righted itself. But now, outside, she could see plumes of black smoke trailing behind them through the clouds and the distant sea.

"What's going on!?" Clara shouted, wobbling.

"Why blow up your own ship!? You'll kill us all if it crashes!" Rose shouted at the nearest Klein.

"This isn't me," he said.

"It's you," another one added.

"Your friends are trying to bring down the _Valiant_ ," a third finished. The third one Rose subsequently decked.

A flash of blue light and a whole bunch of Klones were stunned, electricity pulsing and arcing between until they all simultaneously exploded into black clouds. Behind them stood Esther Drummond, returned to the main group, shouting for Rani, who quickly appeared by her side.

"It's no use, I have no idea which one of them it is," Rani said to Esther.

"Are you trying to crash the _Valiant_!?" Donna yelled at her.

"It doesn't matter if we cure him," Mickey said, clambering out of the hole on a very bumpy staircase made out of rapidly-melting ice Adam Mitchell had eventually managed to scrape together. Clyde was still downstairs, trying to blow up as much machinery as possible, creating energy like mini nuclear bombs in the palms of his hands and throwing it chaotically at the engines. "The _Valiant_ will disperse Project Crystal over London no matter what we do to Klein, we have to bring it down."

Clara went to check if Adam Mitchell was okay, freeing up Mickey, who had taken over helping Adam along after Clyde had gone off on his own mission.

"You're not supposed to be able to destroy the _Valiant_!" Donna argued.

"And you're not supposed to be able to sink the _Titanic_ ," Mickey countered Donna. Esther had become the one allowing them all to talk to each other, hurling lightning bolts at any and all of the advancing Kleins, the others wondering when her aim with those things got so good. Sometimes Clara would have to help with a wave of psychokinetic energy to push back the hordes of Klones, keeping them away from her and the injured Adam. "Rani – you have to get me to wherever the controls for this thing are so I can override the autopilot." Rani nodded.

"I'll go find them." Adam was nearly knocked over from the force of her running off, just a streak of colour bashing down doors in her search for the _Valiant_ 's controls. Another explosion, courtesy of Clyde, below, as he went around and made all the individual engines go kaput. Then red warning lights began to flash and shrill sirens began to ring.

"You don't know what you're doing!" Klein yelled, one of him, all the duplicates now distracted by the destruction of the _Valiant_ and their precious, brainwashing cargo along with it.

"No, we never really seem to," Amy admitted, losing her hold over the Turned-Klein in the chaos.

Remarkably, the clones were still trying to fight, still shooting at them and flinging Rose into one of the metal walls, her crashing into the invisible Rory nobody even knew was there. He groaned and turned visible again underneath her as she struggled to her feet, teleporting right in front of the Klein who had shot her, crushing his head between his hands until he was just smoke running through her fingers.

"I've found the controls," Rani whizzed back from her search, skidding on the metal and leaving hot scorch marks behind her. And speaking of hot scorch marks, there was a male scream from the melted hole in the floor and another explosion, this one catapulting Clyde Langer back out of the engineering deck where Rose had to catch him.

"Let's go," Mickey said to Rani, who was briefly distracted checking if Clyde was alright. Smoke and fire was spitting out of the hole now, the entire deck underneath them burning as the engines exploded. Mickey nearly punched Rani to knock her out of her trance, but she realised before he needed to.

"Get back to the Sanctum," Rani ordered, "We'll meet you there, don't wait for us, I can bring us back safely." Then she grabbed Mickey, whisking the both of them away from the larger group to wherever these controls were. The _Valiant_ was really coming down fast now.

"Well how do we do _that_!?" Donna exclaimed.

"Make a portal!" Rose shouted to her.

"Right!" Donna agreed, remembering only when prompted that portals through the multiverse were her speciality. That and screaming. But the Klones were still coming, probably wanting to stop them from escaping, to force them all to die together in the flaming wreckage of the _Valiant Mk.2_.

Mickey nearly threw up from the velocity once Rani let him go in a dark, hot room, hot from the fires burning below and dark from smoke curling up through the floor. He saw panels and computers and all sorts of fancy controls and went straight for them, but found himself grabbed from behind by someone very obviously trying to break his neck.

"Let him go!" Rani shouted, and Mickey's assailant was suddenly gasping for breath and making an odd, gurgling sound. He released Mickey, who stumbled around to see that it was Klein, another of him, but this one was alone, lurking away at the controls. When Klein stopped trying to kill Mickey, Rani freed him from the grip of her nasalkinesis.

"He must be the real one," Mickey said.

In the hangar, Donna was desperately trying to make a portal. Little breaches kept growing between her palms, but a Klone always came out of nowhere and made them flicker and die, the _Valiant_ heading downwards in the air. There couldn't be more than a few minutes until they collided with the ocean.

"Donna! Hurry up!" Amy shouted at her, possibly trying to use her persuasion, but persuasion wasn't going to work when it came to Donna making her portals. Rose was still punching, Esther still electrifying, Adam now managing to freeze the Kleins all the way through until they shattered into silvery dust; and all the while Donna was panicking too much to be efficient. They _really_ needed to actually practice with their powers.

When Mickey and Rani realised this Klein was _the_ Klein, the original sin, it took a split-second for Rani – who had been carrying that jet injector holding the blue-coloured cure around this whole time – to grab him again and stick him right in the jugular with the needle. Klein's eyes lit up bright silver, all of them rather than just the irises like in the other non-corrupted Manifests. Injecting the cure meant it worked almost instantly, it didn't take a while to kick in, like it did when it was drunk.

Rose's fist was about to connect with yet another Klein, all of them getting exhausted now from the constant, endless fighting, when he vanished in a puff of smoke before she even managed to touch him.

"What the-?" she gasped, wondering if somebody else had ended this Klone's 'life.' All around them, though, the Kleins were backing away, were holding their heads in their hands, until one by one they were all evaporating into black nothing.

"They must have found and cured the real one," Clara realised, "Rani was still carrying the injector." Now all they had to worry about was the fact the _Valiant_ was going to crash and blow up and kill them all with it.

"Donna!" Rory pleaded with her.

And then the blue-tinged portal, black and white, static-y images fuzzing around in its centre, burst into life in front of Donna Noble, and the crackling, panicked form of Luke Smith was visible on the other side. That was the way to safety; it _was_ called the 'Sanctum', after all.

"Your plans are over, after more than ten years, the Manifests will be free," Rani said to Klein. Mickey had his palms pressed against the central computer screen, the largest one, deducing that the biggest was probably the most important. There, through the machines, he could see the _Valiant's_ course plot, and cut off the ship's remaining, struggling engines without any resistance from the encoded protocols designed to _stop_ people from just switching it off in mid-air.

There was silence, just for a few moments, until the enormous, heavy ship went into free-fall.

"Get us out of here!" Mickey yelled at Rani, who grabbed both he and the dishevelled, barely-conscious Klein and took them speeding away, Mickey nearly deafened by the sonic boom Rani created in her wake.


	34. Marks of the World

_Marks of the World_

 _Clara_

Upon returning to the TARDIS, Clara had immediately had a shower to wash away all the blood and filth from her body and hair. Now she stood, woozy, her head still spinning, folding fresh laundry to put away. The Doctor was still a little out of sorts after his ailment but she thought tomorrow he might be back to his old self. She didn't like having to do their washing that day, but she didn't mind. Mostly because he promised to do the majority of the chores for the next few days as a thank you for her looking after him while he'd been ill. At present, though, he was back on the phone to his daughter, in another room somewhere. She would like him to get back soon so that he would return her mobile, but supposed it wasn't a priority. After all, who was going to text her? Her Aunt Fiona, still pestering her about her life choices and about that garden party they were still trying to make her go to? Her father wanting to talk to her about the exact same thing? She could avoid both of them.

Rani may have finally forgiven them all now that they had finally come and cleaned up their mess. The Manifests were cured, or in the process of being cured, the HCC was defunct and useless, and Klein had been passed over to Undercoll – which was apparently still around in 2029. But they hadn't stuck around for long. She enjoyed seeing Esther, though, she always liked seeing Esther. Everyone did. How could anyone really dislike Esther Drummond? It was her housemate who wasn't everybody's cup of tea (though she was definitely _Clara's_ cup of tea.) Apparently, though, Clara had some sort of issue when it came to borderline-sensual and completely accidental encounters with other women. First Thirteen, now _Jane Austen_ ; it was a good thing Sally Sparrow wasn't into her. God knew what would happen. And this Jane Austen thing was a mystery unto itself – how did they know each other? Had they been dating? Was this in Clara's future? Had her memory been wiped? Or, most likely, had Ravenwood been up to no good?

"Clara?" Someone interrupted her thoughts and she downright jumped out of her skin, dropping the skirt she had been holding back into the basket of unfolded clothes. It was Rose.

"Stay over there," Clara ordered frantically. Rose had obviously teleported straight into the room behind her, and she backed away, knocked into the sofa, tripped, and fell over the back of it. She didn't even _try_ to save herself with telekinesis. She was sick of superpowers for the day.

"I'm not going to try and kill you! What are you doing!?" Rose exclaimed, seeing Clara scramble away behind one of her own sofas and push herself against the bookshelf at the back of the room. Rose stayed there, just in front of the raised level the queen sized bed was sitting on.

"Sorry if I'm just a bit nervous about the fact you've spent half the day trying to crush my head," Clara snapped, holding up her hand to try and make Rose stay where she was - _away_. She would use her telekinesis if she had to. Maybe. It was being a bit temperamental, hadn't been working properly since they'd got back from the _Valiant_. No doubt she had overused it.

"I did text you to ask if I could speak to you," Rose said. Oh. So _that_ was who might try to get in contact with her. Not just her Aunt Fiona.

"Right. Sorry. The Doctor has my phone, he's speaking to Jenny," Clara explained, relaxing a little. It was just Rose showing up like that, out of nowhere, that unnerved her. Freaked her out. She hoped it didn't last for too long, her being a little frightened of Rose might do to her on a whim. "What do you want?"

"What are you up to?"

"Just… folding laundry… got told off for never putting the clean clothes away a while ago…" she said awkwardly. "Seriously though, what do you want? I thought you hated me? Even though – you know – I'd just like to point out I've never actually done anything to you, or said anything against you."

"Yeah. I know. Why didn't you kill me?"

" _What_? Why on Earth would I kill you, Rose?" Clara, shocked, asked.

"Well _I_ was trying to kill _you_. You barely even defended yourself, didn't hurt me at all."

"I didn't want to! I don't want to hurt anyone," Clara said, "I don't know what you have against me – though I suppose it's the same thing everyone else who's ever hated me has, which usually seems to be my personality in general – but I don't have anything against _you_. Why would I?"

"Because I'm sort of awful to you?" What was this, just Rose feeling guilty about what Project Crystal had made her do? It wasn't so bad, not really. Clara had only ended up with a mildly fractured skull, a mauled ankle and a minor brain haemorrhage.

"I mean, I don't really…" she trailed off, and then shrugged, "I guess you're entitled to have whatever opinion of me you like."

"Jenny was right about you," Rose said, more to herself than to Clara. Clara frowned.

"Why was Jenny talking about me…? With you…? Hold on – what did she say?" Clara was desperate to know what her own girlfriend thought about her. Um. Sort of girlfriend. Sort of, also, stepdaughter. What she meant was, she and Ravenwood were identical, so whatever Jenny thought about Ravenwood she probably _also_ thought about Clara.

"Oh – nothing bad. She said you have a 'heart of gold.' In so many words," Rose said, then proceeded to admit, "I asked her what she saw in you."

"Okay. So you've come to tell me I'm – what? _Not as bad as everyone thinks_? Thanks. I'm thrilled that my existence finally has your approval, Rose, I really do feel fulfilled in life all of a sudden now that I know you don't think I'm _quite_ as much of the damn antichrist as you seemed to think I was yesterday," she said resentfully. She wasn't in the mood for this, not that day. She wanted a cigarette, badly. But her husband had made her promise not to smoke in their bedroom anymore. "Finally," she continued, going back to the laundry so that she had something to do with her hands, " _Finally_ you've decided I don't _quite_ deserve to be murdered."

"I came to say sorry!"

"You don't need to say sorry! You don't need to come here and insult me by saying you've decided to put up with me without complaining – god, Rose, we've only been _living together_ for _four months_. Nearly five!" she exclaimed.

"I know you're in a bad mood because of what Oswin's done-" Rose began. Clara stopped what she was doing, dropping a pair of socks now into the plastic basket. Rose abruptly silenced when she realised Clara didn't know what she was talking about.

"What?" she asked, gritted teeth, clenched jaw.

"Uh…"

" _What_ , pray tell, has Oswin done? And how would _you_ know about it and not me?" Clara asked coldly, crossing her arms now, trying to tap into her sister's emotions while Rose spoke.

"The time vortex tells me things," Rose explained, "I don't choose what I know. Do you know how many secrets of yours I'm having to keep?" She said that like it was a burden on her, and Clara was affronted.

"Secrets of _mine_? Like what?" Clara questioned.

"Things you don't want your husband to know."

"There isn't anything I don't want him to-"

"I know about you and Thirteen," Rose said, and Clara stopped.

"There is no 'me and Thirteen.' There never was. And there won't be for god knows how long," Clara said stiffly. "What's your game? Are you trying to blackmail me with that? I'm sorry it's so hard for you to not stick your nose in other peoples' business. Do you want something from me in exchange for not telling him?"

"I'm not trying to blackmail you! You're making this really hard," Rose said pointedly.

"Making _what_ really hard?"

"What you said, earlier – I'm sorry," Rose told her, looking like she had said something incredibly meaningful and inspiring. Clara was just confused. And annoyed. And worried, about Oswin. Still a little unnerved by Rose being around her in general. Rose could tell Clara didn't know what she was talking about. "Your mother, I mean." Clara went cold.

"What _about_ my mother? You're apologising to me for something that happened eight years ago? Something you don't have anything to do with?"

"But I do have something to do with it, and you know I do, and the time vortex showed me today, and I'm sorry," Rose said. Clara could see what she was trying to do. "She died in March, didn't she?"

"…Yes."

"Don't you still have nightmares?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Clara said angrily, marching around the sofa to go towards the exit of the room, but Rose stood in front of her. "And certainly not with you, if I was going to talk about it with anyone. Just because you 'know things' about people doesn't mean you have to go bringing them up when you have no right to, okay? It is _nothing_ to do with you."

"Of course it is! If _I'd_ been faster-"

"So many people were saved last night by you and the Doctor stopping the Nestene Consciousness," Clara said, "Ellie Oswald wasn't one of them, and that's _my_ fault, not yours. It's all on me."

" _What_? How could what the Autons did be on you?" Rose questioned. Again, Clara tried to walk past her, but Rose grabbed her by her left wrist, the bandaged up one with the recent electrical burn on it, her entire arm still in wrappings.

"She didn't want to go anywhere that night but _I_ made her, and now she's dead," Clara said, "That's why it's my fault, because _I_ wanted to go shopping, because _I_ took us into the department store where one of those fucking things shot her. I might as well have shot her myself, because it's all my fault, because I was selfish. Not yours, and not the Doctor's, _mine_."

"It was the fault of the Nestene Consciousness who wanted to invade!" Rose told her. Clara just made a noise of anguish and phased through Rose, who turned to follow her, "You and her are exactly alike. She's harbouring all these injuries so that she can keep blaming herself for something that's not her fault, and so are you. Both you and Oswin have things you need to work out."

"What, with you!? You're some counsellor now are you, Rose? Some fucking guru!? You want me to bask in the wisdom of the time vortex as you stand there and you pity me – pity both of us – and act like you know everything about my life because some divine, universal fucking entity 'told you' how my mother died? Well hooray for you for achieving enlightenment! Now I have to go and talk to my sister and if I see you when I get back, maybe I won't be so restrained as I was earlier when you threw me off a skyscraper into hordes of oncoming Daleks," Clara said. It was a sliding door, the door into her bedroom, but she forced it to slam telekinetically for effect, probably infuriating the TARDIS. So much for trying not to use her powers.

"You have to stop blaming yourself," Rose said, appearing in the Bedroom Circle next to her as she headed across the hall to go straight to Adam and Oswin's rooms.

"Oh my stars – won't you piss off!?" she shouted, "Congratu-fucking-lations, Rose, you figured out that Oswin and I are the same person! You've figured out that Oswin's not very well, and that you don't think _I_ am, either! It happened eight years ago, why do you think a five minute conversation with you and the _time vortex_ is going to change anything!?"

"Because-"

"Because nothing! I told you I don't want to talk about this! You are not god, Rose, you were not given these magical abilities for a 'reason.' You vandalised the TARDIS the first time, and the second time it's because you were drugged. And all this time _I'm_ the one who's 'up myself'!?" As Clara shouted at Rose, confused people wanting to know what all the commotion was about were sticking their heads out of their doors. "You really don't have to apologise for trying to kill me, or for ridiculing me, just leave me alone!" She waved her hand and sent a wave of telekinetic energy in Rose's direction, and Rose was thrown backwards. Clara didn't have the patience to listen to Rose for a single second longer, so she phased right through the door into Oswin's room.

She walked right in on them sitting at their island in the kitchen, both staring at the door in shock. No doubt they had heard the shouting, which had mostly been Clara shouting, admittedly.

"Honey, did you honestly just yell 'congratu-fucking-lations' at Rose Tyler?" Oswin questioned. She nearly looked impressed. Adam Mitchell just looked highly concerned with the whole situation. He had a bulky device strapped onto his ankle and half of his foot. Oswin must have made good on her promise to get him a fancy brace for his sprain from Flek, and good timing, too, after he had damaged it even further that day.

"She came to tell me her amazing wisdom that I have to move on from my mother's death, because of course she has every right to talk about that, doesn't she? As if she's bestowing some dawning realisation onto me – god, she's incorrigible…" Clara mumbled. Then she met Oswin's eyes. "She came to tell me tales about you. What have you done? She made out like it would upset me." Oswin faltered when she spoke, but was interrupted by her boyfriend.

"You know, I _just_ realised that I, uh, really have to go and, um… speak to… Esther about… Echoes and… 2029…" he said awkwardly. He just wanted an excuse to leave, and until he did neither Oswin nor Clara spoke (aside from when Oswin made a passing quip where she told Adam to 'have fun two-timing her with Esther Drummond,' and he said he would, which Clara thought was weird.)

"Well?" Clara prompted her baby sister when the door slid closed behind Adam, who was finding walking a whole lot easier than he had been doing a few hours ago.

"Well nothing, Clara. You're going to shout at me. I don't want you to. I might as well just leave too."

"Why would I shout at you?"

"I know exactly what's going to happen – you'll try and lecture me, just like Flek did, just like Mitchell's been doing, and then it won't work so you'll yell, and I'll yell too and tell you you're being a hypocrite. Then eventually you'll accept that you _are_ a hypocrite and I'm just as stubborn as you are when it comes to that burn on your arm and you'll storm out of here, like you just stormed out of your own room, and we won't speak for days," Oswin told her assuredly. "Maybe you ought to just storm out right now and save yourself the trouble. You're already in a bad mood." Clara didn't say a word. She just crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. Oswin was obviously uncomfortable, and she was frightened. Frightened of Clara's wrath. Perhaps that was why Clara had not been told of this 'thing' she had done yet, while Adam and Flek both had.

"Then I won't shout at you," Clara said after taking a deep breath, "I just want to talk to you about why you're upset."

"I'd rather us not fall out two days before your birthday."

"I'm not angry at you, I'm angry at Rose for swanning into my room and pretending like I want to hear what she has to say," Clara explained, going to sit next to Oswin in the chair Adam had just left without pushing it under. She knocked something to the floor when she did, though. It clattered, and she glanced down to see what it was.

"No, don't – leave it, Clara, it's not-"

"Why have you got a cane, Oswin?" Clara asked her, picking it up. It was no wooden stick, either, it was a real fancy sort of device. Oswin's handiwork, she could tell. Had the same white, sleek aesthetics as everything else Oswin had built lately. Oswin went to snatch it off her, and was surprised when Clara let her have it and didn't put up a fight. Clara finally sat down. "I'm sorry we haven't talked much since everything that happened with Kent…"

"It's fine. He's cured now. He can't hurt anyone anymore," Oswin said, not looking at her.

"But something's the matter and I haven't noticed because I've been too focused on myself these last few weeks, ever since Thirteen left," Clara said. Oswin sighed. "Will you talk to me? I promise I won't get angry or shout at you."

"It's nothing, Clara." Clara didn't say a word, she just watched Oswin and waited. She thought Oswin would have to tell her eventually what was going on. "I… have these… scars. On my leg."

"Your right leg?" Oswin nodded. "I've never seen scars on your leg before."

"You didn't have scars on your arm two weeks ago," Oswin pointed out, nodding at Clara's bandages again. Then Oswin crossed her own arms and slouched down on them on the tabletop. "Rose is right. We're more similar than we realise sometimes. Flek wouldn't let the Spores amputate both of my legs four years ago. They managed to save the other. But 'save' is putting it loosely, there weren't very good medical supplies on Horizon at the time, not for things like skin grafts and bone reconstruction."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that the bomb didn't just take my left leg clean off without leaving a single mark on the rest of me, that's impossible. It nearly took both of them. The other one… they sort of… scrambled to 'put it back together.' It's not pleasant to look at, you don't want to see it," Oswin explained. "I just didn't like pretending I don't have these injuries and I don't understand why everybody is making such a big deal out of it. Jenny said herself, the day we caught Kent – scars are like wrinkles. They show experience. If Jenny were here she'd understand…"

"I think the issue is that you're making it hard for you to walk and get around," Clara said softly.

"I already did that when I blew myself up. People shouldn't be able to just erase those sorts of decisions, or mistakes. Don't you think it's wrong for us to have the power to do that?" Oswin asked.

"…I don't know. I'd have died a long time ago if we didn't, if there were no nanogenes or Miracle Medicine," Clara said.

"You have a purpose. You have Echoes to look after. What do I have? I don't have anything. No reason for me to be given an afterlife when so many other people aren't," Oswin complained.

"Maybe you just have to _find_ your purpose? There must be something you can do with that brain of yours, Os. You could do so much good in the world if you put your mind to it," Clara said, "And if not… maybe your purpose is to show me I have to protect my Echoes."

"You have your burn to do that now. I don't need to be here."

"Well I want you here, mangled leg or no," Clara told her, "I'm sorry I've been off for a while, what with Thirteen and Kent and having to try and help my husband get along with his daughter again. But if you're going through some stuff then you're back to being my number one priority, like you always are. And always should be."

"Why should I be?" Oswin asked, sitting up from where she had been slouching.

"Well, why _shouldn't_ you? I made you, and I should be doing everything in my power to make sure you're alright," Clara said, and then Oswin proceeded to fling her arms around Clara in a hug.

"Are you proud of me?" she asked, sounding harrowed, like she was scared of the answer to this question. Clara hugged her back.

"Of course I am, I couldn't be more proud of my favourite daughter," Clara told her truthfully, feeling guilty deep down for so blatantly picking favourites out of her Echoes. As long as Oswin felt better, though. "So – you saw Flek today? Is that what you said earlier?" Oswin relinquished her.

"Yeah. I went to Eslilia. She told me off for giving myself my shrapnel wounds back, and her fiancée slapped me," Oswin said.

"Claressa _slapped_ you!?"

"She hates being called Claressa."

"I'll call her what I like. Why did she slap you?"

"Because I… tested this invention-thing on her. I can't tell you about it. It's classified, top-secret."

"Hmm…"

"To do with your birthday."

"You don't need to get me a birthday present, sweetheart," Clara said, smiling.

"Well it's too late now. Don't ask me any questions about it. And I went to talk to her about something else, but I didn't get the chance because Eyeball was making me leave, then there was all that stuff with you lot – you know I felt it when Rose hit you? And so did Eyeball, but not as bad."

"Did you? God, I should make her apologise," Clara said, "She can hurt me all she wants, but she better not touch any of you." She meant the Echoes. "What did you want to speak to Flek about?"

"Just this thing… because I wasn't talking to her after Squidzilla, and you were busy with other things, and then I've fallen out with Fyn as well, and I didn't want Adam to be upset, so I-"

"What is it?" Clara entreated, "Why have you fallen out with Fyn?"

"Because of why he's doing this whole move to Venus thing in the first place."

"I thought he wanted to get away from Horizon…? That's what you said…"

"It's… partly that. And also… our dad…"

"Didn't he die when you were two?"

"And I died when I was twenty-five, but I'm still here," Oswin said dryly. Clara took a few seconds to figure out what that meant, but when she did, her eyes widened.

"Os-!? Your dad – he's a hologram?" she exclaimed. Oswin didn't seem happy about that, though, "What's wrong? Isn't that good news? I thought you always liked your father – wasn't he a scientist and a writer? A genius?"

"Exactly," she said sulkily, crossing her arms, "He never did anything to hurt anybody else, he still wrote my mother love letters she hid years after she told us all he was dead, he always used his intellect for good. If it wasn't for his forcefields, the Dust Cloud would have destroyed Horizon long before I could call the Cluster Spores down."

"So why don't you want to see him?"

"Because he'll hate me."

"He'll think you're wonderful, just like I do," Clara assured her, "He'll love to see his little girl all grown up."

"His dead, insane, _mass-murdering_ 'little girl' with one leg who's never used her brains for anything good?" Oswin questioned. Clara sighed and merely watched Oswin for a few seconds, Oswin who was pouting and looking the other way.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed suddenly. Oswin looked around, alarmed.

"What!?"

"Stay right there, don't move," Clara ordered, leaning in, squinting, "Have you ever noticed that we kind of look alike?" A smile broke on Oswin's face. "Now, are you done moping for the day, Os? Because I think that you and I should watch TV. Or films, or something. Ooh, _or_ we could play _Guitar Hero_."

"Oh, god, no. I'm not playing _Guitar Hero_ with _you_."

"Only because I always win."

"Well maybe if _I_ had as much practice fingering any girl who pays attention to me for more than thirty seconds, _I'd_ win at _Guitar Hero_ as well," Oswin said, and Clara laughed. "…I'll watch TV. But I'm not watching anything about weddings; I'm sick of hearing you go on about yours."

"Deal."


	35. Offspring of Unassuming Narcissists

**DAY 142**

 _Offspring of Unassuming Narcissists_

 _Oswin_

It was six o'clock in the morning. Oswin Oswald could not get back to sleep. She _had_ been asleep, for a while, but truthfully sleep had been somewhat evasive of her these last few nights, even since she and Fyn had argued and he had gone off to Venus Zeta without so much as a goodbye. Flek had told her she ought to speak to him, but Flek was always trying to do conflict resolution and 'keep the peace.' She was lying awake in bed, exhausted, her right leg giving her no end of the same grief it used to cause her a year and a half ago, after being awake for all of the previous night and most of the day.

She lay on her side with her arm under her pillow and found Adam Mitchell's silhouette in the gloom. He was fast asleep on his back, his dark hair a mess and his glasses probably on the floor somewhere. She watched him and thought about what Clara had said the night before, about her perhaps needing to find a purpose. It was true, when she was busy doing something she was much better off, like when she built the Syphon 2.0 for Esther, or spent those weeks toiling away on Jenny Harkness' spaceship or those suits. But those things were never quite _enough_ to occupy her mind, which now strayed onto that old notion of hers that she ought to build a memorial to all the dead of the Dust War. Would that really do any good, though? Projecting dead peoples' names into the sky? Nobody on Horizon would ever forget the Dust War, or what she had done. She had to do something… tangible. Clara was right – she was sure she could accomplish great things if she put her mind to it. _Good_ things. But _what_ things? The Cluster Spores always used to tell her what to build, assure her she was doing good, and now she had a sense of freedom she had never had before, not through her whole life. There was always someone, or something, to mitigate her – be that her own mother or the Dalek Asylum. And now her own neuroses, it seemed.

Oswin was still looking at her sleeping boyfriend. There _he_ was, a boy who had also spent his life smothered by the moniker of 'genius.' But what had he done? Gone to university early; worked for an amoral CEO of a billion-dollar corporation cataloguing alien relics because he was just that fascinated with the stars; stolen anti-malware software from said company, rewriting it from memory alone, marketing it to the CIA and MI5 and the United Nations. Now he regularly donated at least half of his gargantuan income to a multitude of charities, he had used the information stolen from the distant future to cure his ailing mother. And now – perhaps most good-willed of all – he voluntarily put up with _her_. What was she, compared to Adam Mitchell? Was she even worth comparing to him? What good was all her genius when she never did anything worthwhile with it? They were the same age, as well, both of them twenty-six, and all she had ever accomplished was an early grave.

He would hate if he knew how she was measuring them against each other in her head. He would tell her to stop being ridiculous, say that donating money is no hard feat, and that he probably spent way too much of it on himself anyway. Undoubtedly he would cite that ostentatious and unnecessary yacht he had bought. But she still couldn't sleep, and she couldn't stop thinking, either. Her inability to stop thinking was really her biggest downfall.

She resolved that she might give up on the night and give in to the morning, might go hang around in her laboratory or something, see if she got any flashes of selfless inspiration while she moped about with Helix, playing with old bits of clockwork leftover from her creation of Clara's birthday present. She attached her prosthetic quietly, though Adam was a rather heavy sleeper and probably wouldn't be woken by her leaving, and muddled with her new cane out of their bedroom. For once she pulled her own dressing gown on instead of stealing his, and limped away with the relative ease that came with years of practicing moving without the proper appendages.

Again, she was wandering through the TARDIS at some ridiculous time in the morning. Yesterday, she hadn't run into anybody, until she had gone to fetch Martha and drag her to visit Undercoll and a certain unruly serial killer. But that morning it was different, because for a split-second she thought she had walked in on Jenny Harkness lounging about in the console room. It wasn't Jenny, though, it was some _other_ blonde girl with pretty, blue eyes, one who looked at her funny when she caught herself almost smiling at the notion of Jenny's return.

"What?" Nios asked. She was reading.

"I just thought you were Jenny for a second," Oswin admitted, lurking by the door. Nios was sitting, alone, on the plush but worn-down beige leather chairs Eleven had installed in his funny, green-and-gold console room. She was rather a fan of it, though. It was more well-lit than a lot of the other console rooms had apparently been. She liked being able to see where she was going, especially when she was so liable to trip nowadays.

"Why would you want me to be Jenny?" Nios questioned, wryly. Oswin narrowed her eyes.

"…I don't _want_ you to be Jenny, I just haven't seen her for ten days. I miss her, that's not a crime."

"Donna's got this theory that you're in love with her," Nios said.

"Oh, I'm definitely in love with Donna. Those auburn locks of hers are intoxicating. I'd just love her to be on top of me."

"With _Jenny_ ," Nios elaborated, putting her book down. Oswin, having nothing better to do, came limping over to sit next to her on the smallish 'sofa.' It was… cosy. To say the least. Cramped to say the most.

"That's a good theory. I ought to tell her, so that we can play up to it. It might be funny," Oswin mused, then she went to change the subject, "What are you reading?"

"You mean what _was_ I reading before you interrupted me," she remarked.

"Yeah. That."

"Nietzsche," she answered. Oswin raised her eyebrows.

"Nihilism. How fitting…" she mumbled. And she'd spent the whole night thinking about her lack of purpose and meaning. Maybe they ought to go find Nietzsche himself, so she could give him a piece of her mind. And there was a lot of Oswin's mind to go around, it often seemed. "What _is_ your stance on… all that? What do you think of it?"

"I'm not a performing monkey."

"I didn't say you were."

"You implied it – you want me to talk philosophy to you as a parlour trick," Nios said, then mimicked, " _Look at all the things the wondrous machine can do_."

"I would hardly say I'm any less of a machine than you are," Oswin countered, "What is it he says? 'God is dead – life is meaningless – existence is futile.' Some more anti-religious shtick."

"It's amusing."

"Amusing?"

"Knowing who created you doesn't give your life anymore divine purpose than not knowing. _I_ was designed by a woman called Julie Smith – the least one could ask for in their creator is a more interesting name. She was born in Scotland in 2110. I could tell you every detail of her life, but what relation would that have to me? She is dead, and her creations run rampant and unchecked. What say you to that, anyway? _You_ were made by Clara."

"And she doesn't tell me what I should be doing any more than some god might," Oswin slouched in the chair. "Do you think she knew what she was doing? This Julie Smith of yours?"

"Trying to ease the lives of humans? Give them more time to… lie around and… think."

"Isn't that all _you_ do?" Oswin half-laughed, "Lie around and think?"

"And I enjoy that basic privilege. I assume that nobody has ever tried to stop _you_ from lying around and thinking."

"You'd be right," she sighed. Nios opened her mouth like she was going to speak, then frowned. "What?"

"Are there synths when you come from?"

"No."

"Why?"

"Can't say I've ever looked into it, sorry. Presumably the same reason there aren't slaves, either. You know, if you want philosophy, my younger brother writes some hilarious books. Not that they're _meant_ to be hilarious – you'd probably like them, is what I'm trying to say," Oswin said, then added more to herself, "Our dad used to write books, too…"

"And you're properly sure it hasn't just sunk?" the Ninth Doctor's voice floated into the room when the door into Nerve Centre slid open, revealing he and River Song in close conversation with Mickey behind them. He looked haggard, and he kept trying to get between them so that he'd be included in whatever they were talking about.

"Yes, I told you – it's dropped off the map. That's what my contact said," River explained.

"Well your last 'contact' turned out to be your ex-wife," Nine pointed out, and Oswin almost made a start.

"So what!? Her intel was good! Now, if she'd double-crossed me like Theresa – one of my _other_ ex-wives – I could understand your inhibitions, but I never even married this one!" River protested, then she saw Oswin and Nios there. "What are you two doing?"

"We were making out," Oswin answered.

"You wish," Nios muttered, sliding off the sofa and nearly knocking down Oswin's precariously-balanced cane when she did. Oswin grabbed a hold of it, though.

"Oh, I do," Oswin said, "I'll give you a call if I ever need a substitute for Jenny. Now – did I overhear you two right?"

"What did you hear? About the Bermuda Triangle?" Nine inquired.

"No, forget that – what's all this about River having multiple ex- _wives_? Emphasis on _wives_. Wiiiiives," she dragged the word out, then addressed River Song directly, "If I'd've known you swung both ways earlier, you and I could have been having a lot of athletic sleepovers together!"

"You couldn't handle me," she shrugged.

"Try me," Oswin entreated. Nios cleared her throat.

"May I remind you that you have a boyfriend?"

"No you may not – I'm trying to get lucky here, Ni. You're cramping my style." Oswin went to flash a smile at River, leaning forwards to rest her chin on her hand as though there were a table in front of her. There was not, however, a table in front of her. She went crashing down to the floor. Nios kicked her lightly in her metal foot.

"Yes. Very stylish. If only all of us could hope to be as smooth as you."

"Shut it, Ni," Oswin, stuck on the floor, ordered. Then she said, "Wait," struggling to roll onto her back, "I've had a moment of inspiration; we should call you _Os_ for short, not _Ni_. As in Ni _OS_. I'm a genius."

"Oh, wow. We could have the same obnoxious nickname. What a visionary you can be."

"Thanks," Oswin grinned at her, then her grin vanished to an expression of pleading, "Will you help me up? I can't do it on my own. You know what that's like though, don't you, Mickey? Not being able to get it up on your own?"

" _What?_ " Mickey exclaimed, Nios relenting and going to drag Oswin back to her feet and help her sit on the sofa, "What makes you say that?"

"It's usually my neuroses that make me say things," Oswin sighed with a trace of mocking sadness, "I'm so broken. Anyway! Um. Did he say something about the Bermuda Triangle just there? Don't they call that the Devil's Triangle? I'm no expert on triangles – but I thought the devil was supposed to be bad?"

"Someone contacted me to say that a ship belonging to the US navy went missing in the Bermuda Triangle, carrying very dangerous alien salvage," River explained.

"Why do you tell _her_ but not me?" Mickey asked. Nine looked around at him and narrowed his eyes, then beamed.

"Mickey! When did _you_ get here?"

"I've been here the whole time!"

"Why? It's six in the morning," Nios pointed out, standing next to Oswin and doing that creepy, synthy statue-thing she did. "Why are you awake? I would have thought you'd be asleep for hours; Donna told me you got stuck on the _Titanic_."

"Okay, since when were you and Donna best friends?" Oswin questioned, then she turned to Nine and stage-whispered, "Donna told her about the affair I'm having with your daughter."

"You're _what_!?" Nine demanded, "You're having an affair with Jenny?"

"Jenny who?" Oswin frowned.

"You're doing this on purpose," Nios muttered to her.

"I'm awake because Martha woke me up. I think she's sick," Mickey answered.

"What makes you think she's sick?" Oswin asked. Nine was still giving her a shifty look.

"She was sick."

"That makes sense…" she said thoughtfully, one hand on her chin.

"Is she alright?" Nine asked. Mickey shrugged. He seemed uneasy about the whole thing.

"She said she was. She went back to sleep. I'm just… I guess I'm worried, alright? She's been acting really funny lately," Mickey said.

"Yeah, I hate people who act funny," Oswin said, and everyone rolled their eyes at her, "So where are the three of you heading? Into the Bermuda Triangle? Seems like a pretty awful idea."

"There's nothing unusual about the Bermuda Triangle," Mickey said, "No more ships disappear there than in any other part of the sea. Torchwood always used to have people calling us to try and investigate it, there's nothing there. It's a myth."

"Well it can't hurt to look," Nine said, "Besides, we can't risk dangerous alien technology falling into the hands of the Americans."

"I agree – that's why Thirteen is my least favourite Doctor," Oswin remarked, "Damn foreigners."

"We just need to get a boat, but the Doctor doesn't seem to think my smuggler friends are trustworthy," River said, "Not that he has a boat of his own…"

"The TARDIS is seaworthy!" Nine argued. The TARDIS console flashed and made noises in response, Oswin raising her eyebrows at the central column. "I do too know how to fly you," Nine argued with it. Oswin then cleared her throat.

"You know," she said, "It's hilarious, but, my boyfriend actually owns a luxury yacht. But you'll have to let me come along if you want to borrow it, I'm not having any of you lot destroying more of his property. I'd bring him, too, but he's asleep. It'll be fun, anyway! Just me, River and Nios, together, on the high-seas. We could have a threesome in the Bermuda Triangle – now that's what I call a Pythagorean Triple."

"…Do we really have to bring her?" River asked Nine.

"No Oswin, no yacht," Oswin said firmly, "Take it or leave it."

Mickey then interrupted to ask a little meekly, "Can I come as well?"

"If this threesome goes ahead, I'm sure we'll _all_ be cumming. Get it?" she nudged Nios with her elbow, grinning.

"Fine!" Nine declared, "We'll take the yacht. And… you."

"You won't regret it for one single second," Oswin said.

"No, I'm sure we'll all regret for lots and _lots_ of seconds…" Nios mumbled.


	36. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

**AN: Have you guys watched _Class_? Is it any good, if you have? It's just - I haven't watched it, but if some of _you_ have and you want me to do a crossover, then I'll go watch it and do one. And not a bitter, angry, parodical crossover like any time I write in Old Twelvey, but some fond pastiche, like when I did _Alien_ or _Bioshock_ before.**

 _The Rime of the Ancient Mariner_

 _Oswin_

"I'm telling you, we should be going at _least_ thirty-two knots," the Ninth Doctor argued with River Song, both of them fighting for command of the _Vinsomer_ – that was, of Adam Mitchell's yacht, which was apparently named after some fictional dragon, she had been told.

"Not with these wind speeds – you've already pushed me up from twenty-five to twenty-eight," River argued right back with him. They were there bickering, River sitting in the singular captain's chair, or driver's seat, or whatever you wanted to call it (Oswin wasn't very up-and-coming with her knowledge of boats), Nine trying to grab the wheel off of her. Nios sat perfectly straight on the arm of the fancy pleather sofa, while Oswin was lying across it with Mickey slouched similarly at the other end. It curved around behind the seat the Doctor and River were fighting over and gave a nice view out of the windows at the dark, cloudy sky and the fog.

"Is this how you two flirt with each other?" Oswin asked them, interrupting their argument. They both looked at her, somewhat affronted, and she narrowed her eyes, "Are you even together, or is that some rumour you like to perpetuate? Are we at present witnessing the 'fiery flames of passion' that keep the spice in your relationship?" Quite possibly, before she added that last part, they may have actually answered. But they got annoyed, and refused to. Instead, she turned to Mickey, "You'll know all about the fiery flames of passion though, won't you?" He narrowed his eyes.

"Will you stop asking people personal questions?" Nios quipped next to her, "Why didn't we bring your sister along to make you behave…" She pouted and slouched down. There was a television hanging down overhead, one which could retract in and out of the ceiling at the push of a button, and she was idly flicking through channels at lightning speed with the remote. Nobody was paying her much mind.

"I just want the details on what Martha's like in bed, is that too much to ask?"

"Yes!" Mickey protested, "Why do you want to know!?"

"Because your wife is hot! In both senses of the word!" Oswin said, "Come on, you're not going to tell me _anything_? You're just as bad as my sister when she refuses to tell me the size of her husband's-"

"Okay, that's enough talking from you," Nios cut her off, "Just find something to distract yourself with until we leave, no doubt there won't even be anything here." River and Nine were back to fighting over how fast they were going. Apparently now it had been pushed up to a compromise of thirty knots, except Nine was going on how they could definitely manage just fine at forty. River told him off for getting 'over-excited' about the Bermuda Triangle.

"Fine. I'll distract myself. Does anyone know what number the good porn channels are?" Oswin asked the room at large, still channel surfing absently.

"Give me that," Nios snatched the remote out of her hand and switched the television off, "Honestly, you're like a toddler."

"I can't believe that _you're_ humanity's best and brightest," Mickey remarked, and Oswin flashed him a grin.

"It is pretty unbelievable how amazing I am," she said.

"Can't you read a book, or something?" River asked her.

"If by 'book' you mean Playboy, then yes – if only my boyfriend were the type of person to keep stashes of pornography on board his fancy boat. Now, if this were Clara's boat, it would be chock-full of certain, uh, _risqué_ materials. And dildos."

"We really should have just nicked someone else's boat and left you at home," Nine grumbled. She was a little hurt by that. Surely she wasn't _that_ bad for company, was she? Regardless, she actually put a sock in it, and wondered if maybe she should start to think before she spoke. She had always been terrible at doing that, though. Her older brother had tried to get her kicked out of their mother's third wedding for what a pain she was being during the reception. Still, she thought her quips _must_ be more interesting than listening to River and Nine weird-flirt. At least when _she_ flirted with somebody you could tell she was flirting. Not like _this_ travesty.

"Is this real leather?" Mickey asked. It took Oswin a second to realise he was asking _her_.

"No," she answered.

"Can Adam not afford real leather?"

"I don't know – I'm sure he could," she shrugged. Mickey was looking around, awestruck. Oswin narrowed her eyes at him.

"How rich _is_ Adam Mitchell?"

"He's a software billionaire," Oswin said, and Mickey's jaw dropped.

"A _billionaire_?"

"Well – yeah – or, he _would_ be, but he gives a _lot_ to charity. He's really only a multimillionaire after all his donations."

"'Only' a multimillionaire?"

"I don't mean it like _that_ – he's very charitable. Why are you so interested in his money? Don't try and get him to buy you things. Honestly, if you take advantage of that boy and his generosity, you'll have _me_ to deal with. And _I'm_ a mass-murderer." The way Mickey looked at her when she said that, it was like he didn't even _know_ anything about her sordid life and her many crimes.

"I knew he was _rich_ , I just never thought he was _this_ rich," Mickey said. Oswin laughed.

"He's been a billionaire since he was twenty-two, that makes him the world's youngest billionaire. In your time, at least," Oswin said. Mickey looked at Oswin like he was in the presence of a celebrity, just because she was dating somebody with such an obscene amount of wealth. "He didn't even tell me til, like, three days after we were together."

"Does he have a private jet?"

"What? No. Where's he gonna fly to?"

"How many cars has he got?"

"I don't know. He has a Batmobile. He doesn't let anybody drive it, though, he keeps it on display, along with his DeLorean and his Ecto-1," Oswin said. Mickey continued to stare at her. She sighed and said, mostly to herself, "He's so cute." Speaking of her boyfriend, she thought, he would probably be awake by now. She'd had to leave him a note – one of her trademark scrawled messes he undoubtedly wouldn't be able to decipher, because nobody could read her handwriting save for Jenny – explaining how she had 'borrowed' his yacht to investigate the Bermuda Triangle.

Lo and behold, she had a string of texts from him when she checked her phone a moment later, Mickey still ogling the upholstery. They began: _What did that note say?_ and: _Is this something about my yacht? Where are you?_ then: _Oswin have you stolen Vinsomer!?_

Oswin replied: _I've BORROWED_ _Vinsomer._ Adam must have been agitatedly waiting for his phone to go off, or something, because he responded almost immediately: _Why would you take MY yacht and not me!?_

She said: _I don't know. But I'm regretting it. I wish you were here :(_

Then he responded: _You should have woken me up then._

 _Mickey is asking me questions about how much money you have._

 _You took Mickey and not me!? Who else is there!?_

 _It's only me, Mickey, River, Nios and Nine_.

 _'_ _ONLY'?_

"Well _you_ don't look happy," Nios interrupted her and her texting.

"I'm in trouble," she muttered, "Which is ridiculous, because I just assumed that as his girlfriend it's my intrinsic right to be allowed access to all of his possessions at all times with or without his permission."

"That's not how relationships work," Mickey said.

"I know exactly how relationships work, thank you very much. You don't have to patronise me just because I'm mentally ill," she said coolly. Then she put a real dampener on the mood, apparently, and none of them seemed all that happy with her. She texted Adam Mitchell: _When ur hot girlfriend borrows ur luxury yacht without asking #justrichboyproblems_. He didn't reply. She wrote: _I love you_. Still nothing, so she drew out the big guns and sent him a whole row of various heart emojis.

Adam said: _Leave me alone_.

She replied: _Do you love me?_ and he proceeded to relent, begrudgingly answering: _Yes_. Smiling to herself, she put her phone away, and then realised she was under Nios's scrutiny.

"I don't understand the point of boyfriends," she said, "They seem like a lot of meaningless work."

"Maybe you're a lesbian," River suggested to her.

"River!" Oswin exclaimed, "Don't go getting me all excited by suggesting things like Nios being a lesbian." When she glanced at Nios, though, Nios was looking a little uneasy, if thoughtful; staring away into the middle-distance. "Am I at present witnessing a crisis of sexual identity? Because, Ni, if there's anything _I_ can do to help you with what you're going through, feel free to let me know."

"Which, presumably, means you want her to get you off," River sighed.

"No! That wouldn't work. The reverse would, though," Oswin said, then she put her hand on her heart and said, mock-sincerely, "Nios, if you ever want me to put my tongue, or my fingers, or any other part of my anatomy, anywhere near you, I'll take the bullet and do it." Nios scoffed indignantly.

"You know if you flirt back with her she loses all power in the conversation?" River advised.

"I don't know how to flirt," Nios said coolly.

"I'll teach you how to flirt," Oswin said, "All we'll need is a rake, a pianoforte, and a butterfly."

"Oswin, be quiet. Leave the girl alone," River ordered her. Oswin got annoyed by that, as she always was when anybody told her to be quiet. Seeing Nine had now wrangled possession of the wheel, Oswin bitterly told him he was absolutely forbade from taking the _Vinsomer_ above thirty knots, regardless of what its top speed actually was. She agreed with Nios, anyway; they probably wouldn't find anything at all.

"Is there a swimming pool on here?" Mickey persisted with his questions regarding Adam's personal items.

"Yes; it has a glass bottom, you can see the sea through it," Oswin answered. She had been made to have a nice, fun tour of this yacht earlier on in the week, after her boyfriend decided to drag it onto the TARDIS 'just in case.' In case of what, she didn't know – impromptu expeditions into the Bermuda Triangle? "I hate the sea. Ever since that stuff with that squid."

"Tell me about it," Mickey muttered, "At least you didn't nearly drown yesterday on the _Titanic_."

"…Fair enough. What was that like, anyway?" she asked.

"Cold," was all he said, "Didn't get much time to look around."

"Leave it to you to get caught up in one of the most important events of the Twentieth Century and not pay attention," Nine commented. Mickey scowled.

"Someone _was_ trying to kill me."

Nine tutted, "Excuses, excuses." Oswin laughed. She thought she felt the yacht slowing down steadily.

"What was that fight about yesterday?" River, who had now relinquished control of the _Vinsomer_ since Oswin had given them a speed limit and there was nothing for she and Nine to be arguing about anymore, asked. She was looking at Oswin, Oswin was looking at her, but did not quite realise that she was being spoken to.

"Oh – you're asking _me_?"

"Obviously you."

"What fight?"

"Between Rose and Clara," Mickey explained, "Everyone heard it."

"I didn't hear it," Nios said, "What was it about?" They all had their eyes on Oswin now.

"…It's not really my business," Oswin said, "And it's not any of yours, either. Or Rose's. Basically, she thinks that the time vortex 'telling' her things gives her a right to go sticking her nose in where it's not wanted. And I don't think Clara was very happy about Rose trying to kill her, either." Although, Clara had been _very_ happy with her sensual encounter with one Jane Austen, despite the fact it didn't make any sense why Jane Austen would be all over her, since they had never met before and Clara was supposed to be happily married to the Doctor for years to come. She had, since last night, been wrestling with guilt over it – just as bad as with Thirteen – and wondering whether or not she ought to tell her husband. As far as Oswin was aware, she hadn't told Eleven anything yet (but she definitely should.)

"Well," Nine interrupted with a subject change, "This is where your 'contact' said the ship went off radar." The yacht definitely _had_ been slowing down, and had come to a neat halt in the middle of cold, stagnant waters. It was dark outside, and they were surrounded by a thick fog. Just the kind of dangerous weather conditions ships and planes always disappeared in, but that wasn't to do with anything 'spooky' going on.

"So what are we gonna do? Just float here until something happens?" Mickey asked.

Nios muttered, "I think you mean until _nothing_ happens."

"We should scan the area," Nine declared.

"With what?" River asked.

"Echolocation. Sonar."

"It doesn't have sonar – it's a luxury yacht," Oswin said. He was aghast by that. "What!? You were looking for a boat and I offered you a boat! It seems to me like what you're really after is a submarine."

"Does your boyfriend not have a luxury submarine?" Mickey asked.

"No he does not," Oswin said, "That's the last thing I need – _more_ water."

"Do luxury submarines even ex-" The boat rocked. Didn't just rock, felt like something had knocked it from underneath. Oswin's thoughts immediately conjured up the image of her ex-girlfriend and that damn squid. She hoped they weren't going to have _another_ sea monster on their hands. Her hand went for her cane and she sat up from where she had been lying down, all of them looking uneasy now.

Oswin losing consciousness from the result of some electromagnetic interference happened as quickly as one could blink. One second they were all there, in the _Vinsomer_ , and the next she saw an enormous pale-green light erupt out of the depths around them. There was but a microscopic increment between the emergence of this ghastly light, illuminating vividly all of the fog and the waves, and between all of the electronics on board the yacht cutting off. And there were a _lot_ of electronics on board that boat, not in the least Oswin Oswald, but also Nios and River Song.


	37. 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

_20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_

 _Oswin_

Awakening with Nios's face hanging over her was perhaps not the worst thing that could have potentially come out of their situation. Her and her enchanting eyes pulled Oswin far away from the question of what on Titan was going on. Unfortunately, though, Nios was not looming for any reason more special than trying to work out how to switch Oswin's Sphere back on, an activity not nearly as sensual as Oswin would imagine were she left to her daydreams. No, it was more general maintenance than steamy, illicit encounter. A shame.

"I thought you were broken," Nios said.

"Only heartbroken that you're not into me," Oswin immediately responded. Nios ignored her.

She was holding the Sphere, and she didn't look like she knew what to do with it. Oswin herself was legless and cane-less. If she didn't find her aids soon, she wouldn't be able to move about anywhere. Her right leg didn't support her weight at all anymore; if she so much as _tried_ to balance on it, it would feel like the bones were shattering all over again. Not that she was going to do anything about that. Clara had been spewing Dickensian epigrams at her last night: " _I wear the chain I forged in life. I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it_." That was how Clara was justifying what the pair of them were doing with their matching scars. Oswin didn't have an awful lot of feelings about these quotes Clara enjoyed reciting but, like everything else she read or heard or saw, they were memorised now. Another curse of her IQ.

She may not have a lot of worldly experience, but she would be damned if she couldn't identify a laboratory when she saw one. Most certainly not when they were being held in one, a very morgue-ish kind of place with large slab-like tables covered in mechanical instruments. Some of them _very_ familiar.

"That's my leg!" she exclaimed, pointing at the table, "Shit – where are we? Is my stick up there? Will one of you pass me my stuff?" She looked around pleadingly at the four other faces. All of them were there, wherever there was, reunited and confused. There were no windows, and the room looked quite industrial to her, and very dark. From the mess on the tables the Ninth Doctor was the one to take pity on her and fetch her things, him fishing out his own sonic screwdriver from the messes, too.

"This reminds me of the dingy squat Rose and I picked your boyfriend up in," Nine remarked when he handed her back her heavy prosthetic limb. Who had brought them down there, to that room, and left them alone? And what, exactly, had happened aboard the _Vinsomer_? _To_ the _Vinsomer_? Because they definitely weren't anywhere near it now. "He just sat in van Statten's private, underground museum all day cataloguing space junk he thought was valuable."

"Yeah, he's told me," Oswin said, attaching her leg with some difficulty, her just stuck there in the corner of the room jam-packed with miscellaneous gizmos. "I think it's cute."

"What happened? Why were we knocked out?" Nios asked whomever wanted to answer her first. Oswin hadn't a clue – the last thing she remembered was a big, pale light coming up out of the ocean around them, and then all the electronics dying.

"There was a tractor beam," Nine answered, "It came out of the water."

"A tractor beam? Like on a spaceship? You're kidding?" Oswin asked.

"It made a whirlpool, and everything on the whole yacht malfunctioned," Mickey continued, "Whatever it was, it knocked us out, too, after we got sucked down into the sea."

"Wait – Mitchell's yacht has been sucked up by a _whirlpool_!?" Oswin exclaimed in horror, "Oh my god – he's gonna kill me… he'll be so upset…" She was mortified. But then, if none of _them_ were damaged or broken, then was there any chance the _Vinsomer_ was still okay, too? She wasn't all that fussed about Adam Mitchell's extravagant purchases, but the last thing she wanted was to be lumped in with everybody else responsible for destroying his property and damaging his goodwill.

She tried to struggle to her feet but couldn't find a grip on the wall. Only once Nios came to help her could she actually manage to stand again.

"Could have sworn you could walk properly two days ago."

"Yeah, well, things change in two days," Oswin mumbled. She didn't want to talk about it, least of all in this weird setting, their tiny, dank room with no windows and just one solitary lightbulb hanging from above. And not an ordinary lightbulb, either; the light coming from it was faintly blue, and it was square. A pretty funky lightbulb if you asked her, and it didn't do a good job of illuminating the room at all. Out of courtesy she activated the light that shone out of her Sphere, accidentally blinding River in the process and having to apologise.

"I think we _are_ on a spaceship," Nine said when he handed Oswin her cane, which she grabbed to examine and make sure it wasn't damaged. "That thing's quite heavy for an ordinary walking stick. Since when did you need one, anyway?" Repeating Nios's earlier question. She supposed he must not have been listening to her avoid it five seconds ago. That or he was just especially nosey, but she figured he had just been distracted.

"It's not an ordinary walking stick, that's why. It's a very sensitive piece of equipment. Has… devices in it," she said. As if, if she needed a cane, she wouldn't stuff it full of fancy tricks and innovative technologies. It was sort of like she had her own sonic screwdriver, but it was way better in every regard. Obviously.

"Do you think we can leave? I'm not the biggest fan of laboratories. I've had my fair share of being experimented on," Nios said nervously, unimpressed by their surroundings. Oswin was relieved to discover her cane was quite alright, along with her Sphere, which was always getting broken and messed with. She really ought to get herself some protection against electrical interference. Even being around Esther Drummond she sometimes found herself flickering – though, it was a fifty-fifty shot whether that was because Esther was electric or because Oswin's attraction to Esther was electric.

"What _is_ all of this, though?" River said, growing distracted by everything lying about, "Look, this is a HAM radio from decades ago, and there's a hairdryer."

"Hairdryer – your boyfriend had an alien hairdryer in his 'collection,'" Nine said to Oswin.

"What's with this whole thing of referring to Mitchell as 'my boyfriend' all the time?" Oswin asked, "He's got a name."

"I've never referred to Adam Mitchell as my boyfriend," Nine said innocently, then he smiled because he was proud of his own joke. Oswin dropped the subject and spied a PlayStation 2 among the bits and bobs. "It's junk, all of it, but Earth junk." Leaning against one wall were the propellers from an old-style aeroplane – though Oswin never claimed to be an expert in aviation. It was a load of old crap, and now they'd joined the trash-heap.

"Why sit at the bottom of the sea and collect this stuff? It's worthless," River mused.

"Hey! PlayStation 2s are _not_ worthless," Mickey argued.

"They're definitely worthless," Nine told him.

"Okay, so, this is the alien equivalent of my better half, right?" Oswin began, "But _we_ were all dragged here, too. What does that make _us_? Curiosities? Commodities?"

"I'm sick of people thinking I'm their possession – can't we go?" Nios was pleading a little now, sick of them lingering. The Doctor was holding one of those ancient brick mobile phones people apparently used to carry around in bags, but when she said that he dropped it on the floor and its shell cracked and it broke.

"Yes," he answered, taking his screwdriver back out and going over to the door partially hidden by the piles of electronics sitting everywhere, sonicking it so that the large valve keeping it shut span on its own. The door clicked from within, reminding Oswin of a submarine, and Nine pushed it open.

"It's not very sleek, for a spaceship," Oswin commented.

"Functionality is more important than aesthetics," he quipped.

"Disagree. They're both equally important. What's the point of innovation if innovation isn't attractive? Take Nios, for example," Oswin said, limping after them as the quintet left their sheltered laboratory. Nios disliked being taken for example. "People wouldn't be half as interested in synths if they didn't have any skin, if they were just creepy, robot skeletons."

"Then why does everyone like C-3P0 so much?" Mickey countered.

"That's beyond me," Oswin said, "Gold plating is tacky."

"Where did _you_ get such a keen-eye in fashion from?" River said, "You certainly can't have inherited it from Clara."

"That has to be one of the last great mysteries of the universe."

"Why are these walls so black?" Nios interrupted, "And funny-looking." The other fours' eyes were drawn to what she was looking at. It was a pretty standard corridor, the walls sort of slanted to the right a little, the one on the left curving around quite thoroughly until it met the top-right corner above them and ran along like that. Doors on the right, strange blackness on the left. But along with this odd darkness, there were panels across it. Large panels of mismatched metal, fastened in an amateur fashion across the dark. "Are those tiny lights on it?"

"No, those lights are outside," the Doctor said with an air of realisation, "This is a window. Look at this metal, too, the number on it." It was quite a high-up panel, and he stood on his tiptoes to point it out to the group. It was gunmetal grey and bore, in fading white paint, the number _117_ , and was an odd shape. "It's the rudder of one of the planes from Flight-19. The patrol who went missing in the Bermuda Triangle in 1945."

" _1945_?" Mickey asked, "So this thing has been down here for over seventy years?"

"What are the lights, though?" Nios persisted. As she said that one of the 'lights' came swimming across in front of them, and it was not a light at all, but rather some terrifying sea-monster.

"Eurgh! What the hell is that thing!?" Oswin exclaimed, nearly tripping and falling backwards. River looked at her funny.

"It's only a jellyfish," she said, "Haven't you ever seen a jellyfish?"

"Yeah, that's the one thing Saturn has plenty of, _jellyfish_ ," she said sarcastically.

"They're all jellyfish, bioluminescent ones," Nine said. Oswin thought anything with that many arms was probably from the depths of hell rather than the depths of the ocean. Though she sometimes thought they were the same thing.

"I _hate_ the sea," she complained, "Hate it, hate it, hate it."

"These panels are leaking," Nios said, eyeing large puddles pooling on the floor of the dark, cold corridor, "What if one of them broke? I'm not very waterproof."

"I'll be fine," Mickey said, and all four of them turned to glare at him. "I mean, I'd… I'd swim up and get help. Coast guard, or something."

"And I'm sure the coast guard will be very helpful to us down here, with their state of the art mini-subs and high-pressure emergency diving rigs," River commented. Mickey shuffled where he stood sheepishly.

"This thing isn't made to be underwater," Nine said.

"So why _is_ it underwater?" Nios asked, "And why has it been underwater for so long pulling down ships and planes?" If anybody did have an answer for her, they didn't get a chance to use it. There was the loud, mechanical sound of another door opening in their same hallway on the edge of the ship. Then voices, or rather, one very excited voice, floated in.

"-til the Rybek sees this haul. The things I found on that vessel – they're positively beautiful! And I can't for the life of me figure why the pulse knocked two of them out, they must be hybrids, like you two. Only better. And that funny-looking ball, too… Ingenious things, really – that's why I had more of you lumps drag those men out with them, see if they can't enlighten me," this voice said. Whoever they were talking to wasn't replying, and she wondered if they were just talking to themselves. She could definitely hear more than one set of footsteps, though, so either this person – or alien – had a whole bunch of legs (bragging, much?) or they really did have silent company. These extra footsteps sounded different, though. They sounded… metal.

The crew did not have to wonder for long who was coming down the corridor, all of them too intrigued to cut and run. Besides, it was really an even shot whether they were friendly or hostile. And River Song was probably armed, as she always was. Even Nios on her own was pretty formidable. Not quite as formidable as what approached them, however.

It was three 'people.' One of them was an alien, clearly, an alien whose skin had the same pale, glowing qualities as the jellyfish swimming along outside. He was a little blue, with large, milky eyes, (three of them) like he was at least partially blind. He was the one who was talking, though as soon as he saw them he stopped immediately. Oswin thought she spied him having seven fingers on both hands. He, the owner of the lab within which they had awoken, was not the main attraction, however.

"Cybermen," Nine said quietly when he saw them, then he repeated himself, shouting, "Cybermen!" Two of them, grey and gold, on either side of this extra-terrestrial spectre of the deep, marching along like they were his personal entourage.

"Oh, no," the alien breathed, "I underestimated them. Quick – subdue them!" he ordered the Cybermen. At long range, Cybermen (these ones, at least) were not all that much of a threat. Most definitely not when they were battered and rusty-looking, practically relics of the horror stories she'd heard growing up on Horizon about them. Not that Oswin had ever, personally, run into Cybermen herself. But what were they doing in an alien spaceship at the bottom of the sea, of all places?

"Run!" Nine exclaimed.

"I'm not really with it on the whole 'running' thing right now, you know!" Oswin argued, as they all turned to go back the way they came.

"Well – then – gah," the Doctor struggled to think of what to do as the clanking metal men approached, under orders of their kind of weak-looking 'leader.' Why were they doing what he said? What hold did he have over them? Surely they could kill him in an instant if they wanted?

"Oh, give me that," River snatched Nine's screwdriver and made for the nearest door, sonicking it so that it opened in the same old-fashioned way as the one out of the lab, then Nios half-pushed and half- _carried_ (kind of?) Oswin through it, Mickey and Nine last. The Cybermen hadn't moved more than a few feet in all that time, like their joints didn't work right. River pulled the door closed and sealed it behind them with her sonic, leaving them, for now, out of the Cybermens' reach. _Those_ Cybermen, at least.

"Uh-oh," Mickey said, "I think we might have misjudged…"

"Oh, shit…" Oswin breathed. When they looked away from the door and paid their new surroundings some note, she could hardly even tell what the room was. All she knew was that it was large, and _full_ of Cybermen.


	38. An Ocean Drowning in Lost Souls

_An Ocean Drowning in Lost Souls_

 _Oswin_

For a solid few minutes they remained there in a clump. The alien who had been pursuing them with his 'guards' had given up trying to break through the sonic seal on the door, not possessing the right technology to follow the crew. They couldn't leave in case he was still there, but likewise none of them even dared take a few steps more into the enormous industrial room they were in. It took that long to notice that the Cybermen filling it to the brim were not actually attacking. They were busy. It looked like they were sorting bits of metal into piles, possibly by order of size.

"Why aren't they trying to kill us…?" Mickey asked slowly, quietly, like they might hear him. Maybe they _could_ hear him. It didn't change the fact that the Cybermen, all rusted and old, paid them no notice whatsoever. They were quite broken, in fact, when Oswin took a look around. More than one had arms and hands missing, handles on their helmets hanging off.

"I don't understand, what _are_ they?" Nios, who was still rather unversed when it came to the Doctor and his history, queried.

"Cybermen," the Doctor answered.

"So you've said about a dozen times," Nios told him coolly.

"They're like us," Mickey said, "Well, they're like…" and he glanced around at his four cohorts, an alien, a hologram, a synth, and a combination of the three, "They're like _me_ …"

"Oh, they breathe underwater as well, do they?" Oswin quipped.

"What do you mean?" Nios asked.

"They're like people, or they _were_ people, they're not real anymore. They take a human brain and put it in a metal suit. Chop your body to pieces in the process," Mickey explained, "Came from a parallel world originally."

" _Originally_ they came from Mondas, Earth's twin planet," Nine added.

"But I don't get it," Nios continued, "What makes them not real? If they're a brain? Is the brain not the hub of all of your humanity? Your emotions?"

"They don't _have_ emotions, they're being inhibited," Mickey said, "By a device inside them."

"Keeps them from being in pain; it hurts, being like that," River said.

"It's not pleasant," Oswin spoke eventually, "Having your brain removed." She was watching them work, thinking. It was surreal to see. There they were, rusty, gold-covered lumps, reduced to factory work. Sorting through foreign refuse. She limped closer.

"Don't go near them!" Mickey grabbed her arm.

"Why? What are they going to do to me? I'm already mostly robotic," she said, tapping her left leg with her cane. It clanged.

The Cybermen were quite tall, though, that was an annoyance. There _she_ was, only five-two, able to balance on tiptoe precariously for just a few seconds. She was right next to one of them, its joints creaking, and thought she heard it making a noise, like it was… groaning? Perhaps its voice modulator was broken. It was making a pile of tiny little things, taking screws out of a cart behind it and dumping them on a long table. Carefully, she picked one of them up, just a bolt. It was nothing, completely inconsequential. The Cyberman didn't stop what it was doing, just ignored her.

"I think they're just cataloguing all this junk," Oswin said.

"Cybermen are the ones abducting people?" Mickey exclaimed.

"Look at them, they can't be doing much of anything," she said. Then she went for it – she shoved the entire pile of objects the Cyberman had been collecting, knocked everything onto the floor. It stopped now, but it didn't look at her. Just kind of… froze. With a rather great amount of difficulty thanks to her bum leg she clambered onto the conveyor belt on front of it.

"Don't do that! You'll upset it!" Mickey said.

"She's a genius," Nios reminded him. Oswin half-smiled to herself when Nios said so, but she was distracted. The Cyberman's eyes were dark and empty, the whole thing very vacant. Hardly any of it was silver anymore, it was red rust or old, chipped gold. There was one little malformation in its surface, though; a crack in its head, over the brain cavity, the metal allowing her to see inside. It had been poorly patched up with a stray bit of glass, sort of welded onto its face, but she could see a brain inside, a flesh and blood brain. That eliminated her idea that they were hollow shells with their brains removed. All of her weight on her left leg, right hand tightly gripping her cane, she knelt there in front of the thing.

After a long period of time and the others waiting to see what would happen with baited breath, she gently asked the Cyberman, "What's your name?"

" _Owen Mitchell_ ," it said. _He_ said.

"My boyfriend has the same surname," she said.

"Well don't speak to it like it's a person, it could kill you," Mickey argued.

" _I_ could kill you," Nios said, "Am I not a person, either?" Oswin ignored them.

"What are you doing?" she inquired.

" _You have hindered my ability to catalogue_ ," Owen Mitchell said curtly.

"What are you going to do about it?"

"Don't challenge it!" Mickey hissed. Owen Mitchell did not say a word, however, not for a long while, as though he was thinking. Possibly, he was.

" _Please step down from this surface_."

"Did it say 'please'?" River whispered.

"What if I don't? How would it make you feel if I didn't?" Oswin persisted.

A long time later, Oswin practically able to see the metaphorical cogs whirring around inside of its head, it said, " _Scared_." Her eyes widened, and everybody else stayed quiet. The other Cybermen weren't taking any note of what was going on here, though, they were just going about their business.

"I thought you said they don't have any emotions?" Nios said to Mickey, who was looking just as shocked as the rest of them at this Cyberman saying it felt anything other than a longing to 'upgrade' every living thing it came across. It still had the logo of Cybus Industries on its chest, a name unnervingly familiar to the name of Adam's company, CyTech. Cyborg Technologies. Though, it was so-named after the software he wrote, rather than any metal people he might be building underneath his company's HQ. Not that she knew where that was, or much about CyTech at all, for that matter.

"Nios, will you help me down?" Oswin asked, glancing at her, "I'm stuck." Nios did come and help her, looking at the Cyberman herself as she did so.

"Scared of what?" she asked. Oswin wobbled and nearly fell over once she was back on proper ground, Nios too distracted to catch her. She only fell into the long table again, though.

" _That the pain will never stop_."

"Its inhibitor must be malfunctioning," the Doctor decided, "Makes sense. It's very broken."

"He has a name," Nios said to him, "He's a person."

"It's not been a person for a long time," the Doctor said, "None of you were there when we found El Dorado, were you?" No, Oswin thought, she hadn't been there. She'd been quite caught up that day, Day Fifty, battling with her ferocious feelings for Adam Mitchell the Boy Genius. That day was the day he had gone from stalker to boyfriend. And then she thought, wait – Day Fifty? That couldn't be right. Today was Day One-Forty-Two. That meant that their three-month anniversary had slipped by, two days ago, both of them unaware. And what was her belated anniversary present to him? Getting his brand new yacht stolen. Wonderful.

"Wasn't it full of Cybermen?" River asked.

"Yeah, _these_ Cybermen, these exact ones, covered in gold. We blew it up to stop anybody getting in to activate them, though."

"I guess it didn't work," said Mickey.

"You what? You switched them off and locked them away?" Nios demanded. She was busying herself picking up, in large handfuls, the screws Oswin had brushed onto the floor. She regretted it now, though, feeling bad for Owen Mitchell and his constant pain.

"The Mayans found out gold was their weakness; El Dorado was a prison. It must be losing its effect, but still stopping the inhibitors from working properly," the Doctor said, "You could nearly mistake them for human."

"I don't understand why you're saying they're _not_ human," Nios argued. Owen Mitchell was going back to his cataloguing, satisfied now that Nios had restored order to his little world, "They're a _brain_. You can _see_ his brain. Why should they be less than you because they live in metal?"

"It's not about that, they're killing machines, they want one thing and one thing only – to make everybody else like them," the Doctor said.

"And by denying them an opportunity at life, you're trying to make everything else like _you_. Keep the universe thriving with organic life only. The woman you love isn't organic anymore, not at all, she's been digitised," Nios pointed out River, "Hasn't got a single piece of 'living' tissue in her body at all. What does that make her? Worthless? Nothing?"

"They tried to wipe out humanity," Mickey said.

"Humans have tried to wipe each other out hundreds of times, that's hardly a difference."

"You don't understand."

"Why? Because I'm synthetic? I'm not a real thing, I'm not alive, I don't have rights? I'm a toy?" she challenged.

"The Cybermen have never tried to kill you!"

"People have."

"…How are they not dead?" Mickey turned to speak to the Doctor, giving up on Nios, apparently. Nios was not happy with that at all, though. In fact, she scoffed loudly. Oswin and River were both staying rather quiet, River perhaps taking more heed of Nios's words than the men were. "If their emotional inhibitors aren't working?"

"They're half-working. Enough to want an end to the pain, but probably still numb to feel things more complicated than that."

"Why would they be dead if they had emotions?" Nios questioned.

"They can't live with what they've become," Mickey said, "That's how the Doctor beat them before – the Tenth Doctor. Disabled the inhibitors in all of them at once. They all died. Couldn't stand the sight of themselves in a mirror."

" _What_? You would do that to them!?" she shouted at the Doctor, even if it hadn't been this one who had defeated the Cybermen that time on Pete's World, as they colloquially called it (Oswin called it the Zetaverse.) "What's the _problem_ with the sight of themselves in the mirror!? And what about _you_?" Nios turned on Oswin.

"M-me?" she asked, surprised, faltering.

"Yes, you. What do _you_ think?"

"Uh… I don't, um… people usually tell me what to think…" she stammered.

"Unbelievable! What's the point of being the 'smartest girl in the universe' if you don't even think for yourself!?"

"Shouldn't really be… allowed to think…" Oswin mumbled, "Bad things could happen if I listened to myself…"

"You _shouldn't be allowed to think_? Thinking is the only thing you should be doing with a mind like yours!" she protested, hitting Oswin where it hurt, whether she knew she was doing so or not.

"Can _you_ think?" Mickey countered, possibly trying to save Oswin from Nios's wrath, her outrage at the treatment of the Cybermen. Regardless, Oswin remained stunned to silence, completely still.

"Did you honestly just ask me that?" she said, appalled, " _Can I think?_ Can a submarine swim?" Mickey didn't know what to say to that. "You cannot dictate what should and shouldn't be alive. They _are_ alive, and they were created by _you_ , just like _I_ was created by you."

"You're not the same as them," the Doctor said.

"No! By _your_ definitions, I'm _less_ than them. Even that alien out there recognised the similarities, he called them 'hybrids,'" Nios continued, "Yet you continue to consider yourselves above them."

"They come from another universe!" Nine said, "Nothing to do with us!"

"Your own daughter's girlfriend comes from another universe!" Nios protested, "Is she meaningless as well?"

"Isn't that the dragon boat?" River interrupted and changed the subject completely. She was looking at Oswin, and Oswin wheeled around and nearly fell over, wincing when pain shot through the wounds in her leg. River had pointed a little. It was so dark Oswin hadn't even noticed it before, but there was the _Vinsomer_ , on the other side of the room and tricky to see in the gloom. She wouldn't even have recognised that yacht as belonging to Adam if it wasn't for the fact he was a huge nerd who'd written the name on the side of it glow-in-the-dark paint (seriously.)

"Oh my god! They're taking it to pieces!" Oswin exclaimed, breaking out of her trance. She hobbled through the warehouse as quickly as she could (not very quickly), followed by River, who didn't want to listen to the argument any longer. It seemed that Nine and Mickey were glad of the excuse to stop talking about the Cybermen as well, though Nios gave poor Owen Mitchell a last, forlorn look before tagging along. "Hey, hey!" Oswin shouted at the Cybermen, "What are you doing!?"

" _The Rybek orders that all salvage is to be broken down into usable materials_ ," the nearest one answered her, " _He will make the pain stop_."

"This isn't salvage! Stop breaking it down!" Oswin said.

" _The pain must end_ ," said a different one, " _The Rybek has promised us._ "

"Who's this 'Rybek'?" the Doctor asked, Oswin getting frantic as they tried to tear the _Vinsomer_ 's hull to pieces. They might as well be tearing _her_ to pieces.

The second one who had spoken then turned to face them properly, his arms laden with stuff taken from Adam's yacht. And yes, it was definitely a _him_ , there was no doubt about it, because he was not completely 'cyber.' Upon seeing him Oswin's jaw dropped, River covered her mouth with her hand, and Mickey Smith breathed, "Oh my _god_ …" He was barely a Cyberman at all, he was some sort of amalgam made from pieces of mismatched metal, poorly shaped to look like the others around him, half of his face mechanical and the other half dying, one good arm and one cybernetic arm. He sounded only semi-robotic, too, as though he was talking through a voice changer.

" _Worley_?" Nine asked, "George Worley?"

"You know him?" River puzzled.

"I met him, a long time ago, not a very nice man, used to brutalise his crew," the Doctor explained, "Not sure he deserves _this_ , though. This technology… he was the captain of the _USS Cyclops_. It must be prolonging his life; the _Cyclops_ went missing in 1918. This ship is responsible for every major disappearance in the Bermuda Triangle since the myth began. Although, these Cybermen were never sailed through there, they were long-buried in Peru."

"And somebody dug them up, clearly," River said.

"They're all slaves…" Nios said, staring around, "All of them…"

"Stop! Halt! You five! Don't you dare move!" They had been so distracted by Worley they hadn't noticed their pursuers catch up with them, that same scientist-type-guy they'd given the slip to earlier. They shouldn't have loitered for so long, "You, hybrids, grab them! Restrain them! I'm the Arbek, it's on my authority." The Cybermen all immediately dropped what they were doing to grab the TARDIS crew.

"What are you going to do with us? Try and make us into Cybermen, too? Enslave us?" Nine asked angrily, a Cyberman grabbing his arms to hold them behind his back.

"No. Take them to the bridge. The Rybek will see you personally."

"Good, I'd like to talk to him, ask why he's mining Earth for slaves and aeroplanes," Nine said.

"Just a quick question – do you think you might ask them to stop taking that yacht to pieces?" Oswin asked. The scientist, the Arbek as he called himself, turned to the Cybermen.

"I want this 'yacht' disassembled on the double," he said.

"You bastard!" And then they were forcibly carted away.


	39. Electronic States of Human Minds

_Electronic States of Human Minds_

 _Oswin_

From what she gathered, the Rybek was pretty much the king. The Arbek was the court-appointed chief inventor, or something like that. She didn't know much about monarchies (all human monarchies had been abolished long before she had been born in 5096), but that was what she gathered. This Rybek had skin even more pale and glowy, eyes even more bulbous, white and fishy, than the Arbek. They were thrown down in front of him in the throne-room though, the five of them, released by their Cyberman captors. Oswin's cane rolled across the floor and she was left struggling to balance, using Nios for support, until River took pity on her and went to pick it up.

"Sorry about this," she mumbled, "Sorry I can't stand on my own." Nios, though she was annoyed by Oswin's pervasive flirting with her, wasn't all that bothered by the fact she was stuck with the responsibility of helping her. Generally, that job would go to Adam Mitchell or Clara (even Jenny when she was around), but they weren't there. She was grateful. She would have to think of some way to make it up to Nios. What sort of gift did you get a synth, though?

"The Rybek, I presume?" the Doctor said.

"You can tell by the throne," River said, "Pompous slave-drivers always have thrones."

"Cyber King had a throne…" Mickey muttered.

"Maybe _I_ should get a throne…" Oswin said. She didn't mean to say it, she meant to think it to herself, but everybody heard and gave her a look. "What? Maybe not a _throne_ , but… wheelchair?" she suggested.

"If you carry on like that you'll turn into Davros," the Doctor said. Well, she thought, now she was definitely going to have to get a wheelchair. One exactly like Davros's, that looked like the base of a Dalek. She thought it would be hilarious; she did so enjoy reminding the Doctor that she had been a Dalek at one point in time.

"Who have you brought in front of me, Arbek? Take them to processing where they belong, like all the stowaways," the Rybek dismissed. He was a real opulent, uh – what was the word she was looking for… fuckwit? Definitely fuckwit.

"They're not like the others," the Arbek, who had bowed when the Cybermen had brought them all into the room, said. It wasn't a very fancy room, to say it held a throne. Wasn't a very fancy throne, either, wasn't bejewelled or covered in silk or anything. It was just a big metal chair, with cushions on it for comfort. Oswin was surprised at the lack of other aliens down there, they'd just seen the two so far. "Only one of them is human."

"Then send the human to automaton processing and the others to salvage," the Rybek said indifferently.

"Wait – what's 'automaton processing'?" Mickey, the only human (if you could call a Manifest so much) asked, getting unnerved by all the Cybermen around them with their hollow eyes and electronic groans. All of them were in pain, Oswin could tell, all the time.

"What do you _think_ happens to the people they abduct?" the Doctor said to Mickey, then turned to the Rybek, "Because that's what you're doing. Abducting them. Kidnapping and mutilating people they have no right to mutilate. Not that anybody generally has a right to mutilate somebody-"

"I mutilated your daughter," Oswin pointed out, then with her free hand she mimed stabbing, "Gouged her eyes out*." The Doctor looked at her with disapproval, and she smiled awkwardly.

"Mutilated them?" the Rybek asked.

"Of course! Turned them into these things – do you know what they are? Your 'automatons'? 'Hybrids'? Human beings! Human beings who've had their brains scooped out and put in a robot unwillingly. You're stealing people and then butchering them down here in your spaceship – what are you trying to get out of it? I saw the repairs. This ship isn't meant to be underwater. It's falling apart. Is it even space-worthy anymore?" he questioned.

"Repairing the ship is the Arbek's job," the Rybek said stiffly. Why was it just the two of them? Shouldn't the Rybek have advisors, bodyguards, some kind of envoy? He was just there, alone, on his throne. Perhaps he didn't need much protection stuck down there at the bottom of the ocean. Then again, she thought back to three months ago (three months ago today, as a matter of fact) to their trip down to Rapture, in the Deltaverse. Good luck going _there_ without guaranteed protection.

"That's why I brought them, they hold the secret," the Arbek said, "Three of them are hybrids, as well. And that man – I don't know what he is. Organic, but different."

"Yeah, and don't try and change that," the Doctor said, "I'm not interested in having my limbs chopped off and replaced with bits of metal. No offence, Oswin."

"I'm not offended," she shrugged, "I accept that my fetish for prosthetics isn't for everyone."

"What's this about a secret?" the Doctor questioned, "You said we hold the secret – what secret?"

"You can fix the ship," the Arbek said.

"Why would we do that?" River asked.

"Because I'll have you executed if you don't," the Rybek threatened, "They we can finally leave this rock."

"So that's why you're here? You can't leave? What happened to strand you here, under the sea?" the Doctor asked, standing in front of the rest of them with River at his side. This was the first time Oswin had seen the two of them together and actually believed that they were a real couple. Sort of.

"We came after salvage," the Rybek explained, "Miscalculated the gravity. Sank into the sea."

"I'm confused – are you more of a king or more of a captain…? Because this one's basically worshipping you," Oswin said, nodding at the Arbek.

"I don't understand the difference," the Rybek said. Fair enough, she thought to herself.

"Carry on. You came after salvage."

"Our scanners picked up something interesting, the same scanners we use now to find things above worth salvaging," the Rybek explained.

" _Worth salvaging_? They're living people, you can't salvage them any more than you can salvage us. And we won't let you," River said very convincingly. If there was one person Oswin would want on her side in a crisis, River Song was one of them. It was funny how River had been the one to alter her programming to remove her left leg months ago in the first place. Well, not the first place. Of course the one to remove Oswin's leg in the first place had been Oswin herself.

"In the land you know as Peru," the Rybek said.

"Do you mean… Peru?" Mickey said. The Rybek glared.

"Hold on. The Cybermen. Your scanners detected them," the Doctor realised, "Is that why you came to Earth? After them?"

"Yes. An army to sell. There's a lot of money in armies, especially one so unstoppable, so easily controlled," the Rybek said.

"That's sick. They're not an army, they're a species, they've just been used by the wrong kinds of people," Nios argued.

"A species? I could get so many more credits for them if I were to market them as a species. All sorts of people would pay to own an entire species," he mused, "Arbek – make a note of that, for when we leave. _Species_."

"You're keeping them in pain!" Nios shouted.

"They were in pain already. They're vulnerable to emotions. All we did was prey on it," he said, "Told them we can make it stop if they do what we say. They'd do anything for that possibility. It's remarkable how they're still running."

"That's wrong," Nios said, "You can't exploit them. They're living things."

"They're nothing. They're just strong and stupid. Livestock."

"They deserve to live just like anybody else."

"Are you sure they're alive? Just because they have a brain…" the Rybek said, "They don't look alive to me. They look empty." Nios was just getting more and more furious. This was, unfortunately, not one of those times where the big-man-in-charge was actually reasonable, where he might just let the Cybermen go into their custody in exchange for a trip home. No. He was a profiteering trespasser, a common criminal. "That's why it's so easy to lie to them. I'm talking about it right in front of them and they haven't even realised."

"How long have you been down here?" the Doctor asked, cutting of Nios's spiel. It should be clear to her that she wasn't going to get through to these aliens, whatever race they were.

"A hundred solar years," the Arbek said.

"A hundred years? And you can't fix the ship? You're barely even managing to maintain it!" he mocked, "How many of you are there? You're the only two I've seen so far, and this ship isn't exactly big."

"The two of us," the Rybek said.

" _Two of you_? Then this is practically a Cyberman ship," River said, "They could overthrow you in the blink of an eye if someone motivated them to do so." She cast a very telling look in Oswin's direction then, and Oswin, who was thinking, sank back into the shadows. She had a problem to work out in her head, a complicated one, one she would generally like to write things down to solve.

"You'd have no power if they seized the means of production," Nios said. River scoffed.

"You sound like Thirteen," she remarked.

"There were more," the Rybek told them, "They perished."

"You probably killed them to increase your share of the haul from your 'salvage,'" River said. Neither the Rybek nor the Arbek denied this, and River indicated the latter as she continued speaking to the Rybek, "In fact – as soon as he gets this ship to lift off, you'll kill him, as well, I bet. Once you don't need him anymore."

"So there's two of you, and hundreds of them? And the only reason they do what you say is because they're in pain," the Doctor reiterated, "It's sick. Twisted."

"Coming from the man trying to argue they didn't have any sort of right to autonomy not long ago," Nios snapped.

"Their autonomy depends. On how clever people are," he said, a sentence directed discreetly at Oswin. God – didn't he understand she was already trying to figure out how to fix it? Trying to do something nobody else had ever done before wasn't easy. Not when she didn't even know how morally viable it all was…

"If you don't want us here, you'll have to help us leave. It's not like you can escape the ship, either."

"No, I suppose not. Even for Aquaman over there, the pressure would kill him," Nine said, nodding at Mickey.

"Aquaman was never affected by depth pressure," Mickey said.

"It was a joke, Ricky. Don't think about it too hard and get over it," the Doctor said.

"With the salvage we got last week from one of your military vessels we'll be able to fly away in a matter of weeks. Days if we have you to help us. Which you will, or I'll tell the automatons – or Cybermen, as you call them – to kill you. Simple," the Rybek threatened. He was almost right. They didn't have the TARDIS, no quick escape that way; they'd left it on the shore when they'd picked up Adam's now-defunct yacht.

"So you sit here in your broken spaceship sucking down ships and planes to give yourself what you need to get away," Nine said, "Killing people in the process and running a society based on slavery, with just the two of you. I can't abide by that. And I'm not sure I want to help you."

"One of you will help us eventually," the Arbek said, "You'll have to. More people will die if you don't than if you do."

Oswin cleared her throat to get their attention, "I could fix your ship. Easily. In an hour or so, probably. I assume it's just your boosters that are broken, and the reason you can't do anything about it is – again – because of the pressure outside. And the water. Maybe you do look like fish, but you're not marine life. Neither are these Cybermen. I could throw together a submarine from the technological goldmine you have down here, a few deep-sea diving suits for your Cybermen. Have it done in no time at all. Then you'll be on your way. With us."

"At least one of you is sane," the Rybek noted. All four of her crewmates laughed out loud at hearing somebody refer to Oswin as 'sane.'

"She's far from _that_ …" River muttered.

"That's the thing though, isn't it? We're all even more intriguing than the Cybermen are. More advanced, cleverer – you'd get a fortune trying to sell _us_ on the black market. Smartest girl in the universe, first conscious synthetic, robotic professor of archaeology, the last of the Time Lords," then Oswin paused, "And …Mickey..."

"What are you doing?" Nios hissed at her.

"Being clever," she whispered back, fidgeting with her cane. At least, it _looked_ like she was fidgeting. She was doing far more than that. As she'd said to the Doctor earlier, it was all fitted out with tricks and gadgets. She was like a disabled version of Batman, and just as broody. "We actually have a ship of our own, a spaceship – not here, obviously. Not anywhere near here. Completely inaccessible. But sometimes we pick up salvage, too. _I_ was salvage. Nios here, she was salvage. We're all just flotsam and jetsam, really. But I'll tell you something good the Doctor here found a long time ago on a desolate spaceship**; it was called a 'Stomb.' Well, that's what I called it. Short for 'static bomb.' This sort of spherical device that emitted a cranial electromagnetic pulse, destroyed brainstems and the like. Only affected living things.

"So then, I took that technology and I modified it into stun guns. These _really_ clever things that alter themselves after scanning the species you're aiming at to emit just the right level of electricity to knock them unconscious. We run into a lot of hostile aliens, it's good to have preventative measures. Not that anybody ever _uses_ those guns I made anymore, because I'm significantly underappreciated sometimes…" she was getting off-track, "…Anyway. The technology's still around. I've got some of it here with me, in this very special cane I need to be able to walk." When she lifted the cane with her right hand, she grabbed hold of Nios's shoulder with her left in order to keep herself balanced. "Do you want me to demonstrate how it works?" And then, with her thumb, she pushed down on the button on top of it. When she had been fidgeting with the cane, she had actually been altering the settings, making the Stomb-derived technology identify the new aliens for incapacitation. Being as all the Cybermen had human brains, they all went unaffected, as well.

It worked quite nastily. Both the Rybek and the Arbek screamed as blood began to trickle from their ears, then they both fell. The Arbek was a crumpled mess on the floor, the Rybek slumped down in the industrial-looking throne. Seeing the blood, Oswin bit her lip, anxious, as Mickey went to check the Arbek's pulse.

"Uh… his heart's beating, but I don't know if it's supposed to be going this fast…"

"I'll be fine, Oswin wouldn't make the mistake of murdering someone by accident," the Doctor said. He seemed to have more faith in her than she had in herself – murdering someone by accident seemed _exactly_ like something she might do, to be honest. "Tell me you've figured out a way to do what she wants," he asked Oswin, nodding at Nios.

"You mean 'fix' the Cybermen," Oswin said. That was what she'd been trying to work out.

"You can't do that," Mickey said, "You should just leave them down here to rot, where they can't hurt anybody."

"They're not hurting anyone at all," Nios argued.

"They have done in the past."

"So has every species. Look at them – they're lost. Who created them? Why?"

"John Lumic," Mickey said, "Rich old tycoon. Genius. Terminally ill. Wanted to find a way to live forever, so he built them. He wanted to use them to replace the whole human race and make them immortal and unstoppable."

"So, once, his intentions were good?" Nios put to Mickey.

"People aren't meant to live forever. They're monsters. They can't live with themselves."

"It's a problem of disassociation," Oswin finally chimed in with their arguments, "People are dangerous when they're made aware. That was why Nios killed those people when she became conscious. It's why I finally lost my mind when I was converted into a Dalek." Yes, truthfully, she had been off the rails years before all that had happened, but clever as she was, she was still so crazy the _Daleks_ of all things had chained her up and locked her in a cell on her own. "And the Doctor left me. Nios was on her own. I bet you didn't even try to help the Cybermen last time. They're all victims. Nios is right. Everything that makes them a person, in their mind, is still there. If you say they're not people, you're saying I'm not a person, and Nios isn't a person, and River isn't a person."

"So you have to stop them disassociating. Otherwise they die," the Doctor said, then he admitted, "I wouldn't be able to do it alone."

"I'm not sure _I_ can do it alone," Oswin said.

"You're a technopath," Nios pointed out to Mickey, "Can't you feel their pain? Listen to them groaning, they're suffering. Any human could become a murderer or a soldier in the right circumstances, how are they any different? Following a flawed ideology isn't their fault if they've only ever heard the one voice. They need to hear their own voices again."

"And if you do that, they'll die."

"Only because nobody's ever tried to make sure they don't!" she protested.

"I don't know," Oswin said.

"Can you do it?" Nios implored.

"…Hypothetically, _yes_ … if I used you as a computer for extra processing power," Oswin said, "Which wouldn't damage you, or anything, don't worry, I'd just-"

"Do it. Use me. I don't mind."

"But it's not about you, it's about them. What gives me the right? I'm not god. I can't… _create_ a whole species," she said, "I have no right to go poking around in their heads, changing what it means to be human. Who knows what they'd be? Who they'd be? They probably won't be exactly who they were before."

"They'd be something new. Is that so bad? If they're finally at peace? They're lost souls. They need a home. You're the only one who's intelligent enough to help them, that means you _have_ to help them. It's your duty. You can't make things worse than they already are."

"What if I killed them?" Oswin fretted, "What if they still can't cope, even if I rewrite their programming, put in blocks and change the way they feel things?"

"They'll help each other. And they can stay down here, have their own city, as long as they keep the leaks out," Nios said, then she cast a hateful look at the Rybek and the Arbek, "And we take those two back to whatever dump they came from."

"It's not a bad idea," River interrupted, "Maybe it would work? They'd be safe, everybody else would be safe – as long as we made sure they give us back whatever it was they stole from the CIA last week. And your boyfriend's yacht, of course." Yeah, if there was anything left of it, she thought bitterly.

"Then… I'll do it. I'll try to make them people again." Nios hugged her.

* _chapter 638_

** _chapter 589_


	40. Two Ghosts in the Machine, in Love

_Two Ghosts in the Machine, in Love_

 _Oswin_

She was dreading what she would find in her rooms when she got home to Adam Mitchell, who had no doubt been pacing around and fretting about the fate of the _Vinsomer_ this whole time. His brand new luxury yacht, state of the art, purchased not even two weeks ago, a rare (if ostentatious) treat to himself. And now it was… the kindest word would be 'disassembled.' The cruellest word would be 'wrecked.' And she really needed to figure out a way to get him to forgive her for all of that because she _desperately_ needed to talk to her boyfriend about some things – and what was the point of boyfriends if not to talk to them? Besides, she had missed him, even if it had only been a few short hours. Even when he was asleep she missed him.

"Alright, first things first-" she said loudly, announcing herself after she entered the room quietly through the sliding door. Typically, Adam was in the dark on the sofa playing video games. Probably to calm his nerves after her little theft that morning. Non-typically, he proceeded to _literally scream_ and practically throw the controller for the PlayStation 4 across the room. It landed with a bang and Oswin screamed as well, if only because _he_ had screamed. Then there was a pause where he met her eyes and then glanced back at the television where some creep laughed and grabbed the character from behind, very quickly. And then they both screamed at the same time at that jump-scare and Adam abruptly switched the TV off completely and plunged the both of them into darkness. She almost tripped over one of his stray pairs of trainers on her way to the light switch.

"Ow," he complained when the room was flooded with brightness, as it never normally was. In the cold light of metaphorical day, the room was quite messy, mostly with things of Adam's. Granted, they were things of Adam's that she had stolen and left lying around – like his dressing gown and his t-shirts she slept in – but it was still not the most pleasant of sights. "You scared me!"

"I scared you two days ago! You ought to pay more attention to what's going on around you, Mitchell," she said, shaking her head, loitering by the door.

"I just got really into _Resident Evil 7_ , that's all… see, I'm not even that into _Resident Evil_ , but Esther was telling me the new one is way more _Silent Hill 4_ than anything else," he said. She didn't speak, she stayed there, waiting for him to ask the dreaded question. Waiting for him to ask what had become of the _Vinsomer_. She was clenching her jaw, had her hand tight around her cane. "…What? Have you done something?"

"I'm so sorry."

"What…?" There was a pause, and his eyes widened as he scrambled to get off the sofa. He fell over onto the floor clambering over the back of it, but she managed to hide her fond laughter from him and his sudden and predicted bad mood. She didn't like when Adam Mitchell was angry, because Adam Mitchell was more or less _never_ angry. "Have you broken _Vinsomer_!?"

"I'm literally so sorry, babe! I've been so upset about it all day, seriously, I didn't know how to tell you and I was scared you'd shout at me when you never shout at me – and it's all my fault for just taking your things! I'm practically as bad as everybody else here who blew up your cars!" she said frantically.

"Wait – what happened to it, though?" And then she had to explain the entire thing. How they and the _Vinsomer_ had been abducted by sea-dwelling scavengers, who had dug up an entire sect of Cybermen out of Peru and killed each other off in hopes of getting the most money from whoever they sold their 'army' to. How they wanted to use the yacht for their salvage, but after making all of the Cybermen aware- "Hold on, you did what to the Cybermen?"

"They're a species now. Well, they were always a species, but… but they don't want genocide anymore. Nios is all over me now I did that. One of them had the same last name as you," Oswin said, "They don't have a leader anymore."

"You single-handedly created a commie robot haven…?" he asked.

"Well – no – I had to use Nios for extra processing power."

"I'm genuinely so in love with you right now," he took her by surprise.

"You're not supposed to be in love with me right now – you're meant to be furious at me for them wrecking your new boat! But I swear – I'll make it up to you. I will. I built an entire spaceship from scratch and designed it all myself, didn't I? I can do a yacht. It'll be way better. I'll name it the _Gamordan Stormrider_."

"Oh my god…" he stared at her. That was the thing. He thought she didn't listen to all of his ramblings about optional video game dragon bosses. Of course she did, though. She listened to everything he said. "You're the love of my life."

"Mitchell, can you actually hear me!? _Your yacht is practically destroyed_!" she exclaimed. He sighed.

"It's just a boat, it doesn't matter. _You're_ the only thing that matters," he said softly, and Oswin was _very_ confused, and then he took her face in his hands and kissed her.

* * *

Some hour or so later (perhaps longer, she couldn't say she had been keeping close track of the time), she was still confused. But they weren't in their flat anymore, oh no. She stood – because where they were she _could_ stand without any artificial aids – in front of a strip of horizontal window. Out of it she could see warm-coloured clouds below and blue sky and pale stars above.

"Why do you keep changing it? It was space last time," she said, looking out at the clouds they were drifting above, her arms crossed, not needed to hold onto anything for support. Adam Mitchell was watching her carefully, curled up in bed, self-conscious. He was always self-conscious after they slept together. She thought it was cute.

"I like this blimp simulation," he said, then grew worried, "Do you not like it? You're so fussy."

"I'm not fussy!" she objected, turning back to look at him. All she wore was underwear – and not even normal underwear, actual lingerie. She put a hand on her hip. He couldn't take his eyes off her.

"You are. You hated space because it reminds you of Horizon, you hated underwater because you're scared of the sea, you hated the coast because it's not 'interesting' enough, you hated the forest because of the dirt and the insects and cabins are 'uncivilised,'" he said, which annoyed her because she really _had_ said all of those things.

"You don't have to keep changing the simulation interior for _me_ …" she mumbled.

"The simulation _exists_ for you."

"Oh, please. _You_ can't shag with people in the real world either, Mr Frozen Cock," she remarked.

"Oswin!" he protested. She laughed.

"It's not like it bothers me. If it did I wouldn't continue to let you stick it in me."

"Oh my god."

"…Sorry. I really annoyed Ni today with the way I talk," she sighed, dropping her arms down meekly by her sides. He was embarrassed. That self-conscious thing again.

" _Ni_?" he asked, "You've given her a nickname too, now? Didn't know the pair of you were so close."

"We ought to be, I adopted her. Me and Jenny. She's our daughter."

"She's not."

"She told me Donna reckons I'm in love with Jenny," Oswin said, finally coming to sit down on the edge bed next to him. When she did he sat up, the sheets all piled up in his lap to salvage his modesty. He was ridiculous.

"You reckon _I'm_ in love with _Esther_ ," he pointed out.

"Um, babe, you _are_ in love with Esther. You stayed at hers for hours last night," Oswin said. She'd spent the whole night with Clara for company, he'd gone to Hollowmire to see the Spooks and tell Esther how her job had been changed from passive surveillance of the Echoes to active surveillance, with the silver lining of an even juicer paycheque from the boy-genius. As soon as Oswin presented Clara with her birthday present tomorrow morning, though, guarding the Echoes would hopefully be made a whole lot easier. "None of that's even important – you didn't let me finish telling you about my day! I've been thinking a lot. I want to talk to you about some things. And you'd better not fall asleep again, like last week."

"I was tired!"

"Well I'm sorry if having sex with me bores you _that much_ that you immediately have to go to sleep," she remarked. He glared at her.

"You're clearly in a better mood than you have been recently if you've started making fun of me again."

"Make fun of me back – I don't mind."

"No, I can't do that, that's mean," he said.

"Boys are so weak," she sighed, "But seriously, stop distracting me. You're _so_ distracting. I have to tell you stuff."

"I'm all ears," he finally said.

"I was thinking about my dad," she began, "That's what I've been thinking about for days, ever since we took Fyn to Venus, about how Fyn's going to find him. And it's what I was talking to Clara about yesterday. I'm sorry I haven't confided in you. I just… didn't want you to worry about me."

"I'm usually worrying about you for something or other," he said.

"Well then I didn't want you to worry _more_ about me. But I was speaking to my sister," as she talked she took his hand absently and crossed her legs to be more comfortable, "About if my father would even want to see me after everything I've done, or if he'd just disown me like mother did." Adam began to speak. "No, don't – I don't want to talk about that, I don't want you to sit here and start complimenting me, it won't make a difference. Talking to Clara helped a lot, because she said she's proud of me."

"Of course she is," he assured her.

"And I was talking about all the horrible things I did on Horizon, and she… I don't know – she eventually started talking about all the potential I had to do good things, and how he'd think I was wonderful if I saw him again, and I just had to find some kind of purpose. A purpose that revolves around helping people. So I was up last night thinking about that, and I woke up early and couldn't go back to sleep. Then I got sick of being in here with you because you've only ever done good things with your intellect and you're such a huge philanthropist-"

"Oswin, don't compare yourself to me," he said, "All I did was steal some software. The money I make off it is hardly mine anyway, of course I'm going to give most of it back to people who need it." She stared at him for a while.

"There, see! You're so kind! And I'm not, not at all-"

"You are."

"Shh, I'm still telling you things," she said, "More to go yet." He didn't say another word, so she resumed. "I went into the console room to talk to Nios, and she was reading about nihilism, of all the things, and lack of purpose… anyway, it all happened with these Cybermen. They were being kept down there, as slaves, and everyone was arguing because Mickey was saying the Cybermen had to be killed, and Nios was saying there was no reason they should be killed because the whole reason they were genocidal to begin with was because they were programmed by a lunatic. And then she asked me what _I_ thought."

"What did you think?"

"Well, that was the thing, Mitchell – I didn't think anything." He frowned.

"Really?"

"I told her people usually tell me what to think," Oswin answered. And that was true. That was why she needed Clara, needed her to tell her what was good or bad, what she should be doing, what was real and what wasn't. "Then Nios told me, 'What's the point of being the smartest girl in the universe if you can't even think for yourself?' and that with a mind like mine thinking is the only thing I should be doing.

"Then they were trying to make me 'fix' the Cybermen because I was the only one who'd be able to make them peaceful."

"You basically nerfed them," Adam interjected. She laughed slightly and stopped for a while before carrying on.

"And I said, what right do I have to go poking around in their heads? To create a whole new species and society? I'm not god. And Nios told me that because I'm the only one who _can_ help them, it was my _duty_ to help them. So I did. But I don't know. That's still somebody else telling me what I should be doing…" she trailed off, "I'm not sure I know how to think for myself. First my mother is telling me what to do, then the Cluster Spores, then the Daleks and the Doctor… now Clara. And Nios."

"Clara wouldn't tell you what to think," he said.

"She did!" Oswin argued, "When she brought Ravenwood back to life. I didn't want to do that, but she made me!"

"It worked out though, didn't it? The universe balanced itself after her resurrection by making her into a vampire," Adam pointed out, "And Clara's not a saint, she can be misguided sometimes, everybody can. But she wants what's best for you. You're her favourite, she's always saying it. You know, Oswin, you're only twenty-six. You don't have to have your entire life figured out, you can still be finding your feet." She raised her eyebrows at him, and he nearly choked when he realised what he said. "N-not – not your feet, not finding them. Metaphorical feet, I mean, not – your real ones. Finding your, um… path. Divine path. In life. And stuff." She smiled. She wasn't bothered by him saying something offhand about her feet accidentally.

"You're sweet," she told him, "It's just so frustrating not having anything constructive to do, anything that makes a difference. I thought I would build a memorial for the Dust War, but what good would that do? It would just bring back bad memories for everyone who saw it. They don't need some floating bit of space debris to tell them to mourn, everybody on Horizon is mourning."

"You're still young," he said again, "And you've never been to school."

"…What do you mean…?"

"I mean that there's a difference between a _genius_ and a _prodigy_. Where there's potential that needs to be built on."

"So I should go to school? Do you have some kind of uniform kink, Mitchell?"

"Eurgh! No! God, you don't have to go to school. But you can still get some sort of more legitimate education, Oswin. Like books. You never read books. I've only ever seen you read books of Fyn's to make fun of him. The Doctor has a huge library."

" _That's_ your solution? To all of my woes?"

He thought about it for a moment, "Well… yeah. Come on, you were made by Clara Oswald, you can't be derived from her without enjoying reading."

"All she reads is trash," Oswin said, and he laughed.

"You're getting snobby."

"I'm not snobby!"

"Stubborn." She pouted.

"…Leave me alone. I hate you."

"How kind of you to say."

"Knew I should never have spoken to you…" There was a pause. She was still holding his hand, mulling over his suggestions.

"How does this Cyberman city work, anyway?"

"Oh, they haven't quite figured that out yet. River wants to keep an eye on it," Oswin said, "At least I managed to stop them from all dying when they saw what they were. Like I said, it's a problem of disassociation. And I have a _lot_ of experience with disassociation. I'll fix your yacht, though, I promise. _Vinsomer 2.0_. The _Gamordan Stormrider_."

"I kind of think the Kaltenzahn or the Hivernal are cooler dragons than the Stormrider," he said, "They're cuter."

"The smartest girl in the universe is building you a new boat, you'll get what you're given and you'll be grateful."

"They're the ice elemental dragons, though. So it's fitting."

"Name your boat after whatever pretend dragon you like," she shrugged, "You're such a nerd. Jenny hasn't named her ship after a dragon, you know."

"What _has_ she named it?"

"Oh, god knows. Wouldn't surprise me if she named it after herself, to be honest. I can't keep the names of all of that girl's guns straight in my head." She went back to looking out of the window, but from the bed she couldn't see anything more than the blue sky. Sunlight poured in around them. Funny, going by how dimly-lit every room he occupied was, she would've thought Adam Mitchell's dream locale was a grotty little cave. Just a grotty little cave with a fancy computer sitting in it. And a dirty bed for his nefarious sexual desires.

" _So_ …" he began, getting her attention. She glanced back at him.

"What?" He looked at her hopefully, but she was just confused.

"The smartest girl in the universe is fixing my yacht up," he said, "Is the smartest girl in the universe going to do anything else for me…?"

"Like what? I'm not building you _two_ yachts. That's ridiculous. Although, Mickey said earlier that you should get a luxury submarine. Not that I'd build you one of those, either. Mickey was saying something about Martha this morning, too, that she was sick."

"…Bit of a mood-killer."

"What mood?"

"The romantic mood!"

"There was a romantic mood…?"

"There might have been if you gave me a chance," he muttered.

"… _Oh_ – god, sorry. I didn't realise you were trying to flirt with me. Sure I'll sleep with you again in a minute, if you're not too tired. Why wouldn't I? You don't have to dress it up like some sort of weird exchange – like you're a gigolo who gets paid in boats rather than cash."

"Martha was sick?" he asked, not even bothering to say anything about her last comment.

"Yeah, woke him up, said he was worried about her before he came out. Yesterday she was wide awake at five AM."

"Weird."

"Yeah, I guess. Probably food poisoning, she's been eating all sorts of weird stuff lately. Anyway. How's coffee sound? I love being able to taste it. We can stay here for ages if you like, it's not like there's a time limit," she said, going to stand up. He still had hold of her hand though, and when she rose he tugged on her so that she fell back down and he could plant his lips on hers again. She smiled and kissed back for a second, until saying, "Calm down. I'm making coffee. There'll be plenty of time for _that_ in a while. Have a nap."

"I'm not going to fall asleep," he mumbled, annoyed.

"That's what you said last time! How many sugars do you take, again?" she asked, getting up, relishing in the ability to actually walk for once. He took more sugars in the simulation than out of it, because in the simulation he didn't have to worry about staying healthy by limiting his poor dietary choices.

"You're all the sugar I need," he said. She laughed.

"Fair enough."

"But, um – but three sugars, babe. I'll have three…"


	41. Nowadays

**DAY 143**

 _Nowadays_

 _Clara_

Sometimes, Clara Oswald overthought. It was a terrible habit. She would be trying to sleep, and she wouldn't be able to switch off her mind, and with partial loss of consciousness came a loss of control over her higher brain functions. And these thoughts came out of nowhere, they really did, a whole string of fears and realisations that felt like she had just had half of her teeth knocked out by a brick to her face.

As she lay there in the middle of the night, unable to quite get to sleep and fearing that even if she did she would be subjected to some rather horrendous nightmares, she felt smothered; the darkness around her became a physical entity, a malevolent force her own anxieties had conjured from the depths of her psyche, brought out to attack her, to weaken her, it became tendrils around her lungs and a deafening white noise rang in her ears, an impenetrable silence that was as cacophonous as an air raid siren hung in the air, all of her senses overloaded by a crushing sensation she had imagined unto herself and Clara felt like she couldn't breathe, couldn't do anything, like she was going to succumb to a billion tiny little worries that had popped out of nowhere like drops of water from a tap slowly dripping and dripping and dripping and building and building and building until she was _drowning_ and she thought she might-

The Doctor coughed.

The sensations subsided.

It was some time a while after midnight in the in the early hours of the 'next day' - if 'next days' ever really existed in the stasis of the TARDIS. She had her fists clenched around her bedsheets, lying on her back, and had forgotten her was there next to her. But he was, she could see him when she glanced over, his dark silhouette, she could hear him breathing when she strained to listen. Letting go of the sheets she balled up her hands and pushed them into her own eyes. It was funny how her worries revolved around him, yet she had forgotten she had him there all along, to confide in, to talk to - but would he want to be talked to about this? Would confiding really help her at all?

There she lay, a married woman, and it was suddenly hitting her, four months later, that she had been wrenched right out of her life quite violently and flung into this new one with this man she had hardly known, a man she still hardly knew, and it was all becoming very overwhelming. There she was on a spaceship with an alien, travelling through time and space at a gazillion miles per hour and she could feel her old life, her old self, her family, her everything, slipping away, sending her tumbling down into a choking abyss. The Doctor had swept in and pulled the rug from under her and now she was in free fall. And the only question she had on her mind was the one of if he was willing to catch her. Catch her and keep her.

The darkness painted grim shapes and illusions on the walls and the ceiling around her, things indefinable yet threatening, those moving pictures children saw when they thought the monster under the bed had crawled out to play. But there he was, next to her. She knew where he was by the warmth constantly emanating from his body, those extra thirteen degrees of luxurious heat Time Lords possessed that was so welcome in winter nights and during storms – not that they experienced a lot of that in their cushy prison of a spaceship. In _his_ cushy prison of a spaceship.

She decided then, though, that if she couldn't talk to her husband – who was not merely her husband but who was also a very old alien who always seemed to know the right, most eloquent thing to say in times of crisis – then who _could_ she talk to? So she kicked him (gently) in his leg, more of a nudge, trying to get his attention. He made a noise of awareness, a sort of grunt, attempting to deduce whether or not she was awake and she had disturbed him on purpose, without waking her up if she had not.

"Are you awake?" Clara whispered, knowing full-well that he was. Glancing to her left, she saw him roll all the way over, onto his back, in the dark. He'd been facing away from her, at the wall; before she withdrew into her fitful half-sleep to be kept agitated by her own invasive concerns, she had muttered something to him about being too hot. Presumably, this was why he had moved away.

"Yes," he answered, and was about to say something else when he interrupted himself by yawning. Clara felt like she was stuck to the bed in some invisible way, trapped there. "Are you alright? Something the matter?" She didn't answer. "Clara?"

"Would you switch your light on, please?" she asked, her tone more desperate than she desired, but she had an unpleasant lack of control over herself. She heard him move under the sheets as he leant over to the other side and illuminated the room with dim, warm light, chasing away all the ghosts she had been obsessing over. It was exactly like when she had nightmares, her bad nightmares, those ones about her mother, and she would have to switch the lights on and sit there. Light equalled safety.

"What's wrong, Coo?" he asked softly. Of course he knew something was wrong. He was the Doctor. He always knew. He had probably known before she had nudged him or spoken at all. That was a good thing, though. Clara sat up and wrapped her arms around her knees, thinking. She really ought to _stop_ thinking…

"I like it when you call me that," she told him, "It's my favourite thing you call me."

"It's fitting. It's your initials."

"It isn't." Coo. To 'coo' being the verb to murmur fondly or amorously; to whisper kindly, sweet nothings, _coo_.

"It's what's engraved in my wedding ring. Think of it as a… symbol of commitment. Tell me what's wrong, won't you?" he entreated, sitting up himself next to her, leaning over. She still didn't speak. "What are you worrying about?"

"About whether you'll be upset," she said.

" _Upset_? Why would I be upset? You can tell me anything, no matter what," he assured her. She could hear the concern in his voice, so evident. So comforting, strangely.

"Just… promise you won't be upset, or angry."

"I promise, of course I promise. What's wrong?" he asked, apparently not knowing if it was, at that moment, alright for him to touch her. His hands sort of hovered uselessly next to her shoulder. She was worried that in a moment he might resort to patting her head.

"I'm feeling kind of uprooted right now, you know? Really on edge," she said, "Because I had a whole life. Not necessarily the life I wanted, but I had a job, had home with the Maitlands, and one day I just happen to be here, reading _Pride and Prejudice_ in the kitchen, trying to bake another soufflé. And… in an _instant_ … everything changed. _Oh_. I think the honeymoon period might have just ended, sweetheart… now I'm in the harsh light of day and can't help but be really bloody freaked out that if this ever ends I haven't got a single thing to…" She stopped and sighed, then looked at him. He looked sad. "Do you ever just want to go home?"

"Everyday. And I never can."

"Yeah. Right. Sorry. I shouldn't have said anything. I'll just go back to sleep. Don't worry about-" he reached over and took both of her hands, both of her clenched, shaking fists, in his. "I feel claustrophobic on this ship. Which is ironic."

"Do you want to go somewhere? For a walk? Change of scenery?" he asked her kindly.

"It's the middle of the night."

"The world is your oyster, Clara Oswald. Whatever you think might make you feel better you can have right now, I don't want you to be sad. I would give you the universe if you asked for it."

"Then… yeah. A walk would be nice," she nodded slightly, struggling to smile at him.

* * *

"It's weird, you know, wanting to go home, because it's not so much the place as more the feeling or familiarity and sanctuary," Clara began saying, a while later. She didn't know the date, but it was the middle of the night and chilly and they were sitting on a bench right on the edge of the promenade in Blackpool, overlooking the beach with the moon reflected in the ocean, pearlescent and fragmented in the rippling waves. She thought it was August. They weren't paid much notice by people walking past, which was good because they were both in pyjamas in dressing gowns.

"What _is_ home to you?" he asked. They were both eating Cornettos he had procured from somewhere (she didn't much like to look into his methods of 'procuring' things) because, as he declared, they couldn't go to the seaside and _not_ have ice cream. Even if it _was_ the middle of the night. His was strawberry because, apparently, it reminded him of her. She had mint for little sentimental reason other than she enjoyed the flavour.

"I don't know," she slumped, "Not my old house, not my dad. Not the Maitlands. Not the TARDIS. I don't think it's much more than a feeling."

"Ah, but one has to listen to feelings. Life is so dull without them. Maybe you ought to travel and find yourself."

"All we _do_ is travel. You've been travelling for centuries."

"Yes, but every few decades I turn into a new person. Keeps things fresh. Besides, I don't need to find myself, I found you," he said rather offhandedly, licking his ice-cream. "I know what you mean about feeling lost and homesick, though, Clara. It happens to the best of us. I just can't do anything about it in my case. And I know that you feel trapped by the TARDIS, but for whatever reason you just don't want to leave." He gave a slight shrug when he finished speaking, and she stared at him.

"What do you mean for 'whatever reason'? _You're_ the reason." He almost seemed surprised. She was sitting on the bench with her feet up on it, facing him with her back against the metal arm, and he was sat turned ahead with both legs stretched out in front of him, one crossed languidly over the other.

"What about Oswin?"

"What _about_ Oswin? Oswin… would be alright. This isn't about her. It's… about us. It's like… look, this is gonna sound _really_ weird but I can't think of another metaphor right now other than, like – imagine the TARDIS is… a disease. And I don't mean that in a negative way, just bear with me, alright? So the TARDIS, and the Dimension Crash, and all your other companions, and _everything_ , are just symptoms of this one big disease, right? Well, what am _I_? Am I just another… another _symptom_ in your life, or am I… you know, am I like, my _own_ disease? A separate disease?" Clara was tired and so all of her words were clunky, and she was finding it terribly difficult to construe any completely coherent meaning through them.

"I must say, I sound very ill in these fantasies of yours, darling," he remarked. She didn't laugh. He seemed nearly amused, though. Not angry, like she had thought. Thank god.

"Well, _what_ am I? How important am I to you _really_? Because I'm not just a friend of yours, I'm your _wife_. You agreed to marry me; more than one you, the mysterious, elusive Doctor, have married _me_ , and… I don't know whether or not you quite get what that means. Or _I_ get what that means, in all honesty… not that I'm saying you're doing a terrible job of being a husband, as far as _I_ can tell, you're wonderful, I just… what if you're just getting lucky in us having a healthy relationship and it's not because you really want _this_? What if we started arguing? Would you fight to keep us together or just sort of let us drift apart? I don't know."

"…Forgive me for me confused, but isn't this all rather irrelevant? We've both met Thirteen. She has to happen."

"But you can't just _assume_ that and then not put any work in!" she protested, "We can't just get lazy because our future seems like a sure-thing – and even so, what if our marriage were to break down _after_ whenever she comes from? Neither of us know how old she was." Eleven sighed.

"I thought this was about you feeling stuck on the TARDIS?"

"Say you lost the TARDIS. I don't know how, or why, but hypothetically, say you lost the TARDIS and there was absolutely no way to get it back. None at all. You were just stuck without it. But you had me. Am I a separate part of your life, or just another sub-part of your travels through time and space? A side-effect? Even if I am arguably one of those good side-effects people sometimes get. I don't like to think that my being on the TARDIS all the time is the only thing keeping us together. And from what it sounds like, when Thirteen comes from, we _are_ still living on the TARDIS. If we lived somewhere else, would we still work or would you get sick of me and just leave?"

"You're making yourself sound like a consolation prize."

"Well, aren't I?" she asked. He stared at her in shock. A late-night tram slinked past them and some cars skidded along out of its way, lights from the takeaways that lined the seafront making odd patterns when clashed with the closed, dark souvenir shops.

"Of course you're not!"

"It just all comes down to… if I asked you to leave the TARDIS, for _us_ , would you?"

"It depends on the context, to be completely honest, wifey."

"Not forever. For a bit. A while. But then, you're over a thousand years old. A while to you isn't the same as a while to me. But would you? Do you care about me and our relationship enough to step out of that spaceship and…? I don't know. Live the way _I_ would want to? Are we on equal terms like that? Do you just _hate_ the thought of every stepping off that ship, even with me and even temporarily? Because I'm living there with you the way _you_ would like, and it just seems kind of unfair. Unfair on me that I have to completely eliminate any possibility for my having an even somewhat _normal_ life just because e of some bloke who's come swanning along." He watched her for a long time as he finished eating his Cornetto, reaching the chocolate tip at the bottom.

"Why are you thinking about all this now, anyway? Out of nowhere?"

"I'm not, it's been a while. Weeks, maybe."

"And you didn't tell me?"

"This _is_ me telling you. I thought it would go away."

"I don't understand, we've been happy for four months, what's generated these inhibitions of yours?" he asked. He was more worried than anything.

And when Clara Oswald finally opened her mouth to pour out the miserable contents of her sordid heart, a bleak torrent of things which she had never dreamed she would ever need to tell the Doctor, the only thing that came out was a very loud humming. But this humming was unnatural and didn't come from Clara; in fact, it took the pair of them quite by surprise and she promptly closed her mouth and sealed away her secrets again. It didn't take long for them to locate the source of the humming, the exponentially _noisy_ humming, a buzzing and whirring sound of rockets accompanied by that sharp smell she associated with whatever universal fuel alien jets all syphoned into themselves. There were lights, too, dozens of them, sticking their green bulbs out of the silvery silhouette of a battered spaceship. It was too dark to see the proper shape, but it came shooting, comet-like, across the houses and the seafront and the tacky tourist attractions lining the promenade, bringing its extra-terrestrial stench and its mystery dive-bombing into the ocean. A wave rolled up the beach after it, and they stared at the black water. Nothing for a few moments. Then a great deal of bulbous bubbles, like pustules, conglomerated in a foamy cluster on the murky surface of the sea and the shimmering thing rose up, emerging from the greyish depths like a great, shiny whale. It drifted with the ebb of the tide onto the sand, beaching itself atop the shales scorched from the day's afternoon heat. Then it just sat there very oddly, and she was acutely aware of unfocused screaming just outside the range of her attention.

 **AN: A great deal of the conversation between Clara and the Doctor in this chapter and the next two is referenced by Future Clara and Thirteen in Chapter 467, "Future Hearts."**


	42. Flotsam

_Flotsam_

 _Clara_

She stared from the crashed ship to the Doctor until she noticed a trail of pinkish, strawberry ice cream cresting his bottom lip like drool.

"C'mere, you have ice cream on your face," she said, and he looked at her, flummoxed. She reached over and wiped the ice cream away with her thumb and then licked it off, "I've never been a fan of strawberry ice cream."

"I've always liked orange ice cream, but they won't do orange Cornettos for at least twenty years. I'll have to be sure to pick you some up one day, they _are_ marvellous. There was a lesser-popularised range of bacon-flavoured ice cream, but nobody ever really took to it, funnily enough." Through the distraction of the downed spaceship, neither of them truly forgot the conversation they had been having moments ago. Yet this new incident took priority.

"Do you know what kind of ship that is?" she asked.

"Mmm," he said knowingly. Then he leant over as though he were on the brink of sharing some great secret, "Don't let the fact it's in the sea fool you, darling. It's a _space_ ship." He tapped the side of his nose and winked. Clara punched her husband very lightly on the side of his arm.

"Arsehole," she muttered.

"Oi! As a matter of fact, I do. It's a very generic and mass-produced kind of shuttle presently accessible to a great deal of species, so as it happens I shall have to wait to see if the pilot climbs out to get a rough idea of what the situation is." She watched the dark waves lapping the hull of the vessel, its lights still glowing beneath the surface of the water. People were still screaming around them. "What _is_ your favourite ice cream flavour, then?"

"Cookie dough. Obviously. You know that. I'm always eating it. There's a great ice cream parlour near where I went to school that do really nice bubble-gum, though. And any milkshake you can dream of. I'll have to show you it one day," she smiled, and he smiled back, but then the green spaceship lights went out. He told her to watch and see what happened next, him moving to lean forwards with his elbows on his knees as though he were watching an incredibly engrossing film.

The roof of the spaceship slid off like the lid of a teapot, pushed up by an unseen force and moved so it sat on a precarious angle, until the sloshing of the machine in the waves caused it to wobble enough to splash down into the sea. The Doctor and Clara stared at it with identical expressions of curiosity and enthralment, squinting. Something pumped into the sand, making a dent, like it had been landed in, and splashed wet, gold mud around in the sea-foam. Clara jumped as they observed and very conspicuously slid along the bench to be closer to her husband (for warmth more than anything), and he glanced at her for a short second when he saw this advance. More dents began to appear, loping along in a one-two, one-two zigzag pattern: footprints. They were footprints. Large and freakish footprints and whatever was making them was nearly invisible - just invisible enough to make a mottled ripple in the bleak, navy horizon.

"What is that? Are you going to do something?" Clara asked him urgently.

"Do something? Why ought I do something?"

"Because that - whatever it is - is totally not a human and just crashed in a spaceship," she said, waving a hand in the general direction of the invisible fiend.

"Yes, well, I'm 'totally not a human' and have crashed to Earth in spaceships before, it doesn't make me a danger," he said, "I'd rather wait until I know what it is and try and speak to it."

"You're just a coward."

" _Coward_?"

"Yeah, you're scared. Fear of the unknown, and stuff," she said.

"Well I rather think _you're_ the one with a fear of the unknown," he commented in a tone of voice she could not pinpoint. She asked him what that was supposed to mean but was met by him clapping his hands together and standing up, declaring they best have a look-see inside of the wreckage. He offered his hand to her when he stood up and she took it and pulled her down the beach, her not happy about the ends of her dressing gown getting covered in damp, cold seawater and dirt.

Unfortunately, the ship was at an awkward height. It was six feet tall (taller than the Doctor) and its bulbous, doughnut-like body made it very difficult for either of them to drag themselves into it. In the end he had to give her a boost, and she toppled head-first onto a large pilot seat in a very small space that was like the cockpit of a larger ship just ripped off. The seat was very low down though, and she was resultantly hidden from view from the outside.

"Are you alright?" the Doctor called. She struggled for a minute or so to force herself to be sat in the chair properly, experiencing second-hand memories of the chair in the imaginary _SS Alaska_ 's cockpit from what shadows she could recollect of Oswin's life.

"All fine," she replied.

"Anything in there?" he asked. It was very dark.

"Have you got a torch?" she called. There was a pause.

"Catch!" he shouted, and a torch came flying in from above and landed in her lap, causing her to make a noise of mild fright that was a little less than being a shriek but not quite hopeless enough to be a whimper.

She did not thank him, but when she turned the torch on she genuinely _did_ shriek, and lifted her feet up from the floor, because there was something there. Something pale and slimy-looking. It was alarmingly similar to snakeskin, had the same scaled quality and reptilian sheen, just instead of being more greenish it was on the red-end of the colour spectrum with pink tints between the scales. Then she heard sirens outside.

"The fuzz are coming," her husband warned.

"Don't call them 'the fuzz.'"

"What should I call them? The coppers? The bobbies? The rozzers?"

"How about you just call them the police?" she suggested sarcastically, standing on her feet on the chair, the roof of the ship coming up just above her waist as she leant on it.

"Or an inconvenience."

"As long as you don't say it to their faces," she muttered, seeing the red and blue lights of police cars drifting into the scene at the edge of the beach. Maybe in London, UNIT would be immediately called and would embark upon a clean-up, cover-up operation. However, this was not London, this was Blackpool, an ex-tourist trap with a grotty theme park and an aquarium. It had no military or governmental presence – unless the local council were particularly concerned with UFO conspiracies.

"We're extra-terrestrial experts belonging to Undercoll," Eleven made up a cover story for them quickly and related it to her.

"Why would we be here so soon?" she tried to poke the same holes in it that the advancing authorities would.

" _Obviously_ because we're married and are taking time off work for a weekend away to… visit your family. Coincidence. Partly true. Not a fan of your family," he said. She raised her eyebrows at him.

"What about the bit about us having a weekend away? Is _that_ true?" she asked on a more serious note. Before he could answer they were shouted at by the police to put their hands up, which they both did out of lazy habit. It was alarming the amount of times people tried to arrest them. Clara would like to get out of the skin-filled spaceship as soon as possible, and obsessed herself thinking about how vile the ship interior was, until she realised she knew one of the detectives. She only recognised him when he said her name, surprised. There were about a dozen officers there on the summer beach.

"Clara Oswald?" a man she knew to be DI Sawyer asked. She stared at him. "Is that really you?"

"Uh, yep," she said awkwardly, for this was the father of a boy she had dated for roughly three months when she was fifteen. _In fact_ , it was the father of the boy she'd lost her virginity to years ago, this Sawyer. His son was Wade, he was Geoff. She mumbled, "It's been a while…" She had dumped Wade when Wade's best friend turned out to be an arse who mistreated his girlfriend eventually, and Clara had been there to pick up the pieces of her broken heart. And sleep with her. They'd not really spoken much after that – that beginning her stint as a career whore. Although, 'career whore' made her sound like a prostitute. Hobby whore?

"What are you doing?" Sawyer asked.

"I'm… just here. On a weekend getaway with, um, Theodore here. My husband," she indicated Eleven, smiling awkwardly. Of course he hadn't a clue where she knew Geoff Sawyer from. "I work for the government now."

"Dave always tells me you're unemployed," Geoff said. Urgh. She would have to have words with her dad. Then again, what was her dad supposed to tell people who asked after her? The _truth_? God forbid. She'd forgotten the pair of them went to the pub together all the time.

"Well, obviously, because it's a secret who I work for. Can't just tell people I work for the government. Most people don't even know it exists."

"I think most people are aware the government exists, Coo," Eleven said quietly.

"Undercoll. Specifically. I mean Undercoll. That little… sect…"

"I thought you were an English teacher?" Sawyer asked.

"Undercoll had a shortage of English teachers a while back," Clara said curtly, as though this made perfect sense.

"Regardless," Eleven began, clapping his hands together and taking attention away from the odd reunion, "This is a crashed spaceship. We saw it crash. We were just over there." He pointed to the bench.

"Were you? Why? Undercoll here already?" some constable questioned them.

"Coincidental, entirely, I assure you. We were here for a wonderful moonlit stroll along the seafront in this fine northern weather, when suddenly this silver doughnut thingamajig flew out of the sky and crashed in the sea! Ridiculous. Are you going to climb out of it yet, darling?" he turned to Clara. She raised her eyebrows at him. Here he was suggesting that she, in front of a dozen police officers and an ex's dad, partake in the highly unflattering activity of clambering out of the thing. She wondered if it would be bad if she teleported out…

Objectionably, she acted as though there were a significantly higher step within, while she was really only using telekinesis, in order to make it so she just had to jump down into the shallow sea. The shallow sea was very cold though, and she got water on her pyjamas and her dressing gown.

"Why are you both in pyjamas?" the same nosy, female constable asked.

"We're part of a movement," the Doctor began curtly, "It's like naturism, only instead of being naked all the time we wear pyjamas. Not for any reason to do with the societal constructs of the fashion industry, unnatural and unattainable standards of beauty or - god forbid - to make a statement on right-wing politics or anything; just because it's comfier."

"Doesn't it get cold in winter?" someone inquired. It was clear they all thought he was a weirdo. Well, Clara supposed he _was_ a weirdo, she was just used to it because she had married him.

"We don't do it _all_ year, only in the summer. Anyway, we're actually having a brief holiday, so we'll just pop off and be out of your way," he smiled happily, which took Clara by surprise. He started to head off, and she tried to follow.

"Hold it right there," Sawyer said, "Show me some credentials you really belong to this Undercoll - which I've never heard of."

" _Credentials_?" the Doctor exclaimed in a manner implying he had no credentials of any sort. Then he sighed, "Oh, if I must," he produced his psychic paper from the pocket of his dressing gown, Clara very surprised that he had it on him, and held it up to Sawyer's face. DI Geoff Sawyer was not exactly the tallest of men, and his son had not been, either. Clara would be surprised if he even reached 5'6". "Are my wife and I free to leave now? We have places to be." Did they?

"If this isn't fake, why don't you help? This is _your_ area of expertise, if it's not a hoax," Sawyer asked. He was, very clearly, out of his depth with the UFO.

"Maybe it is a hoax, how should I know? I do this every day of the week, this is my weekend off. Although, between you and I, it's in everybody's best interests to keep this out of the press. Keep the military from sticking their red berets in where they're not wanted," he advised Sawyer and the other officers, before walking off for real this time. Clara smiled uneasily at Sawyer and hurried off in her husband's wake, taking his arm once she was close enough to him.

"Why are you not investigating that UFO crash?" she asked him quietly. She had a million questions all of a sudden.

"You already investigated it, didn't you? And besides, I already knew what sort of a ship it was. Did you find anything?"

"Yeah, a huge, shod skin," Clara said, and he looked down at her.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Whatever that invisible thing was, it had red scales," she told him, and he looked ahead thoughtfully for a minute, "Do you know what it is?"

"Do you know any good hotels around here?" he changed the subject. She supposed he _did_ know what it was, but for some reason was disinclined to tell her just yet.

"I used to live here in a proper house, I didn't need to know hotels," she said, "I know where there's a Premier Inn, but it's not close at all. It might not even be here anymore. It won't be _that_ hard to find a hotel, Chin. They're everywhere - sixty years ago this place was a tourist trap. Why do you want a hotel?"

"To stay in, of course."

"Sorry, _what_?" she let go of his arm and stopped walking dead on the path. There was nobody around. In the distance the police clustered around their new spaceship with the red and blue lights still flashing. He crossed his arms and looked back at her and her shock.

"You were giving me the distinct impression earlier that you most definitely did not want to go back to the TARDIS and you wanted to continue to talk to me," he said, "Besides, I was lying about not investigating that shuttle. It's very odd and I think we ought to keep an eye on the situation... in the meantime, we should book a hotel. And, like you said, there are plenty. Unless you want to call a taxi and go to your father's?"

"I would much prefer not to go to my father's," she assured him, "And if you're putting yourself far enough out of your comfort zone to stay somewhere that isn't your fancy police box in the first place, all for _me_ , I'd hate to make you any more uncomfortable. Just find a hotel that isn't totally grotty."


	43. Always

_Always_

 _Eleven_

"Who was that detective, then?" the Doctor asked his wife when they had succeeded in securing themselves a place to sleep. They had traipsed around for half an hour at least before he finally decided to take 'executive action' and go sonic a cashpoint to get money out of it. He didn't _steal_ the money, it was taken right out of Clara's bank account. They just couldn't access it normally because she didn't have her debit card on her person. After that, they got a room in a hotel that was nearly full up, which he took as a measure of quality. They didn't want to be staying in an empty hotel, after all. They were always quite ghastly. Haunted, perhaps. But no, they got a room in some well-furnished, warm, modern place. Just the right balance of homely and impersonal. Not that the pair of them, a couple of penniless transients, could afford to be picky about the décor.

"Oh, him… that was Detective Inspector Geoffrey Sawyer. I dated his son when I was fifteen, nine years ago," she said. _Ten years ago_ , he corrected himself internally. But she was much too tired to remember what day it was. "His son, Wade, was my first boyfriend. _Real_ boyfriend, if you catch my drift." She wandered around the dark room and took off her dressing gown, then eyed the dirty, wet hem of it disapprovingly. The bottoms of her pyjama trousers were soaked, too. "Apparently he's also friends with my dad."

"Well, how… coincidental. Everything's been awfully coincidental today, hasn't it?" he said awkwardly, then cleared his throat, "Hopefully we shan't run into his son." Clara laughed while taking her sullied trousers off as well.

"You're cute sometimes," she said.

"Are you tired?"

"Very," she confessed, "But I can't sleep until we finish talking."

"That's a dangerous game you're playing, Coo; I can talk for weeks non-stop, day and night and night and day."

"I won't be able to sleep if we don't talk, anyway. I might have a bad dream," she sighed. She wasn't really looking at him. She wasn't looking at much of anything, was off in her own world, perhaps. The lights were off, the only source of illumination the soft moonlight trickling through the thin curtains. He went to lean on the dressing table and wondered if he might use the cheap, provided kettle to brew her something to drink that might settle her more than the ice cream had done.

"Do you want a drink?" he asked. She told him no thank you, and went to perch herself on the edge of the bed. In all honesty, he did not know what to do. He did not know what to say, what she really wanted, and she just sat. Was she thinking about what to say herself, or was she waiting for him to speak? Or did she not really know? He stayed standing in the corner, watching her, eyes on her back, unable to see her face. Eventually, he spoke, "You're sitting on the left.

"Huh?" she asked.

"I… you sleep on the right, usually… not that it matters, of course it doesn't matter, you can have anything you want. What is it, exactly, that you want…?" he asked her hopefully, but he was also scared she might start shouting about something. She still didn't talk. He finally decided to walk around the bed and sit down next to her.

"If this about you wanting to know if you're a separate part of my life to the TARDIS... well, you are. You always have been. Ever since you told me to 'come back tomorrow,' and insisted on only travelling on Wednesdays. You mean so much more to me than you realise, Clara," he whispered to her, "You're not just _you_... your Echoes were people who were created to save me. You've always been in my life, _always_ , even if I didn't know it. You gave your life thousands of times over all for me - that sort of thing can turn a man's head, don't you know. You are the thread that holds my life together, the _only_ thread. Without you nothing involving the TARDIS or any of those other people on it would have even happened, wouldn't have been more than a daydream in the time vortex. You are the most perfect thing in all of the universe and I have been in love with you for a thousand years or more. And now you're here, living in my home, sleeping in my bed, next to me, every night, because after so long, and after me remembering all of the times I have seen your face out of the corner of my eye, or in the back of my mind, I can't even bear to be away from you for more than a second. All of the time I spend not with you I spend thinking about you – thinking of things you've said, things you might like, things I simply must remember to tell you the next time I see you. Of course you are your own disease, you are infinite diseases if you want to be, you are not merely a symptom. You are the cause of all of the symptoms and the side-effects in my life, and I would never in my most frightful nightmares wish for the cure. I would sooner die. What is it you humans say? Soulmates? Something like that. _My impossible girl_. Fascinating, we aren't even the same species yet here you are, your perfect self, the most divine individual in all of the realities which I have had the pleasure to traverse. I would leave the TARDIS if you asked, you gave me the TARDIS in the first place. All this time I thought I was running away, running away from my own species, and then my own species died and I was still running. Running _towards_ you, I assume, and now... the running would hardly be missed."

Clara didn't say anything. She even looked away. He watched her, and then he heard her sniff.

"Clara, are you crying? Don't cry, there isn't any need to cry..." he said, but she was, and he couldn't bear it, "Would you come here? Honestly, you are utterly mad, I adore it, come on." He coaxed her, very easily, into a hug, and pulled her as close as he possibly could and rested his chin on the top of her head. For whatever reason, the poor woman was crying into his chest. "You're very tired, Coo, this will all be the tiredness making a mess of your mind. You'd better sleep."

She didn't speak just yet, though. It took her a while to work up to it, work up to mumbling one tiny, slurred syllable: "Why?"

"Why what?" he asked softly, and she didn't answer, "Shall we lie down? I think we ought to." Lie down they did, and he was left to sort out the covers and produce a small pack of tissues from a bedside cabinet. These he bestowed upon her like great riches, and she thanked him in a tiny voice. He still did not quite understand what was the matter. She curled up with her head on his chest, drinking in his warmth and heat, and he stroked her hair.

"People usually get bored, is what I mean," she said impossibly quietly.

"Bored of what? Bored of _you_?" he asked disbelief.

"Yeah. I'm never 'the interesting one' or anything like that. Not to anyone I've ever been out with – which is a _lot_ of people. No, I'm just pretty. Pretty and too sarcastic. And easy. A 'good shag,' that's what I am. A memory of a lost orgasm," she sighed. There was a pause, and he made a very strange noise, which he turned into a cough. "What was that?"

He cleared his throat, "Hmm? What was what?"

"That cough."

"Oh, nothing, just got a bit of, uh, phlegm. Got rid of it now, though, I'm completely..." he did it again.

"Are you laughing?"

"Laughing!? Of course not! Why would I be laughing when you're so..." he was going to say upset, but he failed to turn his next chuckle into a hacking cough, and she sat up, leaning on one of her elbows, him lying flat on his back and trying not to look at her, "I have a... a cold coming on..."

"Stop laughing at me! What's so funny!?"

"I'm so sorry, darling, honestly, it was the 'memory of a lost orgasm' part."

"I thought it was poetic."

"Poems can be comedic - and you are so very funny. And sarcastic, not to mention sarcastic, like you said. Not _too_ sarcastic though, not at all. You have the driest witticisms, they're my favourite things," he said. Her hair hung down around her shoulders onto him, her still propping herself up. He lifted one of his hands to brush her hair away and stroke her cheek, "Your skin is very soft, as well."

"That's something serial killers say."

"Serial killers?"

"Yeah, there was that serial killer in, like, the 1960s who used to be obsessed with skin. I saw it on TV," she said, and he laughed again, "What?"

"Nothing, nothing… Anyway, Clara, I find everything about you interesting. You have the privilege of being an entirely different species to me with a completely different culture, even the most mundane things sparkle when you talk about them," he assured her.

"Oh, please. You've been on Earth for longer than you've been on Gallifrey." Probably true, to be honest…

"The ways in which we differ can also be the ways which make us strong," he said.

"Who said that?" she asked, leaning closer to him.

"What do you mean?"

"It sounded like a quote."

" _I_ said it, just then, made it up on the spot. Just like your one about the orgasms."

"Drop that now."

"No, I'm going to write it on our wedding invitations," he said mock-seriously.

"I'll kill you if you do."

"Oh really?"

"Yeah, and I'll wear your skin afterwards, just like that serial killer," she told him.

"It would smell."

"I'll have it tanned. A full leather suit of husband-skin. I'd wear it down the aisle if it wasn't for the fact you would be dead."

"Well, I might regenerate depending on how you kill me, and then you really _could_ , you lunatic." She giggled. A strange thing to do in a conversation about serial killers and skin, but if it was cheering her up he wasn't one to object. He was even less someone to object when she decided it was in her best interests to kiss him, pushing her lips on his in the dead of night. For a second they paused, unmoving, and then he laughed very quietly and sat up a little to kiss her back, until she broke them apart.

"I'm not gonna have sex with you in this weird hotel," she told him, sighing and lying back down. He could taste the mint of the Cornetto she had been eating earlier. He raised his eyebrows at her. Why did him merely kissing her mean he had his desires fixed on… _that_? Of all the things… she was incorrigible.

"Well I won't have sex with _you_ , either - you're so tired it would be like taking advantage of a drunk girl, and I'm far too much of a gentleman to do that," he said. The moonlight shone on her hair. As always, she smelt of strawberry laces, a ghostly scent that hovered around them.

"You already _did_ take advantage of me when I was drunk, back in Las Vegas. Oh, and that time we slept together. The first time. I was drunk then," she said.

"Yes, but you didn't tell me you'd been drunk until two months later," he reminded her. Apparently this detail was too minor for them to continue discussing it, and she relaxed into his arms.

"...What did you mean earlier when you said I had a fear of the unknown?" she asked eventually, five minutes later, when he thought she might have fallen asleep. She startled him a little.

"Well, it's natural, isn't it? You're only twenty-five and you've never been married, and what with us eloping you didn't have time to mentally prepare yourself. We weren't even together," he said, "The institution of marriage is the unknown to you."

"Sorry, twenty- _five_?"

"Oh - yes - of course! I entirely forgot to remind you - I was going to do it on the TARDIS in the morning, it's your birthday. Has been for almost three hours. It's a shame we aren't on the ship because I baked a cake," he told her, and she didn't say anything, and he stammered, "Happy birthday, as well. Almost forgot that part. Yes, happy birthday, Clara."

"You baked me a cake?"

"Yes."

"You actually baked it? You didn't just buy one?"

"Of course I baked it, why would I buy one? It's carrot, as well, your favourite," he told her.

"Nobody's ever baked me a birthday cake before."

"I had twenty-five candles, all of them red - your favourite colour. And I wanted it to look like a leaf, originally, but I'm not the best sculptor so I settled for it being round, in the end," he continued, "I've always loved round things, anyway."

"You're the love of my life."

"And you mine, Mrs Oswald. Now, for the love of god, go to sleep." And for a few minutes, he thought she might. Until she swore quite loudly and then sat up. He thought to himself, _what is it NOW?_

"Here you are, telling me about how amazing you've been baking me a birthday cake – and I'm awful! I've got to be the worst wife in the universe!" she protested, "And I completely forgot about all _that_ until now…"

"All 'what'? What have you been doing?" he sat up next to her. It was nearly three in the morning – wouldn't she just sleep already? She looked at him in the darkness with big, guilt-ridden eyes. She _had_ done something then, most definitely.

"It was the day before last, when Rose was trying to kill me! Threw me into some girl's bedroom!" Clara said, "And it wasn't my fault because _she_ kissed _me_ , I swear, and only for a second, and I was so star-struck I couldn't even do anything about it until Rose punched the wall down and tried to strangle me."

"Sorry, _what_? Who have you been kissing?"

"Oh – Jane Austen."

" _Jane Austen_!?" he exclaimed.

"She was acting like she knew me! Like we were a thing! She saw my wedding ring and asked if I'd married _her_ , for god's sake, and called herself _my_ Jane. I haven't a clue what it's all about, promise! I'd never've done it, but she took me by surprise, and I was distracted and very out of it from being teleported everywhere. Then my nose bled on her bedsheets," Clara explained, "And Rose took us to the ISS. I'm so sorry, sweetheart! Really, though, it wasn't my fault!"

"Why is Jane Austen under the illusion you and her are a couple?" he asked, confused, "And since _when_ was she gay?"

"Well she never _did_ get married," Clara pointed out. He was more surprised than anything else. "She knew I was a time traveller. Said I told her, at some point, that girls could marry girls in the future, thought I was meeting her out of order. What if I _am_?"

"No, no, darling. My daughter was complaining to me about all this nonsense yesterday," he remembered. He was always on the phone to her now, since Martha was still keeping her under orders to remain in Hollowmire until her broken thumb was more sufficiently healed.

"Jenny was _what_?"

"Ravenwood has an ornate candelabra she stole from Jane Austen," he said, "Jenny was complaining about how she keeps it on the kitchen table and has it lit when they eat dinner. Jane Austen doesn't know you, she knows Ravenwood."

"Oh. Thank god. I was getting worried you and I were going to separate, or something," Clara said. She seemed legitimately relieved. "She was a good kisser, though."

"Well. You are never to read _Pride and Prejudice_ again."


	44. Darling

**AN: I'm gonna get so sick of Clara; this storyline is all Whouffluff, and the next one is all Clarenny. You're all just gonna have to deal with it. Anyway, it's worth all this Clara for Jenny, because everyone likes Jenny.**

 _Darling_

 _Clara_

If there was one man she hated more than anyone else in the world, it was the Eleventh Doctor. Because he – horrid man – was jumping up and down on the bed next to her and yelling that it was her birthday. She knew it was her birthday, he had told her so last night, told her she was now twenty-five years of age. A whole quarter of a century. She did not need to fall out of bed to be reminded of this. Yet fall out of bed, she did. After that he stopped.

"Wakey, wakey, wifey," he half-sang at her. She told him to eff off. He laughed. She despised him.

"Never a fouler man have I woken up with in all my life," Clara grumbled. She curled up in a ball on the floor. He jumped lightly down next to her – spry moves for such an old man.

"I've got surprises for you."

"The only surprises I want from you are divorce papers." He thought that was funny, too, like he didn't think she was being one-hundred percent serious. That man was insufferable sometimes. He sat cross-legged on the carpet next to her and she scowled up at him where she lay, her pillow across her from where she had dragged it off the bed, too.

"They wouldn't be surprises if you got what you asked for," he remarked. He was fully dressed, which confused her, because as far as she could remember they had left the TARDIS in just their pyjamas, and she had quite possibly ruined her favourite dressing gown. Served her right for trying to wear it to the beach. She yawned. "Sorry for knocking you out of bed, I didn't quite intend for _that_ to happen."

"You shouldn't've been jumping on the bed anyway, you'll break the springs and then they'll charge us for a new mattress. And mattresses aren't cheap," she pointed out. He never thought of these things. It was _her_ money they were using, for once, and she needed to be careful with those funds, being as she was completely unemployed and didn't have any ethical way to get more – even if her bank account _was_ very generously inflated by tokens of Adam Mitchell's generosity, the leftovers from that time they had purchased a haunted house in Nottingham. Months ago now. "And you don't want to make a racket to cause people to complain about us, we get enough of that from Rory on the TARDIS."

"We shall have to take advantage of being here away from prying ears."

"Not if the walls are paper-thin, we shan't," she said, putting him down from the offset that day. Denying him certain… pleasures. He was put out. She finally brought herself to sit up, holding the stray pillow tightly in her arms. She could finally take a look around at the room in the daylight. It was modern and simple, everything either royal blue or white. Warm sunlight poured in through the window, the curtains open, flooding the room with summer light from the clear sky above. They had certainly picked a good weekend to visit Blackpool; the weather was almost always foul up north, more so on the coast.

"There's only an hour left to get breakfast," he said.

" _What?_ What time is it?"

"Nearly eleven," he answered, "They stop serving breakfast downstairs at noon, the flyer over there says." He indicated a glossy piece of paper sitting next to the television. She didn't care enough to go look. "It's included in the price of the room; we've already paid for it."

" _I've_ already paid for it," she corrected him.

"We're married!" he protested, "We share everything now."

"We definitely do not," she told him. That was the last thing she needed, him thinking a silver ring gave him access to her savings account. The money would all almost definitely be spent on a hoard of Jammie Dodgers as soon as he found out what her pin number was. "God, look at that," she said, staring out of the window.

"What?" he asked.

"The sky, the sun – _real_ daylight. It's like a dream."

"It's a shame you slept through the sunrise, though it _was_ at five in the morning. Presents?" he suggested.

"Presents plural?"

"Of course presents plural!"

"You didn't have to get me a lot," she said, watching him get to his feet to walk around to the foot of the bed. "Since you refuse to tell me when your birthday is so I can't pay you back." Not that she would know what to get him, anyway. He had everything. Would she have to just get him bananas, or something? A stockpile of them? He brought a cluster of gifts in shiny, red wrapping paper and dumped them all on the bed. She stood up from the floor and sat back down.

"It's fine, it's not like I paid for any of it," he said.

"You don't have to keep reminding me what a thief you are, you know," she laughed, "It's no wonder your daughter is the way she is."

It was three things, which was two more things than she deemed acceptable. She didn't think it would be very good if he started spoiling her with stolen goods. Still, though, she opened them, struggling a lot because it turned out that Eleven was unsurprisingly terrible at wrapping presents. It was just a big mess of red paper and an almighty amount of sellotape until she finally saw what it was.

"Is this a camera?" she asked.

"Yes! Very interesting type of camera, from the future, very state-of-the-art."

"Stolen?"

"Of course. Prints the pictures out. Instant camera. Fancy polaroid. Would have gotten you a proper, vintage polaroid, of course, but they're not half bulky. And the picture quality is abhorrent," he said. She'd always liked grainy polaroids. The next present she opened happened to be a very nice, leather-bound photo album for these photos to in. It was true, she was often complaining that they didn't have any photos together, and she wanted keepsakes to remember all the places they had seen, even if the Doctor wasn't really all that fussed.

It was the third and final gift which he seemed most excited about giving to her, which he told her to be careful while unwrapping, which she was. She found it to be a book, but not just _any_ book-

"It's a first edition," he said, "Rare." It was Woolf's _Mrs Dalloway_. "I had the idea from Ravenwood, you know, when she was drunk a few nights ago and kept raving about how she thought she might have written _Orlando_. Of course she hasn't." There were two inscriptions in the front of it, one of them in handwriting she recognised as Eleven's, and the other an autographed note she didn't know.

 _I've never met you, Clara, but I wish you all the luck in the world trying to make an honest man out of the Doctor_ , it read.

"Wait – did – did Woolf write that!?" Clara exclaimed. When she squinted hard at the signature she was sure it read _Virginia Woolf_ underneath. "You got me a signed first edition of _Mrs Dalloway_ , with a personalised note?"

"And you haven't even read the one from _me_ ," he said, "In lieu of an actual birthday card." It didn't say much more than happy birthday, and that he loved her, and some other rather lyrical phrases she wondered if he hadn't had help coming up with. She found the Woolf significantly more interesting. After all, her husband was right there – if she wanted him to say nice things about her, she need only ask. She didn't have to wait until November to do so. "It was either that or _Pride and Prejudice_ , and aren't I glad I didn't go for that now, after hearing of all this unorthodox business between you and Jane Austen." She decided to ignore that comment.

"Thank you – thank you so much, sweetheart, I love you," she said, hugging him on the bed.

"Yes, yes, of course you do, why wouldn't you? Anyway," he cleared his throat and let her go, "I wasn't lying about breakfast. I'm famished. Get dressed."

"Into what?"

"Oh! I forgot to mention – I had to go back to the TARDIS, didn't I? To bring all of these things. I brought clothes. There's a suitcase. Hurry along now, I want eggs before they run out, if they haven't already, thanks to you being so lazy and sleeping in."

They had not run out of eggs, thankfully, because Clara wanted some as well. She hadn't eaten since around six o'clock the night before. The restaurant in the downstairs of the hotel – The Dolphin Hotel – was just full enough for them to have to lower their voices when they spoke of what they had witnessed the night before. It was a while later. She was mopping up the dregs of her egg yolk with half of a sausage, having finished all her toast, and he was pouring over that morning's edition of the _Blackpool Gazette_ , the local paper. The 'flying saucer' on the promenade was front-page news, but the photograph wasn't much more than a blurry, silver thing. Looked more like a comet.

"It's nice having breakfast like this," she said.

"We have breakfast every morning," he told her, looking at the paper still with a frown on his face.

"Not on the TARDIS, I mean. Not having to hide in our room because everyone else hates us – god, isn't it peaceful?" she said. He smiled.

"Peaceful is a funny word for it – we _are_ in the shadow of this alien that ran off yesterday, and I still don't know what it is," he said, "I brought my tracking device with us, but it won't work well enough without a DNA sample."

"Then it's a terrible tracker," she said, "You have to find it to be able to find it?"

"Be quiet," he said, "Ah, nine down, clue is _doctor_. Physician, obviously."

"I thought you were reading? Are you doing the crossword?" she questioned.

"Yes," he replied, "The article is dreadful, doesn't tell us anything new, just a bunch of theories from conspiracy nuts. Lord knows what they've done with the wreckage, and the skin you found in it, for that matter."

"Maybe they'll make a handbag out of it."

"That only works if you take the skin off the snake when it's still alive, Coo," he told her. Then he frowned at the page.

"What?"

"Ten across, clue is _circuitous_ ," he said.

"Roundabout," she answered. He looked up at her in surprise. She shrugged and smiled, "I'm good at crosswords."

"Six down, _material for violin strings_ ," he said. He was challenging her now. It took her a moment.

"Ah – catgut!" she exclaimed, a little too loud. An old woman nearby looked at her. "Sorry," she mumbled, "Just getting excited about the crossword." The old woman eyed the pair of them for a few seconds – she also had the morning's paper in front of her with her cup of tea sitting on it, leaving a beige ring on the pages – before talking.

"Did you get ten across?" she asked. Clara began to speak, but the Doctor cut her off.

"Yes, it's _roundabout_ ," he answered, "Figured it out all by myself."

"You did not!" she protested, and he laughed. The woman seemed grateful, though. For revenge, she asked her husband, "Who wrote that crossword?" He glanced down into the bottom corner of the page and told her the name of the man. "I slept with him."

"Clara!" She burst out laughing. "Is that true!?"

"Yeah. Found him in a bar, I was bored and he made out like he was some big-shot reporter. I still might have gone with him if he told me the truth; that he just does the puzzles in the _Gazette_." Annoyed, the Doctor flipped to some other random page in the newspaper.

"Here's an article written by an Oliver Jackson. You haven't slept with him as well, have you?" he asked. She glared at him. "Ooh, it's about a roller coaster."

"Well, there is an abundance of them here," she said.

"' _Yet again, the much-awaited Stratosphere roller coaster's opening date has been pushed back, this time as far as 2018, following a near-fatal accident where an engineer fell from one of the tracks_ ,'" Eleven read aloud, "Nasty business, it sounds." Clara had zoned out halfway through his sentence, however, when she heard her phone buzzing in the pocket of her leather jacket hanging around the back of the chair. Well, it was actually Thirteen's leather jacket she had left behind as a keepsake after emptying the pockets, but Eleven wasn't to know that; just like the transdimensional bag Clara knew she had given to Jenny. She dug her phone out and saw it was an incoming call from her father.

"Crap, it's my dad," she told her husband, putting it to her ear before he could say anything. "Hi," Clara said, trying to sound more chipper than she felt.

" _Where are you_?" her dad asked.

Clara stayed quiet for a long while, until asking finally, "Has Geoff been speaking to you?"

" _Yes!_ " her dad said, sounding irritated, " _I have to hear from a drinking mate that my own daughter is back in Blackpool this weekend!? Why didn't you mention, Clara?_ "

"It was kind of an impromptu thing – we only got here at one in the morning," she explained.

" _Geoff said you were there when that thing crashed. Is it something to do with you?_ "

"No, it's a coincidence, came out of nowhere. We're looking into it, sort of," she said.

" _Are you still here?_ "

"Yeah." The Doctor was very blatantly trying to overhear Dave's side of the conversation, but averted his gaze when she looked at him warningly. "Would've come to stay with you, if you didn't hate the Doctor so much."

" _Geoff thinks he's weird_."

"I'll divorce him then, shall I? Because Geoff thinks he's weird?" she challenged.

" _Do you know what today is_?"

"Saturday?" she suggested, after a pause.

" _Clara_ …" he said.

"What? I don't, I don't have a clue. It's just some Saturday in August, I don't even know the year," she said. Then she froze. A Saturday. In August. In Blackpool. Oh no. She was going to kill her husband if she found out he had brought them there on purpose – but even he wouldn't be able to keep from nervously twitching if he had done, and he seemed quite involved with this article about the roller coaster. Wasn't bouncing his foot up and down or anything, which he usually did when she caught him lying to her. He sipped his coffee and then saw her watching him.

"What?" he asked. She didn't say anything, just looked out of the window, where she could see the sea and the beachfront.

"I'm not going."

" _It's your aunt's fiftieth birthday party, Clara! You have to go. You have to show your face to the rest of your family – people keep asking me if you're dead_ ," he said*.

"Tell them I'm not dead, then," she said, and Eleven pulled a face. She rolled her eyes at him in response to what her father was saying.

" _How many times do we have to go through this? You're coming_."

"I'm not! She keeps getting in fights with me on Facebook! She's twice my age and she's getting into Facebook fights**. It's ridiculous," Clara said.

" _I'll be fine, you don't have to stay for long. There'll be free food._ "

"I don't care. I hate that woman."

" _She still thinks you've married a heart surgeon after your grandmother told her so much. I won't correct anybody._ "

"…Gran'll be there?" Clara asked hesitantly. She liked her grandmother, and she liked her father. She liked her uncle on her dad's side, too. That was where all the family was, everybody on her mother's side was gone.

" _Yes. She'd love to see you._ "

"Dammit… fine, alright? Fine. I'll come. And I'm bringing the Doctor. And if she kicks off – like she will, because she always does – or if she says anything about mum, it's all your fault. I won't be held responsible for my actions," she said. She could hear him smiling. She was just annoyed. The Doctor wanted to know what he was being made to go to. Clara hung up the phone and groaned.

"What was that about?" he asked.

"It was about that stupid bloody party of my Aunt Fiona's he's been banging on about for months," she said, "It's today. Did you know that?"

"Is it? No, I hadn't a clue. I thought it was in April?" he said. She believed him. More coincidences.

"No, August. We'll have to go. Get a taxi, or something… urgh… and you're still going to have to pretend to be a heart surgeon."

"Taxi? No need," he said, "I picked up a little something else for us while I was back on the ship. Or rather, borrowed, from our brother-in-law."

"Have you?" He nodded, beaming, and she grumbled, "Oh, god… I can't _wait_ to see what it is…"

* _chapter 877_

** _chapter 1016_

 **AN: Won't be updates for a few days at least (hopefully before the New Year though) over Christmas, but oh well I'm sure you're all busy as well anyway. If, remarkably enough, you're NOT busy, go read _Spook Watch_ since none of you guys seem to and you don't leave reviews - which baffles me because if I uploaded it as part of the main continuity you'd all love it. It's great. Please read it and review it because I put a lot of work into it.**


	45. Summertime

_Summertime_

 _Clara & Eleven_

A DeLorean. That was what it was. Adam Mitchell's replica of the DeLorean from _Back to the Future: Part II_ , complete with timey-wimey bits of plastic, pretend modifications. She supposed, in the end, she had to be grateful the Doctor hadn't stolen the Batmobile Adam also had aboard the TARDIS. Although perhaps the Ecto-1 from _Ghostbusters_ may have been a _little_ less conspicuous? Then again, it _was_ a hearse with sirens… She thought Eleven was cutting the ruse a bit close with them being actual time-travellers, but he was very pleased with himself. She did still insist on driving it, though. She didn't trust him behind the wheel of a car.

"This is where your Aunt Fiona lives, then?" Eleven peered through the driver's side window. The DeLorean sat on the curb outside with the engine still purring, Clara debating cutting and running and just refusing to bother with the whole affair. Her husband was leaning right across her to get a look at the semi-detached dwelling on the end of the street. In the summer heat, the car's interior was stifling.

"Yeah. Why?"

"I'm not sure," he narrowed his eyes, "I was expecting something a little more… dastardly."

"Like what? A spooky old mansion?"

"No, no; more one of those old chateaus the Nazis used to hide war rooms in, in occupied France," he said, "You know, like Colditz."

"Colditz is definitely in Germany," Clara told him. He looked at her.

"Is it?"

"Yeah, I should know, my dad's seen every episode of it," she said, "He's got them all on video. _Video_. And it was a prison, anyway, not a base."

"No, no, no. What's the famous one in France? I remember it like it was yesterday; I was trapped, it was just my father and I and then, see, this _enormous_ fire broke out and we shuffled over in these wooden chairs to the fireplace, which was actually a secret door into a hidden, Nazi war room," he told her curtly. He had one hand on the side of his seat and the other right across her and on the door on her side – in other words, he was _very_ close.

"You're thinking of Indiana Jones."

"I'm not."

"You are. You're thinking of the third one. I remember _that_ like it was yesterday because Dr Elsa Schneider was-" and she finished her sentence by whistling, "Well, she was something else."

He looked at her for a long while, then very pointedly said, "She was a Nazi, that's what she was."

"She was not a Nazi, she was Austrian."

"So was Hitler," he said, and she scowled.

"Speaking of Hitler, Fiona is probably waiting for us inside. And actually they made a very big deal about the fact the castle they went to was right on the Austrian-German border, so that one wasn't in France either," Clara remarked, opening the door to the car. He didn't notice her do that and so his hand slipped and he fell right onto her (which she knew would happen.)

"Since when did you pay this much attention to films?" he grumbled, pushing himself back up to get out the other side. Clara had to duck under the wing door as it rose up vertically.

"I always pay that much attention to films when they have gorgeous blonde women speaking foreign languages in them," she said, watching him get out of the DeLorean, "On that topic – how's Jenny?" she asked wryly. He tripped over his own feet.

"Don't start," he warned her, and she laughed as he walked around the car, "What am _I_ thinking of then? Definitely in France and definitely full of an awful lot of people who don't seem to be enjoying themselves much and would rather leave…"

"That's a very gentle way to describe Colditz," she said.

"Ah! The Louvre. That's what I mean. Martians used to have pyramids like that abhorrent one they've built in front of it, you know." She happened to think that was quite funny.

The door opened as the house was approached and for a single awful second Clara thought it _must_ be Fiona marching out to give her a piece of her mind away from prying ears. It wasn't, though, thank god, it was her father, and she smiled and waved and called hello when she saw him. The Doctor, as usual, tried to come across as friendly and jovial as possible, but he still failed at winning over her father. She wondered if Jenny would do any better.

"How's things?" Clara asked him.

"The usual," he said, and she made a murmuring noise of agreement, "She hasn't asked about you yet, she's been too busy pestering Simon about Dale," he said.

"Oh, really?" Clara asked, then she paused and said to Eleven, "Oh – that's my Uncle Simon and Dale's my cousin who is, um… I don't know how old he is now."

"Twenty, trying to drop out from Liverpool before he starts his third year," Dave said.

"Drop out of a city?" the Doctor, perplexed, inquired. He already didn't seem to be having much fun and they weren't even inside yet – god knew what would happen when he actually had to meet the dreaded Fiona.

"Uni, Chin," Clara answered.

" _Oh_. Right. Ah. Yes. Of course."

"Did you have universities on your planet?" Dave asked a little coolly.

Clara sighed, and the Doctor awkwardly replied, "We had a similar sort of, equivalent. My daughter, though – she actually has three degrees, she was telling me, one of them in advanced mechanical engineering, another in advanced astrophysics, and some sort of obscure history is the third." The face her father then made just convinced her he had managed to forget that Jenny Harkness existed. Must be a very odd thing having his daughter married to someone with his _own_ grown-up offspring. Not to mention them being aliens.

"You've met Jenny, haven't you, dad?" Clara said.

"Not sure. Might like to meet this one's daughter, see what sort of woman he's raised."

"Oh, well, I didn't do a lot of raising her, I thought she was dead and she ended up living in a swamp for a good number of years until a mafia boss sort of… adopted her briefly. And then, you know, she helped out in the war effort, against the Nazis. Don't tell _this one_ , though, she seems to be very keen on them lately," Eleven indicated Clara, who went red and glowered at him.

"Oh my stars, she was not a Nazi! She was just _using_ the Nazis to get to the Holy Grail," Clara argued.

"You've found the Holy Grail?" Dave interrupted.

"What? No, dad – we're talking about Indiana Jones. He's making fun of me for liking Elsa. You always liked Elsa though, didn't you?" Clara said.

"That's the woman in third one?" She nodded. "The second one was my favourite. Though I always made sure not to let your mother find out about that." Clara laughed. "I thought you liked the last one, with Cate Blanchett speaking Russian?"

"Oh, no, that's a good point really…" Clara melted away into her thoughts for a few seconds, "It's just so hard to pick only _one_ of them. Because I did always like Willie as well…" Eleven opened his mouth and she very quickly ordered him not to say _anything_ about her saying she 'always liked Willie.' He sniggered to himself like a child.

"What about Marian?" Dave put to her.

"Well _you_ can fancy her if you want, but she's got the same surname as mum so it'd be a bit weird for me," Clara said, which her father found amusing, "Mum always did like _Raiders_ the most. What's _your_ favourite, anyway?" It took the Doctor a second to realise she was actually speaking to _him_ now.

"I've always rather enjoyed the sixth one, but I really think they went downhill after that," he said, and neither of them could think of anything to say for a moment.

"Well ever since they went so unrealistic with the aliens in the fourth one…" Dave began a telling sentence. Eleven frowned.

"That was a joke, sweetheart," Clara pointed out, "Sarcasm runs in the family. And talking of family…" she trailed off when she saw the front door of the house opening. And out walked a very severe looking woman who could only really be Aunt Fiona.

" _You're_ introducing _him_ to her," Dave quickly mumbled to his daughter.

"Of course I will," she said, smiling at Fiona. It was a smile which terrified the Doctor, though. Maybe it really _had_ been a bad idea coming over that day…

"Clara," Fiona said stiffly.

"Fiona," Clara replied, beaming. Eleven could see the hatred in her eyes. "We've just been talking about girls I'd gladly sleep with." Fiona outright ignored that comment and turned to Dave.

"You've finally convinced her to show her face in public? Though I can't say the public will be very grateful to have to look at it," Fiona quipped. Eleven could have sworn he saw some muscle around Clara's eye twitch.

"Anything to get a break from looking at yours," Clara said right back. _What_ kind of family had he inadvertently married into?

"Now, now, be nice," Dave said, to both of them. Clara cleared her throat as Fiona walked down the thin garden path towards them.

"Anyway, this is my husband, Theodore," Clara introduced. The Doctor forgot for a moment that Theodore was the alias she had come up with for him. All because 'TED' was engraved jokingly on the inside of her wedding ring. And that was where Coo had come from as well – it was funny how these things lasted and evolved. "He's a heart surgeon and he's doing very well for himself."

"There's more to a happy marriage than money," Fiona remarked.

"Oh really? You always gave me the opposite impression." Now Fiona was the one whose mask of faux-politeness was cracking.

"Very pleased to meet you, she hasn't told me a thing about a lot of her family," Eleven said. He thought it best not to say the usual, " _Clara has told me all about you_ ," because that wouldn't go down well at all.

"I suppose you don't get to learn much about a person when you get drunk and elope," Fiona said. Well. It appeared he couldn't win either way. Along with her sarcasm, Clara's sharp tongue also apparently ran in the family. Eleven didn't know what to say. "Do you always wear a tweed suit in the middle of summer?"

"It's funny you say that about eloping," Clara interjected to come to his rescue in a rather antihero type of way, "Because I seem to remember you and Uncle Derek knowing quite a lot about each other when you got married, and he still left you. For another man." Oh, god… Fiona wasn't even pretending to play nice with her niece anymore.

"And I wouldn't be surprised if you left this one for any girl you find on a street corner you can afford – you being on the dole*," she said, then asked the Doctor, "Has she managed to tell you yet what a slut she is?"

"Alright, that's enough. Stop insulting my daughter," Dave said right when Clara got angry, "Won't you go back inside? We'll be in in a moment, Fiona." Fiona did as her brother requested, skulking away, red-faced. Eleven thought he might rather be in Colditz. "You don't have to rise to her," Dave turned to Clara.

"Well I'm not just going to take her abuse," she argued, "Why should I? Ever since she said mum 'got herself killed' at Christmas in 2005, I don't see any reason why I have to put up with her. I did tell you I didn't want to come here." He sighed and put his hands to his temples; Clara could see that he knew he'd brought this all on himself. There was a good reason she avoided any function where there was even a whisper of her Aunt being in attendance. Looking between she and the Doctor, though, he spotted something.

"What in the world is _that_?" he asked, and they both turned, expecting to be faced with some alien threat. Dave was talking about the souped-up DeLorean, though.

"Oh, we're borrowing it from our brother-in-law," Eleven said, habitually calling Adam Mitchell their 'brother-in-law' without thinking.

"Brother-in-law?"

"Oswin's boyfriend, it's just a joke," Clara explained, "He's a multimillionaire. You're lucky we didn't come in the Batmobile he has. You know what, though, I might leave this jacket in the car, it's leather and I'm dying in this heat." As she took off the jacket and handed the things out of her pockets to Eleven, like it was now his duty to carry her rubbish just because she didn't have a bag (though he did still carry it), her father spotted the mess on her left arm.

"Clara!" he exclaimed in horror, staring at the burn. It had been eleven days since she had been given that, courtesy of Esther. It was by now a dark shade of pink, and she complained of it being sensitive and giving her grief upon occasion. She still had a small bandage wrapped around her left wrist, the epicentre of the burn, which remained blistered in the pattern of Esther's fingerprints.

"I forgot about that…" she said. The Doctor braced himself, because he was sure it would be him who got the blame for it, even though it always pained him to see that Clara was inflicting it on herself when it could so easily be healed by nanogenes or Miracle Medicine, or even that old burn ointment that had worked wonders on Jenny's hollow eye sockets post-facehugger attack (and gouging.) "I got struck by lightning, just the other week."

"Where?" he asked, "Which planet?"

"This one, I was just in Nottingham meeting up with these friends of ours who live in Yorkshire. The Doctor wasn't there," Clara explained, being very liberal with the truth. She hadn't, strictly speaking, told a lie. Not yet, anyway. "It was an accident, nothing to be done. And I shan't hide it, so don't ask me to. I'll be a minute." She slipped away with her jacket and Adam's car keys, leaving the Doctor in Dave's company without her to aid him.

"Is she telling the truth?" Dave asked.

"Yes," Eleven lied. It hadn't been accident, and it wouldn't have happened at all if she hadn't been trying to strangle Liam Kent.

"I don't remember you talking much about a daughter before."

"Oh, yes, well, we weren't on very good terms until quite recently. Not at all, in fact – I daresay she hated me. But things are improving now, I'm working very hard to make amends."

"How old is she?"

"Jenny's 208 now," he said, and Dave stared.

"Who's her mother?"

"Well, that's a tricky question – she was technically grown from a tissue sample of mine in a single-parent cloning machine. Doesn't really have a mother." Best not to mention Thirteen, he thought.

"Does she have a boyfriend?" he asked. Uh-oh.

"No. She has a girlfriend, though…" Eleven said uneasily.

"Really? What's she like?"

"I, um… Jenny's girlfriend? You want to know about… well, she… something tells me you would be quite fond of her…" he was very awkward now, but Clara returned.

"What's the matter?" she asked, coming back through the little front gate that just rose higher than her knees. It was a good thing her ridiculous mango tattoo wasn't visible; no doubt she would have a trickier time explaining _that_ monstrosity away than the scar.

"Nothing, nothing. Your father was just asking me about Jenny's girlfriend," he said, praying she would save him from this conversation.

"Ah, you'll have to ask Jenny all about that herself. You shall have to reintroduce her, sweetheart," Clara said pleasantly. He was very glad of her being there to smooth this over. It wasn't the time to give complex explanations of parallel universes. "Are we going in, then? What food is there?"

"She's managed to convince Simon to do a barbecue," Dave answered as they walked towards the house, and Clara's eyes lit up.

"Oh, really?"

"You just had a full English hardly an hour ago, Coo," Eleven pointed out, and she gave him a look.

"You can't turn down free food," she said, "It's _free_. And Fiona bought it. I'm going to eat as much as possible."

"You'll make yourself sick," Dave pointed out, holding the door open for Clara. He let go of it when it was Eleven's turn to enter and he had to catch it. Would Dave ever like him, he wondered? Perhaps he would prefer Thirteen.

"Even better, waste everything she's got," Clara said decidedly. No point arguing, she'd made her mind up.

The house had a small number of people milling around in the living room, but the majority he could hear in the garden outside. Clara was distracted right away, however, by spying her grandmother in one of the two armchairs, and Eleven was left feeling rather naked in a room stuffed full of Clara's – and by marriage, _his_ – extended family. None of whom he had ever met or heard anything about. Perhaps Fiona had a point about them eloping?

He was very surprised when Clara's grandmother requested he come and hug her hello as well, though, after Clara was relinquished. At least somebody she was related to liked him – and he still had a little bit of faith that Ellie Ravenwood, had she met him for longer than five minutes total, would have been fond of him as well. She, again, had to tell this little story about being struck by lightning on her wrist.

"I think the scar's quite cool, though," Clara said, "Looks like tree roots, sort of."

"You're thinking of the veins on leaves," the Doctor told her.

"Ah – you're right. I am."

"How's the heart surgery going?" her grandmother asked him, and he was taken aback.

"How's the-? It's um, it's…" he rubbed the back of his neck, "Well, it's certainly _hearty_ , for the most part." She actually found that funny. "No, no. It's going well… nobody's died on me recently." That was true, nobody _had_ died recently while he had been performing heart surgery on them. Mainly because he hadn't been performing heart surgery on anyone. If he _had_ been… well, he rather thought the mortality rate might not be so positive.

Clara thought it was very cute how nervous the Doctor appeared to be, how he was unable to figure out how to best act to come across as actually good for her. It was amusing when he cared very little for what anybody else he ever met thought of him and the way he acted, while when it came to Clara's family his aim was always to please. Probably because he was always so put-out by her dad disliking him, though she thought he was getting fonder of Eleven lately. But then she heard somebody's voice coming in from the back garden and got distracted.

"Come on," she whispered to him, stealing him away from a conversation with her gran about the nice weather. Of course, that was always the safe thing to bring up to new people: the weather. "Just going to get some food, Gran," Clara informed, taking her husband's hand to pull him out of the room, into the vacated hallway. The back door was open at the other end.

"What's going on?" he asked, stooping low enough down so that she, on tiptoes, could speak quietly in his ear. She still held his hand.

"Geoff Sawyer is out there, I heard his voice," she said, "I told you he's friends with my dad. He might know something about if our runaway alien has been sighted lately, things the _Gazette_ doesn't."

"Runaway alien? You might as well be talking about me," he said, and she laughed a little, "But yes, that's a good point, let us know if there've been any sightings or anything lately."

"Any idea what it is yet?"

"No, but we ought to be on the hunt for DNA, really, for that tracker to get a signal," he said, "Still no reason yet to assume that it's dangerous. Not that the police generally assume much good about stray aliens lost on-" Somebody very loudly cleared their throat, and he jumped away from Clara when they did. To someone else – that someone being, as a matter of fact, Fiona on the stairs behind them – it may have looked like the pair of them were about to start kissing, they had been so very close. Kissing, rather than conspiring about the thickening plot of a stranded invisible creature from outer space.

"Again, I find my niece disrespecting me by fornicating with somebody in my own home."

"Just because _you've_ never had anyone to fornicate with in your own home," Clara snapped.

"We weren't, as a matter of fact, I merely found it suited me to take my darling wife aside and remind her how ardently I adore her," Eleven said, smiling. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Clara blush slightly.

"Going into the garden now, Fiona. You know what a fan I am of bush," Clara said. Eleven disguised a laugh as a cough next to her as she dragged him out of the house by his hand.

"What did she mean, _again_?" he frowned.

"She really pissed me off one year when I was… eighteen, maybe, so I retaliated by merely seducing the daughter of one of her neighbours**. It was kind of by accident, though," she said, "Got caught fingering her in the cupboard under the stairs. Not in this house, a different one, Fiona's moved since."

"How lovely…" As usual she was unashamed of her promiscuity. The smell of burgers distracted the both of them, though, and it was just after Clara finally acquired one (and gave the same explanations of being unemployed, struck by lightning, and marrying a heart surgeon) from her Uncle Simon that Geoff Sawyer, the object of their interests, spotted them.

"Nice to see you again, Clara, and…?" Geoff forgot Eleven's 'name.'

"Theodore," he answered, offering a hand to shake to Geoff, who apparently thought he was weird. Still shook his hand, though, very firmly. The Doctor was always a fan of a firm handshake, of course.

"And nice to see neither of you in pyjamas."

"No, well, the seawater's ruined my dressing gown now," Clara said.

"You haven't been telling anyone about what you saw, have you?" Geoff lowered his voice and spoke seriously. Some gangly fellow was lingering, possibly eavesdropping, at his shoulder. "We don't want to create any hysteria."

"Of course we haven't, who are we going to tell? Everybody I know is 'in the know' too," the Doctor tapped the side of his nose when he said that, "And Clara doesn't have any friends."

"Oi," Clara argued.

"What?" he said, "It's true."

"You shouldn't be rude to her," the gangly one said. Eleven frowned.

"Who might you be?" he asked.

"Oh my stars, _Wade_?" Clara exclaimed, "God, you're tall now! I thought you were still your dad's height." Eleven's jaw nearly dropped. This was Wade Sawyer, the first person to _ever_ sleep with Clara Oswald. And Wade did not seem all that comfortable with Clara addressing him so casually***. "It's been a while, a long time, in fact. Anyway, this is my husband."

"Yes…" Eleven said, "Charmed." He didn't shake Wade's hand, because Wade had a strange look on his face when he looked at Clara. He was taller than the Doctor was.

"What are you doing now, anyway?" she asked him. He stiffened and couldn't quite manage to speak to her, which she did not appear to notice.

"He's a constable now, following in his dad's footsteps," Geoff answered, "Wasn't on duty last night, though. Ended up quite disappointed he took the night off and didn't run into you, weren't you, Wade?"

"No," Wade said quickly, "Why would I be disappointed?"

"Anyway," Geoff ignored his son, "Lucky we were invited here today as well."

"I wouldn't say there's anything lucky about having to communicate with my aunt," Clara said, then she held up her burger, "I'm only here for the free food."

"Are the two of you staying with Dave, then? You didn't tell him you were coming to Blackpool," Geoff said.

"Oh, no. Dad doesn't like the Doctor. Theodore, I mean," she corrected herself, "The Doctor is a, um, nickname he likes."

"Mmm," the Doctor murmured in agreement.

"We're actually staying at the Dolphin. You know, the one on, erm…" Clara racked her brains, "It's right on the Promenade, when you have the turning for Springfield Road and then Banks Street, you know?" Geoff did know, in fact.

"By the market?"

"Aye," Clara answered, and Eleven froze when about to take a bite out of his burger.

" _Aye_ , you just said, darling?" he questioned, "God, you're going native."

"I _am_ native."

"Returning native then. Regressing. Devolving."

"Shouldn't have married someone from the north then, should you?" she remarked.

"No. I'll go begin work on those divorce papers you were asking after this morning." Clara laughed. Wade was perplexed.

"You're getting a divorce?" he asked.

"Uh…" Clara faltered. The sudden tension was relieved by Geoff's phone ringing.

"DI Sawyer," he answered. Neither Clara nor Eleven could hear the voice on the other end of the line. " _What_? I'm not on call today, I have the – _how many_? … Three what? … What do you mean, you don't know it's three for definite? … _Body parts_? … Where? … No, no, I'm eating a burger, I don't need to know the details… Yes, Michael, we'll be right there." Geoff hung up.

"Body parts, you say?" Eleven inquired.

"Three dead, mysterious circumstances. Have to go. Come on, Wade," Geoff ordered his son to follow him away.

"I rather think our visit to this party has been cut short, wifey," Eleven muttered, "It seems like our missing alien may not come in peace after all."

"Well you don't come in peace, either."

"Sorry?"

"You always make all sorts of noises when you-"

"Yes, thank you, I got it now," he interrupted her very quickly.

"Right. Anyway. Time to go?" she said.

"Very much."

"Okay. We'd better hurry up, we'll have to tail them in the DeLorean. But first – grab as many snacks from the table over there as you can," she said, nodding at a long buffet table stretching against one of the dark garden fences, "Priority is the sausage rolls and the scotch eggs. And try not to let my dad see us when we sneak out."

"Got you. Mission is a-go."

*' _the dole' is informal slang for unemployment benefits, for any of my non-British readers_

** _chapter 977_

*** _in chapter 980 Wade and Geoff Sawyer are introduced via Ravenwood, in which Beta Dave says that her 'death' has greatly affected and upset Wade, despite her not talking to him at all for 12 years_


	46. Viscera

_Viscera_

 _Clara & Eleven_

Dave Oswald had not been happy about his daughter running off the way she did, though being as Clara only told him she was gone over text just before they set off in their so very subtle replica DeLorean, there wasn't a lot he could do about it. Besides, she pointed out that the Doctor couldn't go on his own because she didn't trust him to drive the car.

"I _can_ drive, Clara," he had grumbled next to her, stuck in the passenger side. He kept rolling the windows down and back up because he was bored and it was so warm; the air conditioner wasn't up to much snuff. Obviously Adam Mitchell intended this car to be kept stationary and merely admired, rather than actually driven places. Probably kept all of his rare, collectible action figures in the boxes, too. She was having a real nightmare trying to get the clutch to work properly, which her husband put down to her 'short legs and little feet.' Then she remarked that, okay, she would do her best to keep her legs away from him. And he shut up after that, because he was generally rather keen on those lower limbs.

"As soon as you show me a legitimate driving license – _not_ your psychic paper – I'll believe you," she said.

"I drove that motorbike! You know, the anti-gravity one."

"And!? That's a _bike_ , not a _car_."

"It's practically the same."

"And that's why you're not allowed to drive Adam's car. Besides, you _know_ what he's like for not liking people borrowing his things. I heard my sister got his yacht destroyed yesterday – you remember I was telling you he bought that yacht?" she said. He ignored her, keeping his eye on the Sawyers' car in front of them.

"They're going to turn left, pay attention, would you?" he said.

"Christ, I've married a backseat driver," she complained. He was right, though. They did turn left, and she followed. Geoff had been flashing his hazard lights at them earlier, perhaps wanting them to turn around and leave the Blackpool police to do their job. The thing was, Clara didn't have much faith in the abilities of her hometown's finest to capture a big, invisible alien. If that was the culprit behind whatever crime they were pulling up to, of course.

The Sawyers stopped, so the Oswalds stopped, pulling up onto the pavement, police cars and vans throughout the street.

"Why have you been following us?" Geoff demanded as soon as the pair of them hurried to get out of the car. They were just on an ordinary street, as far as the Doctor could tell. He was keeping an eye out for any traces of alien involvement, had his tracker he'd built to help the Shadow catch the loose Augix just the other week. He should have made Clara fetch a sample of that shod skin when she left the shuttle last night, but he didn't think that far ahead. It would be too much hassle trying to get to it now, and no doubt the skin had been moved elsewhere for a forensic analysis that would glean no results.

"Looking into things, aren't we, darling?" Eleven said, holding his device in his hands. It was a clunky old thing that was modified from a Second World War radio. Clara was holding a whole packet of scotch eggs she had nicked from Fiona, and was steadily working her way through them, scars still visible on her left arm. Wade, lurking, kept looking at them. Clara paid him not notice.

"I thought you said you were having some sort of weekend off?" Geoff questioned.

"That was before people died," the Doctor said seriously, "And it sounds like you're out of your depth, if you don't mind my saying so. The wife and I are experts."

"She has a literature degree, that's hardly what I would call 'expert,'" Geoff said.

"Because it's really the best thing to be advertising that I secretly work for a clandestine branch of government concerned with extra-terrestrial affairs? Just because you've known me since I was little doesn't mean you can stop me from going in there," Clara said coolly, "I'm an independent woman."

"Go on in, Wade," Geoff said to his lanky, quiet, ogling son, "I'll deal with this." Wade did 'go on in,' but he kept his eyes trailing over Clara for a few seconds longer than Eleven was entirely comfortable with. Not that jealousy had ever been a good colour on him… though, could he be jealous? To Clara, it was like Wade was barely even there. She wasn't remotely fussed for him.

"Here's the thing, Geoffrey," the Doctor said, going up to Geoff, "I'm probably supposed to be nice to you seeing as you're buddied up with my father-in-law, but people are dead in that house because of whatever crashed in that spaceship last night."

"You don't know this is anything to do with that."

"Neither do you, and you won't be able to find out. And even if you do – what then? _I'm_ the expert here, _I'm_ your best bet, and Clara is my companion in everything I do, so she's coming in as well. I already showed you my credentials yesterday. Feel free to inspect them again if you don't believe me," he said.

"She shouldn't have to see what's in there," Geoff nodded at Clara.

"And why shouldn't she? I daresay she's seen worse," he said, which was true.

"What will me seeing what's in that house do? Spoil my innocence? I distinctly remember your son spoiling my innocence when we were fifteen," Clara quipped. Shameless. Was it bad that he liked that about her? Finally, Geoff let them go into the garden and towards the small terrace, which was crawling with people all dressed up in white, paper suits with rubber gloves and goggles. She took her scotch eggs on in, ignoring the people who told her she couldn't bring food into an active crime scene. The upstairs bedroom was the epicentre of whatever had happened, and that was what Wade had gravitated towards.

"You can't go in there," he said in a voice he meant to sound official, but there was a tremor in his tone that meant he lacked any legitimate command, holding his arms across the doorway to block Clara's passage.

"Excuse me?" she questioned, "Half the people in your forensics team are girls, what's the matter with you, Wade?" she asked him, "I can see a detective in there over your shoulder who's a woman." She could, they both could. They could also both see a godawful amount of blood.

"You'll never be able to un-see it," he told her seriously. She rolled her eyes.

"'Scuse us, please," Eleven just brushed past him, pushing him out of the way.

"N-no – don't – Clara!" he protested when he went ignored and Clara followed her husband. Still with her scotch eggs.

"Eurgh, grim," was all she commented, then she just took a bite out of the mini scotch egg (about the size of a golf ball, as opposed to the normal, tennis ball-sized ones) in her hand. Yep, 'grim' certainly was the word. She looked around and saw nothing too out of the ordinary in terms of bloody murder scenes, quite numb to the gore by now. Really, could anything faze her in terms of that anymore? She wasn't sure. She remembered how harrowed she had been upon seeing Skaldak's mauled victim on that Russian submarine; was it bad how it didn't really bother her these days?

It was a whole lot of blood and sinewy bits of organs and lumps of red-tinged flesh. She could see a whole foot on the edge of the bed, an eyeball on the windowsill, fingers on the floor, so on and so forth.

"Who might you be?" the aforementioned female detective asked. Geoff followed them in and ordered everyone out of the room, so it was reduced to just the five of them (Wade refused to go, said he wanted to 'make sure Clara's alright.')

"Undercoll," Eleven answered curtly, "Special ops, or something. Working under the authority of the Queen. Wait – we are working under the authority of the Queen, aren't we?"

Clara shrugged, "That's what the Spooks said. And whatshisface. Elliott. Ought I text him, do you think?"

"No, no," Eleven waved her away, going to stoop down to peer at the foot. "There's only the one foot here. How many dead? Three?"

"Don't I get either of your names? You can't just swan in here and take over our crime scene," the woman argued.

"That's Clara Oswald, my friend Dave's daughter," Geoff explained, "And her new husband. Theodore."

"It's the Doctor, actually," Eleven said.

"How do you mean?"

"The Doctor. My name. Just call me the Doctor."

"You make your wife call you that?" Geoff said, then asked Clara herself, "He makes you call him that?"

"It's his name, like he said," she answered.

"Clara can call me whatever she likes," Eleven said. Then he prodded the foot in its big toe with his finger, and when it bent back under the pressure he made a noise of disgust and jumped away from it, "God, that's still warm. No rigor mortis. Well, Coo, I think what we've got here is somebody got a little peckish."

"These people were _eaten_?" the woman asked him.

"Well, yes. Obviously. Where do you think the rest of them went?" the Doctor said, "What's your name?"

"Penelope," she said.

"That's a pretty name," Clara told her, and Eleven gave her a look. "What?" He raised his eyebrows. "I'm just being friendly."

"Yes, because you're always so _friendly_ to girls, aren't you?" he challenged, and she glared at him.

"I'm offended."

"And how _is_ Jane Austen?" he asked her smarmily, and she went a fierce shade of red.

"I told you that was an _accident_!"

"Isn't she that writer-woman?" Wade asked, confused. They ignored him and Clara went to put her box of scotch eggs down somewhere, next to a large blood spatter on the chest of drawers. Honestly, the whole room was _covered_ in blood. Clara felt like _she_ was covered in blood just being in there.

"What about Martha? Was that an accident as well?" he jibed*.

"Okay, until you have also had massive clusters of burn blisters on the inside of your mouth and on your tongue, you cannot comment on what happened between Martha and I – and you _know_ I had to do it because of those drugs she was on," Clara argued. This made everyone else in the room very confused, and even more confused that all these stories about Eleven's wife kissing other women only caused him to laugh.

"Look, can you tell us anything about this or not? It's offensive to be making light of these deaths the way you are. They're murders. This isn't funny," Geoff said coldly to them both, and Eleven's laughter trailed away.

"The way I see it, this is all your fault anyway," Wade said directly to the Doctor.

"Sorry?" he asked.

"You saw that thing crash last night, you saw whatever did this get out, you could have stopped it," he said angrily.

"And how do you propose I ought to have done that, then?" the Doctor asked, "I don't have any weapons or nets, and I was with my wife. I should have made it come after me, then, I suppose? Let it kill Clara and I?"

"Well, I'd've been fine," Clara shrugged.

"That isn't the point. I couldn't have done a thing, if this is what it did to these people here. Besides, we didn't see it at all, it's camouflaged, nearly invisible. Good luck finding any witnesses who saw anything around here. The best you'd get is they were torn to pieces by a ghost." That shut Wade up, pointing out Clara may have been at risk. "Not like I knew it would be hostile, anyway."

"It came from space! What's the likelihood it _isn't_ hostile?" Wade questioned, and Eleven could almost hear Clara rolling her eyes.

"Well I'm not hostile," he said, and Wade met his eyes, was taken aback.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Geoff interrupted.

"Aliens, Sawyer," the Doctor said, "They could be anywhere among us, could look like everybody else. They could even be in this room right now."

"Oh, don't scare him, Chin," Clara sighed, then paused, "But that's a good point. Could it be here right now? If it hides itself?" All five of them glanced around then, looking for movement out of the corners of their eyes. Nothing, though.

"No reason for it to stay, it's got its meal, moved on elsewhere," he said, "If it's clever enough to fly a spaceship then it's clever enough not to stay at the scene of a crime. Then again, it hasn't quite finished off everybody in here, perhaps there's a possibility it'll come back? Might want to lay a trap, Detective," he said to Geoff, glancing around at all of the body parts and mushy clumps of reddish human, gristle. It smelt quite foul, rotting there in the heat of the summer.

"Do you know what it is?" Clara asked him.

"No. Going by that skin you found, though, it has to be reptilian. And large."

"What about Silurians? Do they eat people?" she asked.

"Oh, no. Not normally. A Silurian would need to be greatly angered to do something like this, like when Vastra was disturbed by the construction of the London Underground. They don't possess any camouflage abilities, either."

"Vastra definitely eats people, though. All the time."

"What? I've never seen her eat anybody."

"I think that whatever Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra get up to in the sanctity of their own bedroom isn't anything you _should_ be seeing, sweetheart. I'd be worried if you had," Clara said slyly, and he groaned.

"I don't understand why you have to be like this sometimes… honestly, you can be just as bad as your sister."

"Since when did you have a sister?" Wade, who most likely hadn't understood a single thing they had been talking about until that.

"Since she cloned herself, atrocious woman," Eleven said, "Has enough ego to multiply herself a thousandfold."

"To save _you_."

"And I'm very grateful you're so enamoured with yourself, wifey," he said, going to look through the drawers.

"Why do you let him speak to you like that?" Wade asked Clara, who faltered.

"Uh… how so?" she asked.

"He called you an 'atrocious woman' and said you're full of yourself," Wade said.

"She is atrocious!" Eleven argued, "Eats mayonnaise out of the jar with her fingers for breakfast. You know, a few days ago I caught her dipping a chocolate hobnob into the stuff. Who does that, I ask? Horrible creature."

"You can shut up right now," Clara ordered him, "Go back to rifling through those drawers, nobody cares what you think." He stuck his tongue out at her. "Like fish fingers and custard is any better. And those cookies with the anchovies in them you tried to make me eat the other day."

"Fish fingers and custard is a delicacy. And my daughter made those cookies, they're not anything to do with me. I've seen her eat radioactive, ambiguous meat paste out of a hard hat before. _You're_ the one of us eating scotch eggs at a crime scene."

"I've stopped eating them now!" she protested.

"Leave me alone. Everything that comes out of your mouth is disgusting."

"I love you."

"I love you, too."

The look on the faces of Geoff, Wade and Penelope was as though they had never witnessed anything quite so strange as the way the Doctor and Clara spoke to one another.

"…Are you sure it can't be a Silurian? If they stole that shuttle, they could have stolen other technology, to hide themselves like a chameleon." Clara got right back on topic, startling the Sawyers, who maybe expected outrage from her.

"I suppose, but Silurians aren't this huge, I've never met one with the raw physical strength enough to rip a human apart. Besides, where would they get a shuttle from? They're native to Earth," he said.

" _What_ are native to Earth…?" Geoff asked.

"Silurians, Sawyer, keep up. _Homo reptilia_. Like you, only they're descended from lizards, rather than apes. Live underground at the moment, mostly in Wales. And enough of you making comments about Jenny Flint," he turned to Clara again, "I can see you're itching to make another one." She looked guilty at that. "Why do we call her Jenny Flint, anyway? She has the same name as my daughter, why not just Flint? Like we have Ravenwood?"

"Call her what you want, we don't exactly see her very often," Clara said.

"You have a daughter?" Wade implored. They were all questions, stopping him from getting a good luck in those drawers. And there was one of them caked in rather a large amount of blood in the vague shape of a non-human handprint he had his eye on.

"Yes, what of it?" Eleven said.

"How old are you?"

"Roundabout twelve-hundred years old. Jenny is only two-hundred. And I daresay that isn't any of your business – now let me look in this drawer, it's got a big claw-mark on it," he pointed out the blood spatter. Not that he could recognise the species based on a red imprint of a massive, clawed hand. A hand like _that_ could _definitely_ tear people limb from limb, as had been done in this house they were in. He went to open it and saw that there was a big sheet of paper folded up within, with more bloody marks on it. Clara came to get a look, escaping from Wade, who had begun to question her further about her alleged step-daughter.

"What did you find?"

"It just looks like a rough sketch of a roller coaster," he said, confused, "Can't be that important, I suppose, not if our lizard friend left it behind. Probably just searching for anything useful. Although…" he spotted something dark orange and shining in the sunlight coming through the window stuck to the page with blood and remains of human fibre, peeling it away from the paper carefully.

"Is that a _scale_?"

"DNA, Coo," he answered, passing her the ride diagram so that he could pull up his tracking device he had been carrying this entire time.

"This is that roller coaster you were reading about this morning in the _Gazette_ , the Stratosphere," she said. He glanced over and spied the name of it scrawled messily at the top in pencil. He supposed this was the designer's house, or something.

"Oh, so it is," he said offhandedly.

"Everyone says that thing's cursed," Penelope, eavesdropping, said, "People keep dying on it."

"Curses don't exist. But shoddy risk assessments and poor workmanship do. I'd blame those. Does this city really need another roller coaster, anyway?"

"I've always hated them," Clara muttered.

"Ah-ha!" he exclaimed, hitting the side of the tracker triumphantly when it lit up, and then when he listened to the soft crackling noise it was emitting, like feedback, he groaned disappointedly.

"What?" she asked, putting the diagram back down on the desk he had found it in, blood smudging the drawing in places. The Doctor didn't think it looked much different from any other roller coaster. He wasn't keen on them, either – hadn't ever been much of a thrill-seeker. More of a thrill-stumbler-onto.

"This damned thing, barely works. It's not got a complete bit of DNA, it's having to reconstruct it. Might take a few hours," he sighed, then had an idea and turned to Clara who, sensing it was about time for them to leave, had drifted back towards her scotch eggs again, "Don't you have an aquarium here?" She frowned.

"…Yes…"

"Perfect! Let's do that while we wait for this."

"What? That's all? People have been murdered and you're going to go to the Sea Life Centre?" Geoff, horrified, asked.

"Well… there's nothing to do. This tracker will pick up on it soon enough, and we'll… think of something to do to catch it, in the meantime. But at the aquarium."

"Great," Clara grumbled, "Now I'm a tourist in my own city… fine, fine. Whatever you like. Makes up for me dragging you to Fiona's earlier."

"Wonderful! Have I ever told you how you are the centre of my entire universe?" he said, following her out of the room, the three police officers staring after them.

"All the time, sweetheart. All the time…"

* _chapter 775_

 **AN: Come on you guys, all pitch in to take 5TC up to 100 reviews! You know your reviews are the things which drive me to carry on this fic, remarkable if you've read the entire thing, that's real dedication, I am wholly grateful.**


	47. Promenade

**AN: I'm gonna be honest with you, it's looking like until Day 148, the storylines are going to be very heavily focused around who I like to call the "Usual Suspects," they being Whoufflé, Adwin, Clarenny, and Clarteen. After that it** ** _is_** **meant to ease up a bit (still with a generous amount of Jenny), but you know the fic** ** _is_** **generally better when I'm writing about my favourites.**

 _Promenade_

 _Eleven_

"What if Wade's right, though? What if there _is_ an issue with the way you speak to me? You _did_ call me a 'horrible creature.' Even when we're alone you're sometimes saying these things, and they you go say something nice and sweet-talk me… what if I'm experiencing Stockholm Syndrome? What if you're actually, legitimately, _abusive_ , or something, and I just can't see it? Because I've been stuck on the TARDIS for so long? And you're manipulating me with presents when you're actually not nice to me at all. And don't I deserve someone nice, at least? Even if I _am_ as hateful as everyone always makes out – calling me annoying and barely wanting to be in the same room – am I still not allowed to be happy with someone who treats me _properly_? As opposed to deriving me in front of my friends and family – _our_ friends and family – just mocking me? Maybe _that's_ what I'm getting tired of, and not really the TARDIS at all?"

The Doctor stared at his wife. "Darling, all I asked was do you want me to pass you the vinegar."

"Oh. Right. Yeah, sure," she said, and he handed her the little bottle and she gave her fish and chips a very liberal coating of the stuff, and an even more excessive dusting of sea-salt.

"I shall stop with it all if you want me to, but you always seem rather amused," he pointed out. She was sat there eating chips with her fingers at one of those shiny, aluminium tables outside of a fish and chip shop. There must be a thousand fish and chip shops in Blackpool, and even more hotels. It was the evening, but it was still very light, being as it was mid-August. It had been a blessing to avoid the worst of the afternoon heat hiding out in the aquarium, and even now it was only somewhat cooller. All day, Clara's lightning scars had been getting stares from the people they passed, though she did not appear to mind. His tracking device was sat on the table top between them, still not done deducing what they were after.

"Maybe it's bad that I'm amused?" she asked.

"I don't think you ought to fret this much over a passing comment made by a boy you haven't spoken to for ten years," he said, "He doesn't know anything about us. And it isn't like you didn't ask me for divorce papers this morning. We're as bad as each other." She still seemed rather put-out by her ex's comments, though. "What was he like when you were dating him? And how long was that for?" Clara thought this over, and then get an odd look about her, as though she knew he wouldn't like the answer to that question.

"Six months," she answered, and his jaw dropped. A mushed up bit of chip fell out of it and she pulled a face at him.

" _Six months_?"

"Yeah."

"We've only been married for nearly five…" he grumbled.

"I was fifteen, sweetheart, and I _did_ break up with him, like, a _week_ after I finally let him shag me. Besides. We've met Thirteen. I think the two of us will _definitely_ be together for longer than six months. Forever, in fact. I'd hope so, at least, since I don't have any kind of fall-back if our relationship were to collapse. I'd have to go live with my dad," she muttered.

"You could get back together with Wade Sawyer on the rebound."

"Very funny. He was clingy and we had nothing in common. Honestly, Melanie and I used to just make fun of him all the time when I was with him," she said indifferently, cramming a rather large chip into her mouth with one of those tiny, insufficient plastic forks.

"Who's Melanie?"

Clara held up a hand to him to indicate she was chewing and couldn't speak, so he waited a few seconds for the answer, "The girl I dumped him for in the end. Ex-best friend. And ex-girlfriend, I guess? I don't know, we were never really… an official _thing_ …"

" _Ex_ -best friend? What happened?" he asked. She frowned.

"Did you listen to what I just said? I slept with her, that's what happened."

"You know, you can be a very chaotic woman sometimes, Mrs Oswald," he said, and she didn't appear to know whether to take that as a compliment or not. "That's the fourth new person you've told me about just today you once slept with."

"Does it bother you that I sleep around? Or – _used_ to sleep around?" she asked carefully.

"No! Of course not. Should it?"

Clara shrugged, "It usually does."

"Bothers humans, you mean. I'm not a human. It's not any of my business what you got up to before we ever met," he said, "Besides, all this kissing other women nonsense – I'm quite sure I believe you when you say it isn't your fault. I probably wouldn't have been able to do a lot if Jane Austen tried to kiss _me_ , either." She laughed. This fish and chip shop was practically right next to the Dolphin, their hotel, just around the corner. Only a short walk back whenever they finished eating.

"You don't know how grateful I am to hear you're not angry about it."

"Why should I be? I'm miles better than any Jane Austen, or Wade Sawyer, or Melanie. Or the bloke who does the crosswords in the _Blackpool Gazette_." Clara laughed pleasantly, and went back to her food for a while, too involved with it to do much speaking.

"You know," she said, halfway through her battered fish fillet, "Fiona's always going on that I'll never find anybody to marry me. As if marriage is the only goal for a woman, first of all. But second of all… I don't know," she trailed off her point.

"Why wouldn't you?"

She slumped, and resentfully explained, "Because Wade Sawyer has literally been my longest relationship _to date_. Not for much longer, I'd hope – about a month or so longer, in fact – but, still."

"Well I, personally, think we're made for each other. As I told you last night." She blushed at the memory. "Sod what your Aunt Fiona thinks, the woman is a hollow spinster." Clara snorted.

"I'll call her that the next time she tries to pick on me."

"Your family is frightening. We shan't be having any socials with them, you know, I'm putting my foot down, as your husband."

"Who's 'them'?"

"Everyone. Except your father. And your grandmother, she likes me."

"She _fancies_ you," Clara jibed, and he gawked at her.

"She's too young for me."

"Then what does that make _me_?"

"Someone who has lived a thousand different lifetimes. Just because they don't affect you visibly, and you can't remember anything much of them. Although, I suppose _now_ maybe they _do_ affect you visibly," he motioned to the scars crawling up her left arm. Anyway, enough of this, we're supposed to be relaxing together."

"Til your machine goes off," she nodded at it.

"Ignore the machine – I have to talk to you. Husband-to-wife. Marital business."

"Oh, really?" she asked, intrigued, then she smiled, "I like you calling us husband and wife."

"Well if you like it I shall have to stop. How does pensioner and jailbait sound, Coo?" he asked jokingly. He had finished his food. She was still eating what was practically soup with three main ingredients: dregs of batter, mashed-up chips, and a ghastly amount of vinegar. It made a yellowy lake in the polystyrene tray, and it reeked.

"If this is about us getting our own microwave again, I keep telling you we don't need one," she said sharply. A newish disagreement of theirs he kept bringing up because he desperately wanted one.

"It's not about that, but I still want one, don't think you've heard the end of it," he said, "No, it's about our wedding."

"Our _wedding_?" a smug grin crept onto Clara's face, "Here you are, willingly bringing up our wedding. It must be a birthday miracle."

"Yes, but I have to talk about something _important_ to do with it, not placeholders or favours or something else meaningless." She glared at him, but didn't argue. No doubt he would get an earful later. The next time he brought up the microwave issue, most likely. "I was thinking about my best man."

"Oh, right."

"I don't really know what to do about it – what do you think?"

"What do you mean? It's _your_ best man. Not that you even need it to be a man, when my uncle got married he had a best woman." Eleven stared at her.

"Well now you've just made everything even _more_ complicated."

"Sorry… but it's your decision. You know _I'm_ having Oswin as my maid of honour."

"Yes, of course you are. I'm sure there was never a doubt in your mind about that."

"I thought I might try and convince Angie Maitland to be a bridesmaid… not that this matters right now, we can't go stealing Ten and Rose's limelight. And the pair of them have been wedding planning ever since he 'proposed,'" she did inverted commas with her fingers to indicate the accidental nature of their engagement, "so who knows how soon that'll happen?" Clara had just about finished now, and when he reached to pick up his device, she followed suit and stood up, gathering their rubbish to go and put it in the bin.

"Still, though. Jack keeps asking me," he called after her as she trotted away briefly to get rid of their trays, hers still nearly overflowing with a sea of vinegar and floating islands of fried potato.

" _Jack_? You can't have your ex-son-in-law as your best man. That's _weird_."

"I know, I told him that, told him if he was that upset about being rejected for the position then he could go tell Christina de Souza all about it. That shut him up." They began to walk back in the direction of their nearby hotel, his machine still working.

"Adam, then?"

"Adam Mitchell?"

"We don't know any other Adams."

"I hardly know _that_ Adam. He's _your_ sister's boyfriend. Make him a bridesmaid, he'd love that." He could smell the warm sea air, and the golden beach ran along on their right on the other side of the road. Tramcars trundled up and down every now and again; it was quite busy. Probably because it was such a gorgeous weekend. He thought perhaps it had been nice growing up there.

"Okay, Adam isn't being a bridesmaid, and you don't have to be rude to him. You've already nicked his car today. If anything happens to that thing I'm blaming you, by the way," she said, and he scowled for a moment. "Haven't you just asked Rory?"

"He was the best man at the last one!"

"Well, so what?" she laughed, "He's your best friend. And _you_ were the groom at the last one, should I go and find somebody else to marry?" They approached the front of the Dolphin, which had to be one of Blackpool's fancier hotels (and it did have _so_ many hotels), and Clara went to go open the front door.

"I'm sure your father would like it if you did. Wade Sawyer, for instance," he said, and she pulled an almost repulsed face at the idea, holding the door for him.

"No thanks. The Ponds are always going on about how I've stolen you away from them, anyway," she sighed, "Make the effort, Chin. You can't break ties just because you have a wife."

"But _you're_ my wife." The door swung gently closed behind them. His device still didn't say anything new. They went to go towards the stairs, him smiling politely at the man behind the desk.

"And I keep telling you, I have other people I can spend time with aside from you! This is what Wade never understood – _personal space_."

"I've never known you to remotely care for personal space, Clara – ever since you crawled into my sleeping-bag with me the second day we were together*." She didn't say anything to that – she appeared to be distracted, watching the process of her own feet as she walked up the blue-carpeted stairs to get back to their room, since there was little else for them to do.

On their way, they passed a window, and again he looked out at the sea. It was bluer than he supposed it usually was, since the sea around England was more often an angry green or surly grey, bitter and frothing. "Do you ever miss it here?" he enquired.

"Blackpool? I missed it last night, didn't I?" she reminded him. She followed his gaze to look out of the window.

"You're enjoying being back, then?"

"Yeah. I like knowing where I am. In the TARDIS… there's this sense of displacement," she shrugged, "I _do_ like being by the sea. So does Adam, you know, he's from the coast. The _south_ coast, so it's obviously shit, but-"

"Oh, of course," he agreed with her sarcastically as they began to meander up the stairs again.

"Oi! Blackpool is the Las Vegas of the North; I'll have you know." He burst out laughing.

"There aren't any casinos, so how could it be?"

"There's still the theme park," she muttered, then frowned when she reached their door, "Do you have the key?" He said nothing, because he couldn't remember. Then she groaned. "It's in my jacket, in the car."

"Darling, you are aware that you can walk through walls? Or would you prefer I use the sonic screwdriver?" he asked. She frowned.

"Why'd we even pay for a room in the first place… I'm still sick of superpowers. Use the sonic, I know you hate phasing." He did hate phasing – after all, he was not a ghost. He wasn't meant to pass through solid objects. So, the screwdriver it was, and within a moment they were back in their hotel room. He was glad she had not suggested going to stay with her father.

"Y'know, Jane Austen wrote a book about a seaside resort town," Clara was saying absently. Light still poured in through the open curtains, and she wandered over to go look at the clear, pink sky and the yellow beach and the tourists. He did know this about Jane Austen, of course, but he let her explain uninterrupted. "Well, she _started_ to write it, died before it was even close to being finished... It's called _Sanditon_. People think it's a homophone for 'sandy town.'"

"How very imaginative."

"Has a character called Clara in it."

"You're infatuated."

"I am not!"

"You are. It's ghastly. It's like I'm witnessing a courtship and the woman isn't even in the same century." Clara pouted.

"I'm not being courted by _Jane Austen_. Can we not talk about this?"

" _You_ brought it up! But yes, gladly," he said, enjoying tormenting her about it.

Clara stood still with her arms crossed, silhouetted against the seaside view outside, for only a few seconds, until something possessed her to turn around and ask him wryly, "Are you jealous?"

" _Jealous_? I'm the Doctor; I don't get _jealous_."

"Sounds like something somebody jealous would say."

"Well I'm not. You can have Jane Austen, and I shall keep Marilyn Monroe. Does that suit you?" She soured when he reminded her of that old fling of his.

"I'm still trying to decide whether or not you make fun of me too much, Chin."

"I'll stop if you ask." She didn't ask, she only thought. "…Do you want me to apologise…?"

"What? No," she said softly, but she seemed distracted. He went to stand next to her, looking out at the summer seafront as well. "I just…" she put her head in her hands, "There's all these problems recently."

"Are there?" he puzzled.

"Well, I don't – I don't know. Other people seem to think so."

"Why should it matter what other people think of us? Other people think all sorts about us on the TARDIS and it doesn't seem to matter to you," he said.

"It's a very surreal experience having all these old friends and family members knocking about, and then having you there on top of it all, somehow bridging these two _very_ different parts of my life. I'm tired of people today – I wish it was only the two of us."

"It _is_ only the two of us. We are all alone in this room together. A room with a very nice bed, I might point out, and we have a lot of time to kill while that machine works…" she looked at him with her eyes narrowed suspiciously, but a smile played on her lips, "And I must say, Coo, you seem awfully wound up. I would say some stress relief is in order. I am a doctor, you know."

"Oh, really?" she asked, standing on tiptoes, while he was leaning down, "What kind of stress relief do you have in mind, _Doctor_?" They were eye-level, their heads almost touching.

"The, um… the kind of…" She had been looking at his mouth, but when he faltered she glanced up to meet his eyes, "I can't think of anything to say now – you know I'm bad at this sort of… _adult_ talk…"

"Then let's not talk," she said, standing even taller on her tiptoes so that she could manage to kiss him.

"You read my mind."

* _chapter 35 (yeah, seriously, chapter 35 of 3D9C, my earliest reference so far)_


	48. Indecent

_Indecent_

 _Clara & Eleven_

The tracker was a complete nightmare. It was still blinking its little yellow light at him when he staggered across the room in the middle of the night to get at the door, because somebody was knocking. Initially, he thought the tracker had beeped, signifying it done with its DNA analysis. Of course, that would be too easy, though. Not that there was much to be done about it. Twelve hours or so, he reckoned it might take. That meant it would clock off at three in the morning. At present, he was too tired to determine exactly what time it was. Behind him, his wife lay unclothed and sound asleep on her front, just the sheets trailing across her middle to maintain her modesty; they covered from the bottom of her waist to the tops of her thighs, and he was hardly better himself, stumbling through the bleak room with just his pants on. Her entire back and her legs were on show.

He was yawning when he pulled the door open with one hand, scratching the back of his head and feeling what a terrible mess his hair had become. Clara took great pleasure in messing up his hair. They had fallen asleep relatively early, but they had been exhausted, and he was still exhausted now. He didn't have time to think in his head about who could possibly be knocking at their door at this hour, wondering if it was a noise complaint – though they had been very careful to keep the noise _down_ , and why would a complaint be coming to them hours after they had stopped doing anything? No, it was a far worse caller than that.

Wade Sawyer was standing there. And Eleven was not Wade Sawyer's biggest fan. He did not like the way Wade had been putting doubts into Clara's head about their marriage, didn't like him trying to fabricate issues out of thin air between them, and had sneaking suspicions that Wade still had designs on the Doctor's wife.

"This is an odd hour for the police to be conducting interviews, is it not?" Eleven asked, leaning on the door frame with his elbow. Wade didn't look at him. Tall Wade was looking over the Doctor's shoulder. _Very_ tall Wade was looking at _very_ nude Clara – it certainly _was_ a good thing she was asleep on her front rather than her back, otherwise Sawyer would be getting a far too intimate view of a woman who had left him a decade ago. "Is it really polite to be ogling people when they are asleep and can't object to it?" he questioned, "Consent is important, Wade."

"Then what have _you_ been doing in there with her?" Wade asked him sharply, but he did look away, somewhat guiltily, and Eleven stepped out of the room and closed the door behind him so as to keep Clara hidden from that fiend's wandering eyes. She wouldn't be happy to hear about all this, he had no doubts about that.

"You mean when you woke me up just now with your knocking? Sleeping, funnily enough. She's my wife. We sleep in the same bed."

"I want to talk to her," Wade Sawyer declared. He really _was_ tall, taller even, Eleven thought, than Fyn Kyris, Oswin's gangly, intellectual brother. And Fyn was _infamously_ tall.

"She's asleep as well," the Doctor said, "What are you doing here?"

"I'll start shouting if you don't let me in to speak with her."

"Let you in to go and gawk at her, you mean."

"I bet you stripped her while she was unconscious," Wade accused, "I'll tell people all about what kind of a sick bastard you are if you don't let me speak to Clara." Eleven frowned. And then he thought, fine. If Wade Sawyer wanted to talk to Clara so badly, Wade Sawyer could talk to Clara. She could give him a piece of her mind, her sleep-deprived, angry mind.

"Alright. I shall go and wake her, lest you wake everybody else," the Doctor grumbled, "But you're not coming in."

"Don't you dare hurt her," Wade warned as Eleven tried to go back into the bedroom in a way that _didn't_ gave Wade a view of his wife.

Dryly, the Doctor remarked, "I wasn't planning on it," and closed the door on him. He probably didn't have very long until Wade tried to break the door down, and he wondered what was the matter with him. Perhaps Dave Oswald had been telling stories to Geoff. He wouldn't put it past him. Nevertheless, he went to crouch down next to Clara. Twice in a row he was going to have woken her up; she would be annoyed. He blew on her face, and she frowned. It took him crooning her name very close to her ear to get her to finally stir.

"Wha' you want?" she mumbled.

"You have to put some clothes on," he said. She made an unhappy noise. "Your ex-boyfriend is outside. He seems to think I'm going to hurt you. Threatened me if I didn't come and wake you up. And he was trying to stare at you through the door." And then she became alarmed and alert and pushed herself up, squinting in the darkness at the small slivers of light around the now-closed door. "Clothes, Coo." He had brought that oversized woollen sweater of hers she often slept in with them in his transdimensional briefcase, and it was this she bade him fetch while she got her bearings.

"Whaddid 'e say?" Clara asked in that northern, slurring way of hers she always adopted when tired, rubbing her bleary eyes. She didn't like being woken up, but there was something about the Doctor that meant he could never help himself but to do so. That was how it seemed to her, anyway. Always she was getting disturbed. If she didn't love him so much she might punch him in the face – _and_ if she wasn't a (usually) nonviolent person. He passed her the jumper and she dragged it over hear head.

"Well, he swore at me," the Doctor explained, "I think he thinks I'm mistreating you."

"Urgh. This is ridiculous," she complained. He sat down on the bed next to her. As she slid off it to get to her feet and answer Wade's incessant knocking (which he had resumed) she kissed him briefly, touching his face for the smallest second. He reached up his hand to hold hers there, but found it gone, slipped through his fingers.

"What?" Clara asked coldly when she opened the door. The Doctor was behind her, sitting on the bed.

"Are you okay!?" Wade asked her urgently.

"…I'm fine. I'm just tired. _Somebody_ has woken me up in the middle of the bloody night."

"I was worried about you. Come on, you have to leave," he ordered, then – the nerve of him – tried to grab her hand. He took her so by surprise she was pulled all the way out of the room, the door shutting behind her, before she hit at his arm to make him let go.

"What are you _doing_?" she hissed in the hallway of the hotel. The Doctor didn't follow them out. No doubt he knew she could handle this – whatever _this_ was – herself. Or his tracking device had done something interesting.

"I'm rescuing you," Wade said.

"Rescuing me from _what_?"

"From him! He's abusing you, and you can't see it," Wade told her firmly.

"The Doctor is not abusing me at all," she said.

"He is. The things he said about you!"

"And I say things just as 'bad' to him. It's just how we are with each other," she said. If she was unknowingly in an abusive relationship, Oswin would have figured it out long ago and done everything in her power to break the spell over Clara. But there was no spell over Clara, and there was no issue with her marriage, she had finally decided. And this behaviour from Wade Sawyer just put the last nail in the coffin, the coffin which was any respect she had for him and his opinions. "He would never hurt me."

"How do you know? Earlier, the way he talked – like he wasn't even a human. Like he was just as bad as that thing we're hunting."

"He's not a human," she said, "He's an alien. And to him, _I'm_ an alien. But he'd never tear people limb from limb – even if he wanted to, I'm not sure he has the strength." Eleven was a little scrawny, she sometimes thought. Not that she _minded_ , of course she didn't.

"Then what happened to your arm, hmm? You were really 'struck by lightning'?"

"You know what, Wade? No. No, I was not struck by lightning. A girl I know called Esther who was brought back to life via alien technology, and subsequently gained the power to _shoot_ lightning _out of her hands_ , ended up _electrocuting_ me, because I was threatening to telekinetically murder someone who'd killed some of my Echoes. And Echoes, if you're wondering, are clones of me I created in order to save the Doctor, that man in there you hate so much."

"He's changed you."

"He's _changed me_!? I'm sorry, did you honestly just say that to me?" she was getting loud now, and she didn't care, "How would _you_ know?"

"He isn't good for you!"

"And you are!?"

"Yes!" Clara scoffed at him. "I'm in love with you." Her eyes widened. People were coming out of their rooms nearby now, and she could hear a shrill, muffled bleeping from somewhere, but she tried to ignore that.

"You're _what_?" she exclaimed, horrified. Tired onlookers were suddenly quite engrossed in this scene, rather than being annoyed by the ruckus. She supposed that, to them, it must look like a soap opera.

"I've been in love with you since you first kissed me," he told her.

"Bloody hell…" And then he got down on one knee (yeah, _seriously_.) She imagined that the Doctor, most likely listening in through the door, was highly amused hearing all this. "Wade…" she sighed. The incessant, high-pitched beeping continued in the background.

"I'm serious. I can't take my eyes off you, Clara," he said. Their observers were now swooning, assuming that this was a genuine proposal. Clara just stood. "Leave him, leave him right now, he's not treating you right. _I'll_ treat you right. Your dad would give his blessing! I _love you_!"

"Aww," a sleepy woman said, getting emotional looking at the pair of them.

" _What_? No!" Clara said to her, "This isn't – you do not love me, Wade, we haven't spoken to each other for ten years! I have a husband!" she brandished her left hand and her wedding ring in his face, "You've followed us here in the middle of the night!"

"You gave me your address!"

"…No I didn't! I just told your dad where our hotel was, that isn't an invitation to come and ask me to fucking _marry_ you! Jesus! This is why I left you for Melanie in the first place." She was made even more agitated by that damned electronic beeping in the back of her head this whole time – could other people hear it, too?

"You left him for a _woman_?" somebody interrupted. There was a crowd gathering, but guests and nightshift staff, the receptionist coming up from below to see what all the racket was about. "This is better than _Hollyoaks_."

"I'm glad to see you're all so entertained by a stranger being stalked in the middle of the night," Clara said coldly.

"I'm not stalking you!" Wade argued, still on one knee in front of her.

"You are!"

"Marry me!"

"No!"

"You're the centre of my entire universe," he said, which more people seemed to find cute. And then, obviously, the Doctor couldn't resist. He more or less kicked the door open (but not quite, he just made rather a big show of his entrance) to join the chaos.

" _I_ said that to you earlier today – he overheard, and now he's stealing my lines!" Eleven complained.

The woman who kept commenting gasped and muttered to the cleaner who was closest to her, " _The husband!_ " The Doctor was pulling his tweed jacket on, all of a sudden dressed, and carrying a large amount of items in his arms. Fabrics, and the tracker. The tracker which Clara now realised was the source of that beeping.

"This is between Clara and I," Wade declared.

"There's nothing between Clara and you!" Clara shouted at him, "Clara never wants to see you or hear from you or speak to you again, you absolute creep!"

"Tracker, Coo, it's got a signal, we have to go," Eleven said.

The woman made another noise, "Aw! He calls her 'coo'!" She and the other guests were very involved in all this. Clara made to leave immediately, seizing the opportunity, but Wade grabbed her hand when she tried to follow the Doctor. She made a noise of disgust and wrenched her fingers free, and then, with the same hand, slapped him.

"Don't even touch me, you _weirdo_!" she shouted. The Doctor handed her the fabrics in his arms, which she promptly realised were her own clothes, and she quickly followed him down the stairs, jumping the last three at a time.

"It's got a name I can't pronounce, _but_ I recognise it," Eleven began hastily explaining. The annoying thing was that they weren't allowed to go alone – of course Wade was following right in their footsteps. She _really_ wished she had more clothes on that just that sweater – when they burst out onto the twilight street, it was… drafty. To say the least. Why did _he_ have time to get dressed but _she_ didn't? "And we have to hurry up."

"Well – where is it?"

"Pleasure Beach," he answered.

"Why would it go _there_?" she questioned. That was the last place she expected a flesh-eating alien lizard to go, a theme park. Then again, she couldn't really think where she _would_ expect a flesh-eating alien to go.

"I don't know, but this species – it's _very_ dangerous. The interesting thing is they have a very bad reaction with nitrogen, so it won't be able to survive long in Earth's atmosphere. It's number one priority is probably finding a way off this planet."

"Isn't Earth's atmosphere all oxygen?" she asked.

"No! Unbelievable! Do you really not know the oxygen percentage of your own planet's atmosphere?" he asked, going up to the DeLorean. She just shrugged innocently, and he seemed disappointed in her. Then she realised that _he_ was standing at the right-side door.

"Hold on – this is the passenger side," Clara pointed out, her at the left. Wade was still tailing them. She spied his car nearby.

"Yes, I'm driving."

"No."

"Yes! You have to get dressed! You dress, I'll drive! We don't have time to wait around for you to put your knickers back on. You're so much better at taking them off I assume you hardly even _remember_ how to put them on again," he said, and she glared. But he was right, they didn't have time for her to get dressed in the middle of the street. So, against all of her better judgement, she told him fine. He could drive. But if _anything_ happened to that car, _he_ had to be the one to tell Adam Mitchell.

"You _do_ know the way, don't you?" she asked, closing the door as they got into the car. Wade Sawyer, she saw in the wing-mirror, also got into _his_ car. You didn't need to be a genius to figure out he was still going to come after them.

"Not exactly. But it's a theme park on the coast, if I just drive straight north from here in one direction, I should find it easily enough."

"South, sweetheart. It's south. Behind us."

"That's what I meant, south. Practically the same thing. Put your clothes back on."

"If I had a penny for every time you've told me to put my clothes back on…"

"You would be very poor indeed," and he turned the key in the ignition.


	49. Stratosphere

**AN: If any of you have never been, you can actually walk through the entire Pleasure Beach on Google Maps. Though, the Stratosphere roller coaster is fictional, and I'm taking a LOT of creative liberties with the layout. Also, when you imagine the lizard, imagine Killer Croc, only red. That is, when it's not invisible.**

 _Stratosphere_

 _Clara & Eleven_

"Stop, stop, STOP!" Clara yelled. Eleven slammed on the breaks and the DeLorean skidded to a very abrupt halt only a few inches away from the Pleasure Beach gates, its sign dark and switched off at that time of night. She had desperately been trying to pull on her boots while Eleven had been trying to force the car to get to the mystical eighty-eight miles per hour.

"I nearly had it!" he protested.

"Had what!? Our joint funeral when you kill us both!?" she demanded.

"We'd be _fine_. A car crash would be easy for us to survive."

"I don't mean the car crash, I mean my baby sister when she finds out we wrecked _another_ of her boyfriend's vehicles," Clara said, but Eleven ignored her, already hastening to get out as quickly as possible. She followed suit but immediately tripped over onto the cool ground, still struggling with her damn shoes. "Are you even sure that thing is-" A loud roar echoed from within the theme park somewhere, something visceral and frightening. It made her freeze just as she finally pulled on her boot all the way. The Doctor met her eyes.

"Yes," he answered simply, and then he went to jump the gate while she staggered to her feet in pursuit of him. It was then that Wade Sawyer's cheap old automobile came rattling up behind them. "Look, it's your fiancé," Eleven remarked, and she told him to piss off.

"Don't you dare run off without me – you know if it finds you and I'm not there you don't stand a chance," Clara ordered him, and he jokingly saluted to her as Wade nearly crashed into one of the bollards preventing cars from ordinarily getting so close to the entrance. There was only a small gap big enough to fit a car through, but their DeLorean was blocking the passage for Wade. "Get out of here!" Clara shouted at him. He left the car door hanging open and rushed towards them.

"You're not safe."

"I'm quite alright," she said coolly, "Leave. You don't know what you're dealing with."

"Neither of _you_ know what you're dealing with!" he protested. He'd always been a bit of an idiot; very headstrong, but not in an endearing way.

" _Technically_ , that _is_ true," Eleven said thoughtfully.

"What do you plan to do when you find it?"

"Improvise," he shrugged, "It usually works."

"Just run away from him with me!" Wade continued to plead, "He'll get you killed." Then he tried to take Clara's hands, and in Clara's sudden fit of desperation to get away from him, she felt her whole head swim before she was wrenched through space like a fishhook in her brain and she crashed into the Doctor, having teleported to his side on the other side of the gate. Eleven helped his disorientated wife to stand, her wobbling a little. "What the hell!?" Wade shouted.

"Stay out there," the Doctor ordered, "I mean that!"

Another loud roar resounded from within the theme park, reminding them what they ought to be doing, and he took a woozy Clara's hand to pull her in, still clutching his green-flashing tracker made from an old maritime radio.

"He won't follow us," she mumbled, trying to get her bearings, which was not easy with the Doctor dragging her along in desperate search of a big, invisible lizard-monster.

"Well I hope you're right – if that thing finds him and we're not there to do anything about it, he'll be killed."

"And of course when you say _we_ you mean _me_. Unless you're planning on talking it out of murder?" she remarked.

"We're a team!" he protested as they passed the large, sheltered carousel. Its ornate horses looked particularly eerie in the middle of the night, the entire place deserted. It was a bit grimmer in the twilight than it was during the day, and rather than just looking empty it looked outright abandoned; desolate, rusty and grimy. "I show you where the alien is, and you…"

"What? What do you want me to do to it?"

"You know – telekinesis it."

"That's literally so vague you might as well have just not said anything," she complained, and then she dropped his hand because she had regained herself enough after her accidental teleportation. Glancing back, she didn't see Wade Sawyer. Good. She might, in that moment, hate him a little bit, but that was a far-cry from being indifferent to whether or not he got himself killed with his own stupidity.

"Did you used to spend a lot of time here, then? Growing up?" he asked quietly, following the sonar-like radar strapped messily onto his jury-rigged device. Clara thought for a moment, then laughed slightly.

"Eh, sort of. I hate roller coasters, but… god, this is pretty scuzzy come to think of it, but one of my friends worked here so me and some others just used to sort of hang out in here and not go on the rides. It used to be free to get in, and you'd just pay for the individual tickets, but now they charge for both," Clara explained, "I haven't been in here since I moved away when I was eighteen, though. See, look, over there." She stopped him, getting them distracted from the task in hand with her nostalgia, and pointed out the Ghost Train, which had a _very_ large skeleton looming over it – for that added, spooky touch. "She did the Ghost Train, and she sometimes did the Gourmet Burger stand."

" _Gourmet_?"

"That's just what it's called, I'm not saying theme park burgers are _actually_ gourmet, sweetheart. We used to hang out just over by the hook-a-duck, there was a boy in there who fancied me. He once tried to give me a giant plushie of Sonic the Hedgehog, but the catch was I had to go on a date with him for it, and I didn't want to."

" _You_? Turning down a date?" he joked, and she scowled, and changed what she had been talking about with a sigh.

"It's weird being here with you, though. My husband. Ten years ago, I never would've thought any of this would-" another loud roar sounded. What it was roaring about, the Doctor hadn't a clue. Perhaps the pain of slowly suffocating on the abundance of nitrogen in the air was making it scream. Or it was just _exceptionally_ angry. "Y'know, there's rumours that the Ghost Train is haunted. And one of the gift shops*."

"Well, we shall have to come back and see if it is," the Doctor said, "You know, Jenny was telling me that Esther can see ghosts. Or she causes them to manifest, or something."

"Oh, great. Let's kidnap Esther and force her onto the Ghost Train, then," Clara said sarcastically, "Maybe she'll be able to speak to all the people who keep dying building that roller coaster, find out if it really _is_ cursed." As they spoke, they found themselves both whispering. It was creepy in there at night, potentially being stalked by an invisible monster. On the lookout for that, and now thinking in the back of her mind about the alleged ghost (though she had never seen anything herself), she kept making shapes out of the shadows, which unnerved her. She could have sworn she saw a flicker of something move on the Wild Mouse as they passed it, but put it down to a trick of the eye. Still, she besotted herself by taking the Doctor's arm – not that he objected.

"You can keep talking, you know," he said quietly, "If it wants to find us it will do so by scent. And besides, we _want_ to find it."

"I just think it's a bit creepy here, that's all," she answered, still talking under her breath. In the darkness, the familiar surroundings of many childhood daytrips and treats were distorted, the shadows making everything surreal and unnatural. In the back of her mind, the craving for a cigarette began to take priority. But a cigarette would certainly give away their position, and despite what the Doctor said, she still felt it was a little uncertain who was the predator and who was the pray in their situation.

"…You don't like roller coasters, then?" he inquired, almost definitely sensing how unnerved she was.

"No. Scared of heights."

"Are you?"

"I… _was_ scared of heights… a lot of things have happened since the last time somebody tried to convince me to ride the Pepsi Max here. It used to terrify me, but I _did_ fall out of an escape pod and get impaled on a branch a few months ago**, so maybe now I'd be alright…" He turned his nose up at this thought, a memory of hers he may have forgotten about. After all, he hadn't been there when she had been impaled. But the next day, when they had reunited, he had worried a lot about the dried blood she was caked in, the tear in her clothes where the branch had penetrated her abdomen.

"What are you still scared of now?" he asked. The silhouette of the Pepsi Max itself was visible on the horizon, the largest roller coaster in the entire place – and as a matter of fact, Clara knew, the tallest roller coaster in the country.

"I don't know – losing Oswin? Losing you?" she said, then paused, " _That_? Isn't it freaky?" She nodded at a much slower children's ride wearing faces from _Alice in Wonderland_. The plastic iterations of Tweedledum and Tweedledee stuck to the outside were garish even at the best of times – right then, the whole thing was the stuff of nightmares.

"Eurgh. Horrifying. Worse than the Ghost Train."

"…What if it's in there?"

"Tracker says it's this way," he steered them in another direction, _not_ towards the Pepsi Max, she was relieved to see. She didn't see the appeal of wanting to feel like you might die – currently, she felt like she might die. In fact, she often felt like she might die. Despite the numerous occasions on which she became dreadfully aware of her own pseudo-mortality, it wasn't a feeling she enjoyed. "I don't suppose you _know_ what's this way?"

"No. I told you, I haven't been here for seven years." After that there was a lapse in their conversation for a minute or so. "Why come to a theme park, though? In the middle of the night? What's it looking for – wouldn't it try to get back to that crashed shuttle?"

"The shuttle's gone, I assume," Eleven shrugged, "The tents were taken down from the beach by the time we finished dinner, the remains must have been taken elsewhere. And not into this poorly fortified tourist attract… ah." He had paused. "This is certainly interesting." He proceeded to fumble in his pockets for his torch – the same one he had thrown to her last night while she had been investigating the downed ship – and switched it on.

"Oh my god," Clara said, staring. He handed her the torch and she kept it trained on what they had spotted – a huge wreckage. Not just any wreckage, in fact, but it was one of the cars from the Flying Machines***, which they were just in front of, torn from its cables and left a mangled mess on the ground. But that wasn't the worst part; the _worst_ part was the semi-liquid, steaming lump of faecal matter splattered across the Flying Machine's white paint. "That _thing_ came in here, tore off one of the plane-things, and shat on it!?" Clara exclaimed, horrified.

"Yes. I think so." The Doctor leant down to get a look. Clara held the torch steady.

"Please don't touch it," she begged him.

"…I wasn't going to touch it…" he grumbled. She still thought he may have been planning on touching it. The main thing, though, was that he didn't. Then he gasped, as though he got a brainwave, and clapped his hands, dropping the tracking device (which was thankfully hanging from his neck by a leather strap, so it didn't break.) "That's it!"

"Can't believe a pile of shit has made you have an epiphany. It _reeks_ , Chin."

"It's so obvious! We were looking at things like they were just coincidences! Those people who were killed today, one of them was the chief designer of the Stratosphere roller coaster. They had the concept drawings in their room, all bloodstained. This lizard monster saw them, and now it's here."

"Why would it be looking for a roller coaster?" she asked him, hastening to follow him as he rushed away from the vandalised Flying Machines, looking desperately around for any signs that might lead them to the Stratosphere coaster, still under construction.

"It's not looking for a roller coaster – it's looking for a spaceship. And I don't know if you've noticed, but those Flying Machines don't actually fly. That's where it is, and we have to find it before it gets angry and defecates in there, as well, because if it can't find a spacecraft I daresay it will rampage around Blackpool until it dies. And this is a prime tourist attraction in the middle of summer, the damage it could do is unthinkable – are you keeping up?" he was talking and walking at the same time, on the brink of breaking into a run.

" _Yes_ ," she said, "I wouldn't have married you if I couldn't keep up with you." He smiled.

"That's what I like about you. You never let your little legs hold you back."

"If you ever make another comment about the length of my legs I will do my best to keep the length of my legs out of _your_ line of sight," she said, then she muttered under her breath (but still loud enough for him to easily hear), " _Twat_."

Lucky for them they stumbled across a map, a big plastic picture sealed behind glass and featuring cartoonish caricatures of all the different attractions. It had a big space on it, marked: _Stratosphere! The fastest ship in this zone of the galaxy! Coming soon!_ It was replacing the Revolution. _Good_ , Clara thought. She'd always hated the Revolution – queuing up a narrow tower for hours just to go on a loop-the-loop twice, once forwards and once backwards. Waste of time.

She was surprised to find that the Stratosphere was – or was going to be – a partially-indoor roller coaster. When they arrived they were faced with a big, silver husk, very shiny and reflective, trying to look space-age. It kind of worked, and the big sign with the name on was pretty enticing with its _Star Wars_ -derived font and flashy blue colours. It looked very good, aside from the yellow crime scene tape sealing off the exit; a result of those deaths Eleven had read about in the paper, presumably. The tracker was beeping wildly. It was not completely indoors, though, because he could see the beginnings of an ascent creeping out of a crevice in one side of the structure, black tracks sticking into the night sky before abruptly coming to a stop some forty metres above the ground. The foundations around them were all laid, and she could tell by the groundwork that the track would curve around while outside before returning within.

"Definitely in there," Eleven said, standing at the entrance with the tape cordoning it off, looking from the doorway to the tracker to his wife.

"Well come on, then, before it gets pissed off and massacres half of Lancashire," Clara went in first, holding the torch for both of them, while Eleven switched off the volume on the tracking device so that it would stop with its loud, incessant bleeping. She hadn't realised how annoying it had been until her ears weren't being subjected to it anymore.

They crept into the dark, 'cursed' ride together, Clara clutching her hands around the torch and the Doctor with his eyes glued to the tracker. Unbeknownst to him, she was doing her best to create a barrier around them telekinetically, that they might be kept safe from a surprise attack from the invisible lizard monster. The Doctor jumped the queue barriers within – her phasing through them with ease – until they got to the ride itself, with the rocket-like cars all tethered to together and sitting complacently on the tracks.

A loud, high-pitched noise pierced the air. Trying to clutch her hands to her ears she nearly dropped the torch, and the sound morphed into a crackly roar of alien frustration. It wasn't in the room with them, this beast, but it had apparently inadvertently activated the PA system within the Stratosphere.

"I think it's trying to switch on the ride – where do you suppose the control booth is?" he inquired, and she pointed at a metal panel next to the ride with a couple of buttons on it, simply marked with words like _Start_ and _Emergency Stop_. "No, no, not that. That's just for the roller coaster. This is indoors, it can't all be darkness, there must be other things going on."

"Space _is_ mostly darkness," Clara pointed out, but he wasn't having that. The lizard was still making noises over the speakers. The Doctor wanted to know where the booth with the microphone in it was. At least, while it was making such a racket in an isolated area, it couldn't be sneaking up on them.

"Come on," he said, and surprised her by jumping down into the dip carved out for the tracks, "This thing is set to open in just a month, it must be nearly completed by now. I suppose all that's left to do is set the tracks down, and they're all built somewhere else and just moved here." She followed carefully, having to walk single-file behind him so that they fit alongside the metal tracks.

It was freezing inside the ride. The track curved upwards, but not very high, and took a veering left turn above them. They walked underneath it in an area covered in luminescent paint to look like stars, everything glowing faintly. The track was black and nearly as invisible as what they were after, Clara still trying to make a forcefield to protect them.

And then there was a very odd noise which scared the living crap out of Clara Oswald. It was kind of a muffled thudding followed by a very human-sounding grunt. She shrieked and the pair of them whirled around to see-

"Wade!?" she exclaimed. Wade it was, of course, who else would it be, now sprawled out on the ground? She realised what had happened. He had run into her barrier and knocked himself down. She felt the barrier fade and debated whether or not to help him to his feet, but in the end she was too angry to be courteous. "What the hell are you doing!? The thing is in here! You can hear it over the speakers!" They still could, as well, its heavy breathing and hissing.

"I'm a police officer, you can't make me leave," he argued.

"Oh, let him risk his own neck, we've done enough to try and save it for him," the Doctor commented, displeased by Sawyer's constantly following them around. He was like a cockroach; they just couldn't get rid of him, no matter how hard they tried. Clara shook her head and listened to Eleven.

A second later, they were all completely stupefied by every single light in the whole ride coming on, and the walls appeared to begin to move like they were travelling through space very quickly. Though of course they were not. It made her head hurt, though. And then voices announcing that they were about to 'blast off' to head towards a 'fierce space battle' and become the 'heroes of this light-cycle' and some other galactic mumbo-jumbo started to play. These voices were quickly stifled by the loudest roar from the lizard-beast yet, abruptly cut off and replaced by buzzing feedback. Then the feedback died, and the sounds of the alien died with it.

"It's broken the speakers," the Doctor said. He hurried on, Clara following _him_ and Wade following _her_ , to leave the vertigo-inducing tunnel covered in stars. They entered a large hall, planets painted in the same phosphorescent manner on the ceiling and the walls, big, fake UFOs hanging from the ceiling coated in loud, neon lights. The room was drowning in strobe, and it reminded Clara vividly of a rave.

"God, I feel like I'm on drugs just being in here," Clara commented, staring around.

"How did you know to come here? You don't have a tracking device as well, do you?" Eleven interrogated Wade, still leading them quickly through the ride. This room really was enormous, a lot bigger than it looked from outside, the tracks of the roller coaster heading at least thirty feet into the air before shooting out of a hole in the wall at the far end. A hole which, she knew, led to the outside. It would veer around and come back into a different room.

"It's an alien. This is the space coaster," Wade said simply. Eleven narrowed his eyes.

"Can't believe you figured it out before the Doctor," Clara was amused by this, "But you still shouldn't have come here."

"This is nothing like a _real_ space battle, though," Eleven declared pompously.

"Oh, because you're always in space battles, aren't you?" Clara quipped.

"I am!"

"Name the last space battle you were in," she put to him. He struggled for a few seconds. In the end, he didn't to think of an answer, because they were interrupted. Again.

A huge mass of apparent nothingness ripped through one of the walls, tearing the MDF apart and leaving a big dark hole in its wake, petrifying the lot of them where they stood (Wade screamed.)

"Oh, shit," Clara said. Looking at this alien was like trying to see when your vision was impaired by a migraine, squinting to focus on a big blot of fuzzy shape that just wouldn't stay still. That was the only way to describe this camouflaged monster, imprints of glowing stars and spaceships rippling across its scales. All she could really discern about it was that it was about nine feet tall, and _furious_.

"Uh-oh."

"What do we do!?" Wade panicked.

"This." Eleven grabbed the torch out of Clara's hands and threw it at the lizard, hitting it right in the face. He knew he got it in the face because it promptly stopped disguising itself, revealing a huge, crocodile-looking fiend with a gaping jaw and shiny, yellow eyes to clash with its red skin. It roared.

"What was that supposed to do!?" Clara demanded.

"I got it to appear!"

"You just pissed it off!"

"You two are meant to be 'experts'!" Wade yelled at the both of them, and they shut up. "What do we do now!"

"Runaway. Runaway!" Eleven grabbed Clara's hand and turned. The thing gave pursuit, dropping to all fours and scrambling after them. Clara threw a blast of telekinesis, but she didn't do a lot more than startle it. In her panic, she clung to the Doctor's arm tightly enough that she could pull the both of them to relative safety. It hurt, and made her woozy again, but at least her teleportation was good for something. The world slipped away for a brief second until they were thrown down in the middle of the empty area of the Stratosphere meant for queuing, black wisps curling off the both of them.

"What just happened!?"

"Teleport, don't worry," she assured him, getting to her feet. She realised she had never teleported the Doctor before. She hadn't even known she could teleport two people at once until her fight with Rose.

They didn't have much respite, though. As soon as Wade, probably with no idea what was going on, more scared than he'd ever been in his short life, appeared out of the warp tunnel, the big, red lizard was in hot pursuit. Wade hurried to clamber up to get out of the track ditch and away from the roller coaster. The Doctor was distracted trying to get to the little control panel that made the Stratosphere stop and go.

Wade got onto the higher level where Clara and Eleven were, and turned around to face the creature which towered above him. He was frozen in its reptilian gaze, and it lifted its arm with its huge claws to swipe at him.

"Wade!" Clara yelled, and managed, again, to conjure up the desperate strength to teleport. Why was it she could only do it at will when it was a life-or-death situation? She could never teleport into the bathroom in the middle of the night when she needed the toilet?

Clara slammed into Wade and pushed him out of the way just as the creature swung its arm and punched its scaly gauntlet straight through her gut. Phasing through walls and phasing through an alien lizard fist were two vastly different sensations – the latter of which not at all pleasant. Wade Sawyer gawked at this sight, until Clara threw the creature back with a huge amount of telekinesis into the back wall.

"OI!" Eleven yelled at it. He was clambering into the cars of the roller coaster itself, "Come over here you ugly thing!" It turned to face him, "Not that close, you've got a face only a mother could love, if that. And you stink. Stinkiest thing I've ever smelt." The Doctor loudly insulting it drew its attention away from Clara and Wade. He had left his tracker on the ground next to the controls, and met Clara's eyes while beckoning to the creature. He was drawing something very slowly out of his jacket pocket. As soon as the reptile mounted the front-most car of the Stratosphere, Clara saw the Doctor had pulled out his screwdriver, "Turn on the ride!" he shouted at her, throwing the sonic, which she barely managed to catch in her fingertips.

"You can't turn it on!" Wade objected, "It's dangerous!"

"I trust the Doctor," she said, hurrying over to the console and extending the sonic's claw while Eleven acted like a lion tamer to the advancing lizard.

"What? You think he knows what he's doing?"

"I'm not sure I'd go that far."

" _BRAVE SPACE CADETS! PREPARE FOR BLAST-OFF!_ " the sounds shouted out of the console in front of her. It was the tannoy that was broken, not the pre-recorded tapes and sound effects. Jerkily, the incomplete Stratosphere began to move.

Eleven was not strapped in. He was in the last car of the ride; the lizard was at the head.

"You want to go to space? Well this is how you get there. I'm a pilot. I'll fly you, if you keep me alive," he said, "After you crashed that last one." The lizard hissed. He didn't understand it, nor did he know if it understood him, but he was going to try and speak to it anyway.

" _ENGAGING HYPERDRIVE!_ " the voice echoed around them. The coaster shot off into oblivion, the stars painted onto the walls dizzying him greatly. It didn't help that he was trying to ride the thing while standing up with no safety equipment of any sort. The lizard was confused as well, but the Doctor had a plan. A very precise plan which wouldn't work unless Clara was very fast and very clever and used to how reckless he was.

The thing rocketed around a sharp turn and he almost fell off, but he knew that if he were to jump while he was still able to easily brush off the fall, the lizard would just follow him and maul him horrifically. So he had to stay on, as they shot through the fluorescent room with its planets and strobing spaceships and toy aliens on the ground, heading towards the little opening at the back, through which he could see the moon outside. He had his eyes on that, the reptile followed his gaze and turned around to see. When it turned, the Doctor prepared to jump. He didn't even bother to look down as the ride blasted out of the opening, lizard-first. At the last _possible_ second, gravity sucking the cars down to the ground outside, he leapt from the tracks of the Stratosphere, dozens of feet in the air, to be caught in the arms of his tiny wife. If it weren't for telekinesis, he would have squished her.

Outside there was a pained, roaring noise, accompanied by some very loud crashing and (eurgh) _squelching_. Him with his arms around Clara's neck, her still holding him quite safely, they both looked in that general direction, but heard nothing more of the creature. Then he met her eyes.

"You idiot," she said, and then she kissed him for a few seconds.

"Call me pathetic, but this is considerably emasculating, being held by you, since you are so short and usually weak," he said, "I'm supposed to be a bloke." She pretended to be offended, but did put him down. Wade Sawyer stared at them. And then he fainted.

* _The Ghost Train at Blackpool IS allegedly haunted – and you won't believe this, but the ghost is supposedly called "Cloggy the Dick Hunter" (and no I did not make that up.) It also happens to be the first ever Ghost Train ride in the world_

** _chapter 326_

*** _The Flying Machines are, in fact, the oldest ride in the park_


	50. Echoculum

**AN: Sorry that this Whoufflé storyline has dragged on so much (ten whole chapters - ridiculous) but then, none of you have complained. Besides, I let it grow more organically than I usually do lately; trying to make all my storylines very uniform.**

 _Echoculum_

 _Clara_

To them, it was Sunday evening when they returned to the TARDIS, no worse for wear, laughing together, the Doctor carrying the transdimensional briefcase in one hand. They were probably, again, mocking the ridiculousness of Wade Sawyer fainting the previous night, Clara boasting that _she_ had never fainted. The Doctor argued with this, saying she did, in fact, faint twice the day she met him. Though she argued that having your mind sucked out by an omniscient 'AI-thing' (as she called the Great Intelligence) was not the same as _fainting_. And then she blamed him for not stopping it sooner.

It was this conversation, rehashed, that they were tracing over when they entered the console room of the ship. And it was this conversation that Oswin Oswald interrupted with a very loud and very theatrical cough, and the two of them noticed her sitting there on the little leather chair with her arms crossed and her cane leaning on the railings.

"Where the hell have you two been all day?" she questioned. It was a little bit like coming home a few hours later than your parents expected you, Clara noted, being faced with her disappointed sister. It was strange to read that kind of maternal anguish in her own face reflected back at her.

"All day?" Clara asked, "As in – just one day?" That was a terrible thing to have said. Oswin's jaw dropped.

"How many days have you been gone for!?" she demanded, "And you didn't tell anyone where you went! What if you needed helping, or something, hmm? What if you didn't come back?"

"Babe, I think you're overreacting," Adam Mitchell – another person neither Clara nor the Doctor had noticed there – said. Clara glanced around for any more people who might be hiding, again reminded of her terrible habit of not paying attention to anybody else around her when she was in the company of her husband (though he was just as bad.)

"We've only been gone for a weekend," Eleven said, displeased with his sister-in-law treating him like a child, "Why are you so bothered?"

" _A weekend_? Is it even your birthday anymore, Clara?" she questioned.

"Well, no, not technically…" Clara said.

"Oh. Fine. I suppose you won't want your birthday present, then," Oswin said.

"Is my birthday present having my wonderful favourite-daughter in my life, her looking out for me and making sure I'm okay?" Clara countered her bitterness with – _gasp_ – sincerity, hands on her hips.

"Do you know," Eleven clapped his hands together and interrupted them, after putting the briefcase down next to him, "I rather thing I ought to go with Adam Mitchell to fetch his car." He just wanted an excuse to leave, she could tell.

"You _what_!?" Adam demanded. Clara was shocked; he looked angry. Adam Mitchell, _angry_. It was like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs. "Which one!?" Oswin looked alarmed, too, and leant over so that she could hold his hand. He didn't object.

"The DeLorean," Eleven answered.

"You're freezing me!" Oswin protested, and they all saw that he _was_ freezing her, her hand, by accident. Immediately he let go, leaving her fingers coated with ice. Good thing she was a hologram or she may have gotten frostbite.

"I can't believe you're destroyed that DeLorean! It's not supposed to be driven! It's not a replica, you know – it's the real set-piece they used on _Back to the Future 2_ and now – now it's gone!" Clara thought he was at risk of crying. She was amazed that the car wasn't a replica – just how rich _was_ her sister's boyfriend that he could afford the _actual_ DeLorean?

"We didn't destroy it!" both Clara and Eleven said together, the Doctor adding, "It's fine, I just forgot about it, it's parked in front of a hotel out there. Nothing the matter with it at all, we barely drove it. And Clara was driving. Mostly."

"You let him drive?" Oswin asked Clara, " _Him_? That's like letting _me_ drive something."

"He had to drive, I was naked and had to put my clothes on because we were chasing a lizard to a theme park," Clara explained.

"Oh, well, that makes perfect sense," Oswin remarked.

"In all fairness," Clara said to the Doctor, "You _did_ destroy the roller coaster."

"Oh, _I_ destroyed it? I think it was a mutual effort," he said.

"Let me check on the car," Adam said.

"Yes – car – right – of course," Eleven said, motioning to the door, and they swiftly left to check on the wellbeing of one of Adam Mitchell's most prized possessions. Clara sighed and walked over to lean on the centre console in front of her sister (the TARDIS making a small, indignant whirring sound, because the stupid spaceship still hadn't warmed to her.)

"So, he swept you away for a romantic weekend on your birthday, and you didn't even bother to come and get your present from me? Or see me?" Oswin asked.

"No, it wasn't like that, sweetheart," Clara said softly, sighing a little, "I was just… having a bit of a panic in the middle of the night, and I was really homesick, so we just went to sit on the beach and I had to talk to him about some… private, marriage-related things. Then this spaceship crashed into the sea, typically enough. We stayed to look into it, and because… I just needed a break from the TARDIS. I didn't even remember it was my birthday at all."

"What marriage-related things?"

" _Private_ , Os," Clara said sternly, "I don't ask you about you and Adam all the time." That annoyed Oswin, because it was true, but she remained nosey and unsatisfied by not knowing something about Clara's life.

"…What's this about a roller coaster and a lizard, anyway? Or is that more _private_ stuff? I know – you married a lizard, didn't you? On a roller coaster! And then he must have destroyed it to stop you. Or did the lizard kidnap you and trap you on the roller coaster? Oh no, wait, that's what happens in _Super Mario Sunshine_ …"

Clara proceeded to relate back to Oswin the whole of the events concerning the lizard – which did, unfortunately, include those involving Wade Sawyer, stalker extraordinaire. How it had crashed, had killed a roller coaster designer, had thought the roller coaster was in fact a spaceship it could use to escape the toxic atmosphere, how the Doctor had bravely lured it onto the roller coaster before the entire thing ended up as a gory, mangled mess of metal and sinew on the ground outside.

"And then he fainted," Clara concluded, "We waited for him to wake up, and then he called the police and said we were crazy and he didn't want to marry me, after all, and he was going to tell my father all about how I was a 'dangerous lunatic' and had married a 'madman.' We left pretty quickly before the rest of Blackpool's finest showed up."

"Then you came back, right? Came straight back to the TARDIS?"

"Well… no…"

"The police didn't come after you?"

"Apparently Geoff came to speak to one of us while I was asleep – I don't know, I suppose the Doctor must have threatened him, or something, but they left us alone for all of today. The stuff with the lizard was just last night. I've been sunbathing, mainly."

"Eurgh. Sunbathing is just masochism dressed up in a bikini," Oswin grumbled. Clara laughed.

"How's that?"

"The sun isn't good for you, Clara. Its warmth is, but not its toxic radiation. You're just going out and burning yourself on purpose, you lunatic. You might as well climb into an oven."

"Of course you'd say that, you grew up on Saturn."

"If _I_ grew up on Saturn then _you_ grew up in that wretched theme park," Oswin countered. Clara had told her story now, and there wasn't much else to say. Her day hadn't been filled with the most astounding of activities, not after everything with the alien reptile had been quelled, she had just been very lazy. They had got some ice cream at a point, and he had kept asking her if they could climb the 'Eiffel' Tower, because he knew that calling Blackpool Tower the 'Eiffel' Tower would annoy her (and it did, but they didn't climb it.)

"We went to the aquarium as well," Clara said, and Oswin pulled a face. "What?" Clara feigned innocence, "Do you not like the sea? I thought you love the sea. You're always going in it."

"Yeah, and I wish I wasn't," Oswin crossed her arms huffily, still trying to be angry at Clara.

"…The Doctor got me a camera for my birthday."

Oswin scoffed, "Pfft. I got you something way better than a camera."

"I'll have to see it to believe it," Clara challenged, trying to coax Oswin into giving her this present she seemed so desperate to bestow. Oswin narrowed her eyes but did, finally, give up. She leant down to pick something up from the floor next to her, which was something of an indiscernible shape covered in shiny red wrapping paper, which had the word ' _birth_ ' written across it in messy writing a few times. Clara laughed warmly. "That's adorable."

"Well I tried really hard! And you weren't around to appreciate me."

"I'm appreciating you now! God, you're a nightmare sometimes – it's like having two spouses. Or… three. If you include Thirteen. I don't know."

"Careful with it. It might… do something. When you touch it. I'm not sure what, though," Oswin said, "Hasn't been tested on the genuine article, only fakes." Clara frowned.

"Fakes?" she questioned.

"Open it!" Oswin entreated, so she did, surprised at how neatly it turned out to be wrapped, considering the queer shape. Not that unwrapping it enlightened her at all to what it was, as she sat down, carefully suspending herself in the air with telekinesis because there wasn't a spare chair close by, to examine it. "You kind of hold it in the palm of your hand. I had to put a counterweight on the front; it kept falling over, because of the mirrors," Oswin explained. Clara did hold it in her palm, and was shocked to see these aforementioned mirrors sort of unfurl themselves from out of the back of an orb-shaped device, full of tiny pieces of clockwork, and in her palm lights within the mechanisms glowed softly amber. It fit in her hand very nicely, her fingers clasped around its gold curves.

"Wh _oa_ ," Clara said in awe, "…I still don't know what it is."

"Of course you don't know what it is, I haven't told you what it is – have some bloody patience," Oswin snapped, "Don't hold it for long, though, it might show you something you don't want to see."

" _Show me_ something?"

"Yeah. Actually, you know, give it to me for the moment," Oswin said, and Clara obliged, wanting to know what the thing was with its mirrors and its cogs and bolts as it made a faint ticking sound. She hoped it wasn't some kind of explosive – but her sister _did_ have such an irrepressible knack for building bombs. It was a little bit too pretty to just blow up, though, more like a sculpture than any genuine technology. Oswin did have a bit of an obsession with the aesthetics of all her inventions, though, so Clara was hardly surprised the thing was so ornate. "I call it the _Echoculum_. But, if you were to write it, write it with just the one O. Echooculum or Echo-Oculum would look stupid, Echoculum is more aesthetically pleasing." Clara didn't really know the difference between the different words, nor did she understand whom Oswin was addressing when it came to spellings and pronunciations of something she had just made up.

"Echoculum, then?"

"That's the one."

"You still haven't told me what it does."

"Well – that's the thing. You know about the telepathic circuits, right? Well, it's sort of like a… miniature telepathic circuit, tailored to you. You remember you gave me your blood months ago so that I could run tests on Manifesthood-"

"This thing has my blood in it?"

"Yeah. I had to go see Flek to test it," Oswin said, "Well, more sort of Eyeball to test it…"

"Have you been bullying Ressy again? I wish you wouldn't be so harsh to her," Clara said.

"She slapped me!" Oswin protested. Clara raised her eyebrows.

"What were you doing for her to slap you?"

"I can't believe you think I would have to do something for that maniac to lay her hands on me. All I did was tell her that her fiancée and I were having an affair and we were going to elope together. I had to make her angry! For science!" Oswin complained, and as she did, the Echoculum in her hand changed colour, from amber to pale blue. "Ah, see, it's doing it again." As soon as she spotted it doing something and got excited by it, it reverted back to its previous colour.

"I don't get it."

"It knew I was upset, so it changed colour to blue, to let _you_ know I'm upset," Oswin said.

"But I know when you're upset already, we're psychically linked and we have an empathy bond," Clara said, "I have an empathy bond with all of them."

"Exactly, it's carried into your bloodstream, every bit of your DNA. But your empathy link doesn't really… work very well. It's based around proximity, that's why you can only really sense changes in me or Ressy," Oswin said, "But _this_ will detect when they're experiencing an extreme emotion, and when _you_ and you alone touch it, it'll show you in the mirrors what's going on."

"'Extreme emotion'?" Clara questioned wryly.

"An extreme _bad_ emotion. If one of them cums, it won't acknowledge it," Oswin said, then added to herself, "It was very tricky getting it to ignore orgasms… Anyway. You see when they're angry or sad or scared and judge if you ought to go all _guardian angel_ about it." After explaining what it did, Oswin let Clara have it again.

"Thank you," Clara said, "This is great. It'll really help keep them safe. I didn't think you cared about your sisters." Oswin made an almost disgusted face when Clara called the other Echoes her sisters.

"I don't care all that much. But you do. Besides, maybe I'll get into a tight scrape and the Echoculum will help you come and get me. It's self-preservation, if anything," Oswin said, trying to be indifferent. Clara didn't really believe that she didn't care about the other Echoes, or that she really disliked them much. She hugged her, which was another thing Oswin pretended to dislike, and it was then that Adam Mitchell and Eleven came back, Adam apparently making the Doctor promise to never steal one of his cars ever again without permission. Clara let Oswin go.

"You like the thingamajig, then?" Adam asked.

"Of course I do," Clara said.

"What is it?" Eleven asked, and Oswin had to re-explain, though she tried to be a little more concise about the Echoculum's purpose when speaking to the Doctor. "Ah – excellent. You ought to put it on top of the piano, Coo."

"I thought I'd keep it in bed next to me – you can have the sofa," she said.

"Even better, I love the sofa."

"I meant the sofas in Nerve Centre."

"Brilliant, right by the fridge."

"Alright, well, Adam and I are going to leave if you two won't stop weird-flirting," Oswin said, that reminding Clara how she hadn't yet told Oswin how Wade Sawyer had thought she was being mistreated by Eleven. Then again, Oswin didn't like Eleven much already, telling her that might make her even colder towards him. Though Clara was sure her sister's dislike of the Doctor was more to do with Jenny Harkness than anything else…


	51. Another Girl Another Planet XVIII

**DAY 18,200***

"The nerve of you is astonishing! You call me up to come and get you, then you march into _my_ home-"

"It is not _your_ home, Jennifer," Thirteen snapped at her only daughter, who was, at present, pacing back and forth on the balcony above the central column of the future TARDIS. Thirteen's interior because, while Jenny may be in temporary possession of it while she and Clara were living on Earth and teaching together, she was still forbidden from changing any of these aesthetics. They'd had a row just a few weeks ago about how Jenny thought she could fix the chameleon circuit, and Thirteen had scoffed and told her she wasn't allowed to touch the chameleon circuit under any circumstances.

"Alright, you march into your own home which you're lending me, and accuse me of murder!" Jenny exclaimed. It was only the two of them. Clara Oswald was asleep elsewhere, Clara Ravenwood was presumably listening in on the other side of the door. She hadn't seen Adam Mitchell and Oswin so far. Jenny was in front of the railings while Thirteen stood next to the taxidermy bald eagle she had received as a gift from President Lincoln. The American flag that used to hang beside her had been moved into the house with she and Clara, as had the two large, mismatched, antique chairs that used to reside there. And a fair few of the books. It was oddly empty.

"I'm just repeating to you what was said to _me_ by a giant and _very_ angry tentacle monster," Thirteen said sternly, her arms crossed, not rising to Jenny's anger at this 'injustice.' The Doctor supposed Jenny must have had a bad day, and that was why she was being so moody. "A Khaolu tried to kill us! Don't you know why? It said it was trying to avenge its mother because _you_ -"

"'Murdered her in cold blood.' Yeah, I heard you the first dozen times, mother."

"All I know is you had something to do with the death of its mother in 1948. Has it not happened to you yet?"

"Wait – 1948? You didn't say 1948 before!"

"Of course I did!"

"Did not."

"Well I'm saying it now. Why? Do you remember now?"

Jenny stopped pacing, stood still, then sighed and put her head in her hands for a brief moment while her mother watched, anxiously awaiting the answer to the questions that had been puzzling her for the last few hours. Ever since Cole Campbell had mutated in their living room and turned into a tentacle ball.

"I… might. But it was an accident!"

"Just tell me what happened," Thirteen entreated softly.

"…Okay. Fine. It all started when Clara made me that scarf-"

"The awful scarf you wear _all the time_? _That_ scarf?" Thirteen questioned. Jenny looked offended on behalf of Ravenwood when Thirteen insulted the blasted scarf – but the Doctor knew she was right. It wasn't all that great of a scarf.

"Yeah. That one. And if you insulted it again, I won't tell you anything about the Khaolu at all."

"Go on, then. Tell one of your famous stories," Thirteen said, remembering that Jenny by far had a penchant to embellish when she told anything. Like when she had told Ravenwood what had happened on Day Ninety-Four, lying about the presence of a Maddy Cooper zombie, or when she had told Ravenwood the story of how she came to be so vampiric.

"We were in Hollowmire, it was a dark and stormy night-"

"Oh, come on."

"It _was_ a dark and stormy night! And I, being the doting, chivalrous girlfriend that I, of course, am – or, was, what with us being married now – took it upon myself to carry Clara's umbrella, which she forgot that morning since the skies were cloudy but the ground was dry, all the way to her shop so as to walk her home and stop her from getting drenched…"

* * *

 **DAY 144**

 _Another Girl Another Planet XVIII_

 _Jenny_

Rain lashing down against the fabric of her girlfriend's umbrella, Jenny stoically approached the door of Dylan Danvers' bookshop, the thing tiny and nearly windowless and perched on a street corner. It was an almighty storm she was battling through, but bad weather had never really bothered her, and she had lived through hurricanes before. This onslaught, while bleak, was no tropical force. She drew up to the door and debated in her mind whether she should knock or not. It was a shop, it was open to the public, and the little bell would presumably announce her (if it had a little bell; she had, truthfully, never been into Dylan's shop before), but as far as she knew the only person in there was Clara Ravenwood. She resolved that Clara could probably smell her out there, though, and decided to just enter, if only to get out of the harsh, winter sleet.

She did not need to, however, for the door was opened from the inside right as Jenny Harkness went to turn the handle, and she stepped back accordingly to be out of the way of it.

"Your umbrella, milady," she joked, smiling, doing a curtsey for added effect.

"Unbelievable," Clara commented, though she did laugh, Jenny stepping up to hold the umbrella over her head as she locked the door. Clara had Jenny's transdimensional bag over her shoulder, because Jenny presently had no specific use for her mother's parting gift so she let Clara have it to take books and large flasks of coffee and blood with her to work. "Weather's nice, at least," Clara said when she had locked the door, returning Jenny's smile.

"That's one word for it."

"No! It's great. There's no sun. I might even be able to take my glasses off," Clara said. Her sun-glasses were in danger of growing blotchy from the rain, rendering her even blinder than she normally was – which happened to be quite blind. She didn't do well with any light at all now. As the weeks drew on, the less Clara Ravenwood could see during the day. "Let me take that," Clara tried to take the umbrella from Jenny before they left to walk home together.

"Nah, it's fine," Jenny said, and Clara crossed her arms and stood rigidly still.

"You've carried it all this way – your arm must be tired," Clara said, and Jenny narrowed her eyes. It was her left arm she was using, of course, what with her right thumb still being immobile and painful, and Clara knew full-well that it wasn't tired one bit. She did two-hundred one-armed push-ups on it just yesterday and had been quite alright.

"Of course it's not tired."

"I'll carry it," Clara offered again, and Jenny sighed.

" _Fine_ , I suppose," she relented, and let Clara take it, Clara who also took the umbrella with her left hand, so that she could hold Jenny's good hand with her right. That had been her game all along, Jenny supposed; she wanted to hold hands. She didn't complain, at any rate, as they began to move, practically invisible to anyone standing more than five metres away in that ghastly weather. "How's your day been, then?" Jenny inquired, lacing her fingers through Clara's, the rain so heavy it was like walking through an endless waterfall.

"Boring," Clara said, "Girlfriend-less." Jenny laughed. "What about you? Do anything interesting?"

"Of course not. The weather's been depressing and I've just been cold in your house." Clara glanced over at her in a strange way, and Jenny frowned, "What?" Clara didn't speak for a few seconds.

"It's just – it's funny you should mention being cold," she began.

"I'm always cold recently," Jenny said.

"I know, and you've been going on and on about how you want a new coat and stuff."

"Yeah, so?"

" _So_ … I may have… got you a present. Not a coat, but – still," Clara confessed, "And I more kind of made it. Rather than bought it." Jenny stopped while they were mounting the hill which would eventually lead to Clara's house, its winding road shiny and soaked. Water ran down it like a stream into Hollowmire below them.

"You don't have to get me presents," Jenny said.

"Oh – but you getting me presents all the time is fine?" Clara countered, "You either have to stop with the presents altogether or accept that we're both equal."

"You being my girlfriend is enough of a present," Jenny said in a low voice, leaning in.

Clara leant towards her right back, and then proclaimed, "Trying to schmooze me won't work. Deal with it." And then she began to walk off again, and Jenny was forced to follow her, being as Clara was in possession of the umbrella. It was an enormous black umbrella and _very_ high quality, one of the long ones that was harder to get turned inside out. Clara needed such a fancy umbrella because, again, she didn't cope well with sunlight.

"I only get you presents because I love you," Jenny said when she caught her back up.

"And _I_ love _you_ ," Clara affirmed, and Jenny smiled. She supposed it was fair enough – she just wasn't very used to receiving gifts. Anyone who ever _had_ tried to get her one generally proclaimed she was impossible to buy for. "Anyway. You'll like it. It's… useful, I hope." While they walked, Jenny stopped them again.

"Wait, wait, wait," she said, holding Clara still by her shoulder.

"What?" Clara asked as Jenny squinted in an exaggerated fashion and looked into her face.

"I'm just trying to deduce if vampires can blush," she said, "Because you seem to be managing it."

"Oh, be quiet," Clara scoffed, and began walking again, while Jenny chortled and squeezed her hand fondly. Now Clara was embarrassed, and Jenny was almost one-hundred percent sure she was blushing fiercely. Well, as fiercely as one whose heart only beat once per minute, and who usually had the countenance of a corpse, _could_ blush. "Vampires can't blush."

"How would you know? It's not like you can see your own reflection."

"Ah – but actually – that jibe doesn't work anymore, because your dad got me that funny, alien mirror," Clara remarked, "So I can see my own reflection. Sometimes."

"You ought to get the mirror out when we get back, then, and see your blushing for yourself."

"I can't believe you walked all the way with this umbrella just to make fun of me."

"I don't get it," Jenny began, "There's so much water on this hill, doesn't this count as running water?"

"What? No."

"Why not?"

"It's complicated."

"You don't know, do you?"

"Well nobody explained to me the ins and outs of being a vampire because _somebody_ bashed all the other vampires to death with a big Victorian cane, _didn't she_?" Clara cast an accusatory look at Jenny, who decided she deserved that for making quips about Clara's reflection – or lack thereof – and recoiled like an upset puppy.

The house emerged out of the torrential rain to meet them, Clara slipping a few times on the wet stones and thin mud and having to be kept steady by Jenny – who would never slip, because, after all, she _was_ an acrobat. It wouldn't do her much good to be falling all over the place on the highwire, or letting her fingers slip as she tried to grab the trapeze. Clara, however, wasn't an acrobat. She was a bookworm who skulked around in the dark all day.

"Did no-one ever teach you to walk in a straight line?" Jenny said, when Clara slipped on the small pebbled path in her very own front garden, after they went through the damp wooden gate.

"That's homophobic. Why does the line have to be _straight_?" Clara countered.

"You're very clumsy."

"I bet you think it's cute, though."

"…Alright, I'll admit it, I do." Clara unlocked the door because Jenny made a fumble of trying to find her own key with her damaged, bandaged hand, and shook the umbrella out on the doorstep for a few seconds. She didn't do a very good job of it though, and only proceeded to make her own legs wetter. Closing the door, she leant the umbrella in the corner by the door seeing as she didn't possess an actual umbrella stand. Jenny wondered if she ought to get one. No doubt there was one on the TARDIS somewhere she could swipe.

"Urgh, I am _soaked_ and I am _freezing_ ," Jenny complained, kicking off her boots to leave them messily strewn underneath the hallway radiator, "I wish I could just take my clothes off."

"If you want to take your clothes off, Jen, I'm not one to object," Clara shrugged, "I'll support you whatever decision you make." Jenny just raised her eyebrows, her arms tightly crossed around her.

"…I'm going to make us some tea…" she mumbled finally, going down the hall. Clara, having nothing else to do, went through the living room to meet her in the kitchen from the other door.

"Fancy seeing you here," she remarked.

"Ha, ha. Very funny."

"Thanks. I try my best." Clara put the transdimensional bag, once Thirteen's, now Jenny's, down on one of the wooden kitchen chairs, and then went to lean against the counter while Jenny faffed about with the kettle and the mugs. "Have you talked to your dad today?"

"No, he's been busy, or something. And yesterday, too," Jenny sighed, "I asked Oswin what was going on and she said it was Other You's birthday and they went off somewhere together."

"When do you think you'll be going back?"

"As soon as I can manage to pick up a cup of tea with my right hand, I reckon my thumb might be healed enough," Jenny shrugged, "But I can't yet. You're still stuck with me."

"Oh no, what a shame," Clara said sarcastically, making Jenny smile. They were interrupted by a bright flash outside, visible around the edges of the curtains. There was a moment of silence before it was followed by a crash of thunder. "Thunder and lightning – I bet Esther's loving it."

"Yeah, well, I'm not," she sighed. Being at Clara's for so long was getting to her. Of course, she adored Clara Ravenwood more than anything else in the universe, but there was only so much rural, village life she could take before the boredom _really_ started killing her. And she supposed it had been killing her ever since she had recovered from her illness the other day. She was just lazing about the place, melancholy, her mood growing worse in time with the weather. "What's this present then?"

"Oh, right," Clara appeared to have forgotten about it, whatever it was. When prompted she turned to pick the bag up off the chair and open it, taking out a few items. Namely two flasks (a black one and a silver one, black for blood and silver for tea) and some piece of fabric. Wool, she thought. It was this that Clara held out to her, looking embarrassed for herself, and Jenny reached out to take it. "It's a scarf. Because you keep complaining about being cold and wanting a new coat and, well, I couldn't really get you a coat, so…"

"You knitted this?" Jenny questioned, "Yourself?" it had funny shapes in it in silver wool, though she couldn't make out what they were. Just a lot of blobs. Stars, possibly? "I didn't know you could knit."

"It's just something I learnt how to do after Danny died," Clara explained, "Keep my mind occupied, you know. This was _after_ I stopped getting drunk and sleeping around but _before_ you and I were officially knocking boots." Jenny winced at Clara's use of the phrase 'knocking boots,' but didn't pick her up on it.

"What are the shapes? Stars?"

"What? No! They're… meant to be bats. Because, you know, I'm a vampire." The silvery blotches did not look like bats, but Jenny did not care. Nobody had ever knitted her a scarf before. In fact, nobody had knitted her anything before, and she found herself dumbstruck. "I've been doing it when I'm at work, since there's not a lot else to do." Jenny still said nothing. "Jen? Do you like it?"

"Do I _like it_? I love it!" she flung her arms around Clara and dragged her into the tightest hug she could manage – which happened to be a _very_ tight hug, but Clara the Vampire could easily withstand it, as long as she didn't start singing a hymn, or something. Clara was incredibly taken by surprise, though. "It's the best scarf I've ever seen in my whole life. I'm going to wear it everywhere and never, _ever_ take it off." She released Clara and put the scarf on, as well, wrapping it loosely around her shoulders. It was a good thing it was so long. Then she hugged Clara again.

"Seems like a bit of an overreaction to a scarf…" Clara mumbled.

"It's amazing. I love it. My favourite thing in the world, apart from you," Jenny let her go for the second time in the space of thirty seconds, "You. Are. _Wonderful_. But you know what this scarf needs?"

"Uh, an appropriate level of excitement?" Clara, perplexed, asked.

"A coat to go with it! A nice coat, as well," Jenny continued talking about this coat she was after, which she had been talking about ever since going to Chernobyl in the wintertime. "I have a friend who owes me a favour. Or, who could be persuaded to owe me a favour. I'll just nip out."

"Whoa, hang on – what do you mean _nip out_? 'Nip out' where? And who owes you a coat-related favour?"

"Just, um, this girl. Owns a tailor's. Best tailor's in New Orleans. Look, I'll just be a minute, two minutes, tops, okay?" Jenny said, kissing Clara briefly before wandering off to fetch her boots from where she had left them in the hall. Then she paused. "Actually, those boots are soaking…"

"I don't understand – you're just going to rush off to New Orleans on a whim like that?" Clara followed her around as she turned to go towards the cellar door. The stairs down to the cellar were always well-lit and softly-carpeted, because Clara, though she hated light, didn't like them looking creepy. So there were red fairy-lights draped along the wall, plugged into a socket at the bottom, and on these stairs were some more pairs of shoes. Another pair of Jenny's, in fact, because it was always handy to have a spare pair of good-quality leather boots. Military-grade, of course.

"It's not _on a whim_ , and I said I'll only be gone a moment, I'm just going to change my socks to some dry ones and put on my other boots, then go to the ship," Jenny shrugged. Of course her ship was still residing peacefully in Clara's back garden, where it always was. She went to rifle through Clara's drawers for some clean socks of hers, seeing as it was at the stage where she had her own entire drawer in the dresser, and almost everything in it was black and at least half of all that was made of pleather.

"Do you actually own a dress, or a skirt?" Clara asked, looking over Jenny's shoulder. She'd brought some clothes with her specifically to keep at Clara's when Martha had kicked her off the TARDIS a few days ago, telling her she had to rest her broken thumb.

" _Yes_ , they're just impractical," Jenny said, casting a disapproving look at Clara, who _was_ wearing a skirt, a short one (as always), even though it was stormy and midwinter outside.

"So – I'm not allowed to come?" Clara asked, and Jenny stopped what she was doing, a pair of clean socks in her hand.

"What? You _want_ to come?" Jenny was perplexed, "But you hate time travel. That's why you always refused to live on the TARDIS, with Old Twelvey _or_ with me."

"Yeah, I refused to move onto the TARDIS back when I had a lite to get back to, and responsibilities. My biggest responsibility these days is my relationship with you," Clara pointed out, "Besides. It's you. It's different to with the Doctor. Of course I don't hate time travel. And I've never been to New Orleans – can we go to Mardi Gras?"

"Absolutely not. I'm going in December, and especially if you're coming, too. Colder the better, since it's practically tropical all year round."

"So you're just going to drop by New Orleans? When?" Clara asked, crossing her arms, watching Jenny sit on the edge of the unmade bed and peel of her sopping wet socks, pulling a face at how soggy they were. She threw both socks into the laundry basket on the other side of the room, though, without looking – an old parlour trick. Clara had seen it too many times to be too impressed.

"I don't know yet. Depends on what sort of impression I want to make on her…"

"Who her?"

"My… friend. Don't be jealous. Hardly a friend, really. Don't upset her if you tag along."

"Why would I upset her?"

"She's sort of a horrible person. A sociopath, even," Jenny tried not to look at Clara, pulling on her socks.

"Why does a horrible sociopath owe you…?" Clara continued to question, but Jenny did not want to answer. It was a long story, that one of how and why she had come to be on good terms with the infamous Viola O'Hara of all people, usually remembered by history as the maniacal martyr of organised crime, after her death in a shootout in the 1970s. And there was Jenny, her right-hand, the patron saint of moonshine.

"It's… complicated. Just… maybe put on a skirt that's not _quite_ so short? That's a bit more era-appropriate?"

"You're wearing tight jeans and a leather jacket," Clara said as Jenny stood up, brushing past her to get back to the staircase, sitting down there next so as to sort out her boots.

"That's me, though. People don't question _me_. I'm too cool for that. You're not, though."

"Oh, thanks. How am I not cool? The tight jeans _and_ the leather jacket are both mine."

"It's to do with how you carry yourself. Posture, you know."

"Ah. You're saying I have to act like a butch lesbian? Like you?"

" _What_? I do not!"

"You _were_ in the army…"

"I bake cupcakes!"

"Everybody likes cupcakes, Jen," Clara said knowingly, Jenny just managing to tie the laces on her other boot – always tricky with only the one thumb, "Not everybody likes military fatigues."

"Oh, okay. I'll remember that the next time I decide to bake for you on a whim." She stood back up. "You're not getting changed, then?"

"I'll be fine," Clara said.

"Suit yourself. But if people won't talk to you because you're dressed too _revealingly_ then it's not on me," Jenny said.

"I'm not revealing anything! I have tights on as well."

"So what? You're practically inviting the masses of 1940s perverts to ogle you. My own girlfriend wants strange men to stare at her – imagine how that makes _me_ feel." Clara stuck her tongue out at her, and Jenny took her hand, "Come on, then. We'll just refill your flask with blood and off to Louisiana we go, just the three of us."

" _Three_ of us?"

"Yeah. You, me, and this scarf."

"Oh, lord…"

* _Refer to Chapters 1019 and 1021 to refresh your memory of Clarteen's encounter with the other Khaolu, and this storyline's sister-storyline_


	52. The Three Hearts

_The Three Hearts_

 _Jenny_

Jenny was determined that her return to New Orleans would take place in the streets rather than sticks, which meant it had been a real pain trying to find somewhere to park a giant, silver spaceship. Of course the spaceship was invisible, but the fact remained that they still had to awkwardly clamber down a fire escape off of a particularly scuzzy rooftop in one of the more uptown parts of the city. A fancier area. Not as fancy as the big, white mansions that crested the fringe just before the land gave way to the swamp and the bayous, but decent. Home to the sort of people Viola O'Hara wouldn't _quite_ be disgusted to bump into. There they were, in the midwinter heat, the temperature still burgeoning on twenty degrees even though it was the end of December.

"This is 1948, then?" Clara asked, hovering close to Jenny but keeping her hand clutched tightly around her umbrella she had to protect from the bright, southern sun. It would be setting soon. As for Jenny herself, all she was carrying was the transdimensional bag Clara had taken with her to work and produced her new scarf from, a scarf which, despite the hot weather down in Louisiana, Jenny still had around her neck.

"Yep. You're looking at prosperous, post-war America, right before the Cold War dug its claws into society," Jenny explained, trying to put a bit of flourish into the things she said. Okay, _maybe_ she was trying to impress Clara, was trying to match up to Clara's travels with the Doctor. But it was hardly a crime for Jenny to want to sweep her girlfriend off her feet. "And all the fancy cars people can afford now the Depression is over," she added as a vintage automobile with a shiny, dark blue body, chrome trimmings, and white-walled tyres drifted past them on the road.

"And you _do_ know where we're going?" Clara asked, glancing around at the old cars, the traffic lights, the grid layout of the streets and all the retro shops.

"Of course I do! I lived here for over ten years. I'm not my dad, I don't just whiz around getting snapshots of different eras. I generally hang about for a bit," Jenny said, then she pointed across the street, dragging Clara by her elbow into the road with her, "We're going over there." Clara seemed very on edge about Jenny just pulling her into the traffic without even looking left or right, and muttered something about 'illegal jaywalking,' but it turned out fine in the end as they approached their destination.

"The Three Hearts?" Clara, perplexed, read the place's name aloud.

"Yep. 'Authentic Irish tavern' it probably says somewhere on it." Jenny looked up at the Three Hearts, Viola's favourite joint.

"But I thought you were getting a coat?" Clara asked. Jenny had explained very little to Clara about what was going on and who they were going to see and how Jenny knew this person, this enigmatic sociopath.

"I _am_ , it's just my… friend… she runs this place. She runs a lot of places, including the tailor's, and this is where she'll be. Probably. I haven't actually been to New Orleans since 1939…" But she knew from the history books that Viola's chokehold on the richer districts of Louisiana wouldn't lapse at all until the 70s. "Just trust me." Clara sighed, but resigned to do just this, as Jenny marched confidently up to the Three Hearts and walked right in. A bell overhead tinkled.

As soon as she entered, Clara carefully closing her sun-blocking umbrella, a huge, burly type of guy sitting at the lonely bar pulled a magnum on her, cocking it immediately. As soon as Clara heard the gun cock she whirled around to see they were being aimed at.

"We're closed," the man said gruffly. Jenny frowned at him. A new bouncer.

"What happened to Joyce?" Jenny asked him. She didn't put her hands up. The man's eyes narrowed.

"Joyce got iced by the Cubans in '44 – who the hell're you? This ain't your type of establishment, lady," he said coolly, "You've got ten seconds til I shoot ya."

"Viola won't be very happy if you shoot her oldest friend," Jenny remarked, "Is she upstairs?"

"The boss doesn't take visitors," the bouncer said, "Not at this hour and not unless they call ahead. 'Specially not a limey."

"Boss of what?" Clara whispered in Jenny's ear. Jenny ignored her; it wouldn't do well to look as though they wee colluding in front of a mobster who didn't know who she was.

"Listen. Viola wants to see me. She'll always want to see me. You go upstairs and tell her DeLacey is here," Jenny said, crossing her arms, "And then see she doesn't put you on racket duty for a week for not bringing me up right away. If you shoot me she'll have your head."

"Hold it – didja say _DeLacey_?"

"That's the name." He holstered his gun, looked a little pale, and then disappeared into a door at the back which Jenny knew led to the upstairs 'VIP' area – though Viola was the only VIP who spent her time in that place. And Jenny, of course. Before she left.

"Holy shit – what's going on?" Clara hissed at her once the new, unknown bouncer was gone.

"Relax, it's fine," Jenny said smoothly, taking the large umbrella out of Clara's hands to put it into the transdimensional bag. She couldn't take an umbrella into a room with Viola, she'd think it was concealing a shotgun, or something.

"Who's 'DeLacey'?"

" _I'm_ DeLacey, obviously," she explained, "Seriously, though, when we get upstairs… be nice?"

"What do you mean _be nice_? I _am_ nice."

"Look, you're just not everyone's cup of tea, try not to argue with her about morals. In fact, anyone you meet today, don't bring up morals or the 'right thing' or righteous mumbo-jumbo," Jenny implored.

" _Righteous mumbo-jum-_ " Clara's exclamation of confusion and judgement was interrupted by Jenny shushing her as they heard the bouncer's heavy, hurried footsteps coming back down the wooden stairs.

"The boss says you can go right up," he said, even paler than he was before. Viola must have threatened him, Jenny assumed. She was always threatening people. Jenny smiled pleasantly at him as he let them pass, taking his seat up again on the empty bar. Clara seemed uncomfortable. Really, though, Clara was with _her_ , she had nothing to fear when it came to the likes of Viola. Jenny had always been Viola's favourite.

"Why – I do believe my eyes are deceiving me, for it can't _possibly_ be my own DeLacey returning to me after all these years," Viola said in her prissy, Southern drawl, talking like she had just stepped out of _Gone With the Wind_. She was half being sarcastic, Jenny seeing her sitting in the middle of the room with two more henchmen around her, and a weedier looking man in a fancy pin-striped suit sitting at her table with her. Jenny laughed.

"Maybe they _are_ deceiving you, because I wouldn't really say I was returning," Jenny said, smiling. Viola smiled, too, but couldn't hide her dissatisfaction with Jenny for saying this was not the grand return she wanted it to be. Viola's sharp eyes immediately sought Clara.

"Who's this stranger you drag into my place of business?" she asked coldly.

"Ah – this is Clara," Jenny introduced, "My girlfriend. And Clara, this is Viola O'Hara. She's the head of the Irish mafia in New Orleans." Clara, in all her newfound terror at their company, could not even begin to question Jenny about her shady acquaintances while they were in the same room.

"What's this? A consort? A flame?" Viola asked, "I've never known you have any interest in taking lovers before."

"You haven't known me for a _long_ time," Jenny answered, "May we sit down?" She didn't forget her manners, and most definitely not when Viola was already being off with her because of the not-returning thing.

"You look the same as the day I met you," Viola commented, after assenting that they may, indeed, sit down. Jenny pulled out Clara's chair for her and then sat down herself, on Viola's right, where she had always been. Probably always would be.

"Two-hundred years ago," Jenny said, "I told you. It's been a long time. I left after the war."

"Left to go where?"

"I ran away and joined the circus," Jenny told her the truth, and Viola, blatantly not believing her, laughed, then asked if either of them wanted a drink. "No, thanks," Jenny answered quickly.

"Suit yourself. Conor's never quite managed to recreate your moonshine recipe, anyway – O'Hara-brand whiskey hasn't sold as well since you left," Viola said.

"It's all about technique. I'll write him down some instructions before I leave later, it's the least I can do after you help me," Jenny said. She was telling the truth, she didn't mind copying down her intricate hooch recipe. "Why's this place empty, anyway? At this time?" It was the early evening, they had arrived just before the sunset began to roll in.

"Closed for business this last week," Viola said, "Keeping my customers safe from the likes of Salvatore." Jenny raised her eyebrows.

"What've you done to Sal?"

"Haven't done a damned thing!" Viola protested, "Not initially. Lucky you showed up today, of all the times. There's been a few misdeeds recently."

"I'm not going after Big Sal," Jenny said firmly, "I'm not whacking someone for you, Viola, and especially not a don. I only came here to get a new coat."

"All the way to Louisiana for a coat?" Viola asked, amused by Jenny's quaintness.

"Wasn't as far a journey as you think it was," Jenny said, being cryptic. Viola wasn't going to ask her about her trip, anyway. She only cared about herself and what she could get out of a situation.

"Ha! Isn't she funny?" Viola said to the weedy man who was her only other company. Viola turned to Jenny and said, "This mook here's name is Eduardo Mancini. He's just here while Mahoney has some words with his wife, Francesca. Eddie," Viola spoke to him again, "This darling is Jenny DeLacey. You've heard of DeLacey, haven't you?" Eduardo Mancini was trembling and sweaty. And, most importantly, Italian. Jenny knew Mahoney, one of Viola's most-prized enforcers.

"Didn't suppose you had an Englishwoman for your right-hand," Mancini muttered.

"And I didn't suppose _you_ thought you had a right to speak while you're in my charitable company."

"What the hell's charitable about keeping me locked up in your goddamn pub while one of your micks tortures my wife!?" he exclaimed. Both of the bodyguards behind Viola drew pistols on him.

"Johnny, you take Eddie here downstairs and wash his mouth out. I won't have that kind of filth at my dining table," Viola ordered one of them, and he silently did as she asked, dragging a protesting Eddie Mancini out and down the stairs towards the bar. Jenny thought to herself that she really ought to have left Clara at home despite her asking to come… Viola snapped back to herself like she _hadn't_ just ordered Mancini to be brutalised in her cellar.

"Who is he?" Jenny asked.

"He's a Scarpelli, one of Sal's accountants. He's going to open his heart to us and spill the details on Sal's fronts," Viola explained. Clara, all the while, said not a word, just listened, and occasionally looked at Jenny. Jenny was trying not to meet her gaze, though, lest she succumb to the judgement within. No doubt Clara thought she was looking at a stranger as this meeting took place, as Jenny didn't take any steps to try and prevent Viola's efforts to make Mancini talk. "So. You're after a coat?"

"Yeah. And I'm not interested in getting dragged into whatever's going on between you and Sal," Jenny said. Unsurprisingly, she'd probably just walked right into the middle of a mob dispute. She wondered what had started it, but the causes of these gang wars were usually quickly forgotten, buried underneath dozens of criminal corpses. "I'll teach Conor how to brew the moonshine, and you make me a coat. And give me Josephine." Viola laughed.

"That's not going to work for me," Viola said, "You're going to do something else for me, because there's something that only _you_ can help me with. Requires your special area of expertise. And no doubt, if you've really been away for two centuries, you'll know a whole lot more about it than you did the last time I saw you."

"What is it, then?"

"I'm not telling you a thing until I get the word that this girl of yours can be trusted." Jenny glanced round at Clara. "She looks mighty confused."

"I trust Clara more than I've ever trusted you," Jenny remarked, then asked Clara softly, "Are you alright?"

"Am I _alright_?" she hissed back, the first words she had spoken in Viola's presence. She was never normally so quiet. Jenny _had_ warned her that Viola was a horrible person.

"You ought to let the girl speak," Viola said.

"I'm not stopping her from speaking," Jenny quipped, "Presumably she just doesn't want to talk to _you_." The one bodyguard left in the room made a reach for his gun again, but Viola held up a hand to stop him, and then laughed.

"How'd you meet Jenny?" Viola asked Clara.

"Uh… I, erm…" she frowned, "I'm not sure I remember… oh, you came to Coal Hill and pretended to be an inspector." That had been a _long_ time ago. Jenny had met Danny Pink, in fact. She had been the one to break the news of the parallel universes to Ravenwood.

"Clara's a teacher," Jenny added.

"Pretended to be a school inspector? A relationship based on subterfuge! I love it. That's all I expect from you." Viola didn't care that Jenny was dating another woman, even though this _was_ the 1940s. As long as people made her a profit, they could sleep with whomever they liked; it made no odds to Viola.

"Anyway, what's this special business you want me to take care of?"

"I need you to put that cleverness of yours to good use and solve some recent crimes," Viola said, "I was _going_ to send O'Reilly from the Seventh Precinct, had Seamus holding the scene for him and everything, but now you've shown up. I'd like to have my best eyes on it. That being your eyes, of course. They're unusual, anyway."

"Unusual?"

"I haven't seen any photographs, but Eddie Mancini tells me the bodies have been turned into some sort of substance. I'm foggy on the details. You apprehend whoever this killer is, and you'll have your coat and you'll have your Josephine." That wasn't what Jenny thought Viola was going to ask her. "It's in the alley off Parker Street, next to the pawnbrokers."

"That's not exactly close."

"These incidents are of a particular… importance, shall we say, in the city recently. You can borrow my new car to get to and fro. Discretion is advised, though – I know how you can be in cars. Give her the keys," she ordered the bouncer.

"We ain't got no keys."

"I told Johnny this morning to stop by Sullivan's and get me some keys for the Porsche."

"Aye, and then you went and nabbed Mancini."

"Fine. You're on fifty percent this week. You're lucky DeLacey doesn't need keys to drive a car." Clara looked questioningly and coldly at Jenny now, Jenny who managed a sheepish, slightly guilty smile in response. "I should warn you, though, the car's hot. Parked around back. Shouldn't cause you any bother if you keep it in my territory, though."

"Right," Jenny said.

"Best you two be going," Viola then said, "Since you're on my time, now. Payment in cloth. Oh – you have a piece though?"

"Always," Jenny answered stiffly, drawing a revolver out of the back of her jeans with her good hand (she had been wearing driving gloves this whole time so as not to betray to Viola the poor state of her broken thumb) to show her. She didn't even look at Clara when she did this. Viola smiled.

"Off with the pair of you, then," Viola said, and Jenny stood up quickly, lest she get shot. Viola wasn't beyond shooting people in non-lethal places if they didn't do what she asked fast enough. Clara, broiling with a thousand different emotions Jenny was, most definitely, going to be subjected to as soon as they were relatively alone, followed suit. "The officers are on my payroll, they'll let you walk right in and have a look yourselves. Oh, and, Jenny?"

"Yes?"

"Are you sure about her?" Viola asked quietly, nodding at Clara.

"Of course I am. Why wouldn't I be?"

"She's English," Viola pointed out. When Viola had known Jenny, Jenny, despite her accent, had never stepped foot in England. This Viola knew, because Viola knew everything of Jenny's short past up until she turned seven.

"Well, that's… a fair point. But I look past her English-ness. I love her."

"Don't scratch my Porsche," Viola ordered, then she finally let Jenny and Clara leave, Jenny purposely avoiding her girlfriend's gaze the whole time, nodding at the large bouncer sitting at the bar as she went past and left the Three Hearts through the front door.

"What the hell!?" Clara demanded straight away, Jenny just walking on to go around to the back of the tavern where this Porsche was allegedly waiting. "Jenny! You're carrying a gun!? When did you pick that up!?"

"I keep this revolver on the ship," Jenny answered stiffly. The Porsche, a Porsche 356, was pretty hard to miss sitting in the back lot among a bunch of old trucks and coupés. The thing was a bright, shining red, with just two doors and white-walled tyres. She wondered who Viola stole it from. "That's a nice car, don't you think?"

"I don't know anything about bloody cars, and it's probably stolen."

"It _is_ stolen, she said it was hot," Jenny said.

"Oh, great. Let's just drive a stolen car. And since when didn't you need keys?"

"I know how to pick locks and hotwire," Jenny admitted, trying to be nonchalant about these sordid talents of hers.

"Holy shit, Jen, it's like I don't even know you! Carrying a gun this whole time!"

"Oh my life, look," Jenny said, drawing out the revolver again and then flicking it so that the cylinder opened to reveal six empty chambers, "It's not even loaded. It's a scare tactic, I do it all the time. It usually works, unless someone knows my tricks, like Iveanne the other day. I wouldn't just shoot somebody. Listen, I'll explain in the fancy car." She got her sonic screwdriver out of her pocket and opened it that way, Clara getting into the passenger side.

"You never told me that you work for the mob," Clara said, Jenny starting the car.

"It's never come up! And it's _worked_ , past tense."

"You're working for them now."

"So are you. To solve some murders, anyway. It's not like she's tried to get me to kill anybody."

"Would you have done?" Clara asked as Jenny messily drove out from behind the Three Hearts, praying Viola was telling the truth about it being safe to drive the Porsche around Irish territory.

"No! Of course not!" Jenny said, "I've never killed anybody while living in New Orleans."

"Who was the bloke she's torturing in the cellar?"

"Eduardo Mancini, she told us. One of Big Sal's accountants."

"Yeah. Who's this Sal?"

"Salvatore Scarpelli, the don of the Italian mob," Jenny explained, "Sounds like Viola's got into one with them."

"And how, exactly, do you know the leader of the mob? How do you get so entangled with organised crime?"

"She wasn't the leader of the mob when I met her. Her dad was rich, see, owned this very upmarket tailor's in New Orleans, just called O'Hara's, except then her dad died and left the shop to _her_. Except Ferguson, the leader of the Irish mob at the time, wanted to take over her business and use it as a front for a speakeasy. But she wouldn't rollover on them," Jenny explained as she drove them towards Parker Street, "He sent some goons to kill her and she ended up running away from them all the way out into the swamp – which was where _I'd_ been living for five years, making money by selling game. Mostly alligators. I can make these killer alligator meatballs; I'll have to cook them for you someday…

"Anyway, I… dealt with the one who was chasing her. Shot him in his wrist, and his hand, so he couldn't fire his gun. Shot the hat off his head to show him how good my aim is, and he ran off. After that, Viola sort of, adopted me. Took me out of the swamp and tried to make me into some sort of Southern belle for a while, but I mostly brewed moonshine for her and hung about in her house protecting her from make-believe assassins. She's got a head for business. She eventually managed to stage a coup – which I had nothing to do with – to kill Ferguson and take control of the Irish mob. That was in '35. In '39 I left and came to Britain to help in the war effort. Six years later I left Earth outright. I haven't seen Viola at all since I was twenty-two – the age I look, in fact. Although, she did wire me money when I lived in Berlin in the 1960s.

"And as for the stolen car, Clara – you _have_ met my father. He steals _everything_ and everyone knows it. Horrible thief. It's a victimless crime, anyway."

"…Who's Josephine?" Clara asked eventually, calming down somewhat after Jenny explained her dealings with the mob weren't quite as dark as Viola had made it sound.

"My old hunting rifle."

"Do they _all_ have names?"

"No, this revolver doesn't," Jenny said, driving a little too fast than would probably be recommended, "I don't think my plasma blaster I stole from Koltn does, either, come to think of it. This is the revolver I stole from the Ukrainian who broke my thumb, in Chernobyl. You can name it, if you want."

" _Me_ name it?"

"Yeah, sure? Why not? You _are_ my girlfriend. Wait – you still are, aren't you? You're not going to dump me because I know people in the mob?"

"I'm just shocked about it, that's all…" Clara sighed.

"In all fairness, you could have been doing all sorts of shady things with Ashildr for however long you were travelling with her."

"But I don't remember doing anything shady," Clara grumbled, "You should name it Aphra."

"Afro?"

" _No_ , Aphra. As in Aphra Behn."

"As in who?"

"The playwright! As far as female playwrights go, she gets barely any notoriety. And it's a nice name."

"How are you spelling this?"

"A-P-H-R-A."

"Well… alright. You're right, it's nice. The revolver shall henceforth be known as Aphra, and I'll call her as such whenever I club someone over the head with her."

"Wonderful."


	53. The Criminal Touch

_The Criminal Touch_

 _Jenny_

"Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god, oh my god-"

"Would you relax?" Jenny said.

" _Relax_!?"

"Yes, relax!"

"Do you have a driving license!?"

"Not, um… you know, paperwork never fully matches up to real-world experience, Clara," Jenny told her firmly, "Now, just let me parallel park right there."

"What do you mean _parallel park_!? You're going forty!"

"Look, it's fine," Jenny said, and then she veered away from the space she had seen – finding it very tricky to drive with her broken thumb bandaged up the way it was – and span the wheel around wildly so that the whole car turned, dragging up the handbrake at the right moment so that the car neatly slid, sideways, into the space, just knocking the curb but missing both the other cars. While this had happened, Clara had screamed. The bright red Porsche now stopped, Jenny looked to her right at Clara, who was grasping the side of her seat and the door so tightly she might break them, and raised her eyebrows.

"You're a lunatic," Clara said, "I can't believe you just did that."

"I'm a great driver!" Jenny protested. Clara gawked at her.

"No! No, you're not! Who told you you're a great driver!?"

"Excuse you – I'm the best pilot in this entire galaxy," Jenny said.

"Holy – Jen – spaceships and planes are _not_ cars!"

"They're near enough," Jenny shrugged, going to get out. Clara was also not happy about the fact the Porsche didn't have seatbelts, and even less-so when Jenny pointed out that no cars in 1948 had seatbelts. The light outside was fading enough that Clara didn't feel the need to take out her umbrella again as she followed Jenny, Jenny walking into the road without looking as usual.

"Do you have a death wish? _How_ did you manage to go two-hundred years without dying?" Clara hissed at her as they approached, next to the pawnbrokers as Viola had directed them, an alleyway with a vaguely familiar cop guarding it. A young officer who tipped his hat to Jenny as she approached and then, a smile breaking on his face, he recognised her.

"Shush, would you? Only Viola knows that stuff about me," Jenny whispered to Clara, the officer not abandoning his post, "I'm not the mob's pet alien."

"Are you sure about that?" Clara quipped, and Jenny ignored her.

"Seamus!" she exclaimed, putting a name to the face when they were closer. The sky was orange and pink, the sun in the distance halfway sunk behind the horizon, "This is crazy, how old must you be now?"

"Twenty," he answered her.

"Wow, haven't seen you since you were ten. I remember your tenth birthday party – Viola got me to do magic tricks, you remember?" Jenny said, then she remembered Clara was hanging about there and turned to explain, "This is Seamus Mahoney. You remember Viola mentioned somebody called Mahoney was talking to Francesca Mancini? Mahoney's one of her mob enforcers. Seamus is his son."

"Son of a mobster? In the police?" Clara questioned.

"Who's the limey square?" Seamus asked Jenny, who hadn't thought through that Clara might not approve of the mob sinking their claws into the New Orleans Police Department.

"This is Clara Ravenwood," Jenny introduced, "My girlfriend." She had yet to take off the scarf Clara had knitted her since Clara had first given her the thing. It was very soft. Would it be acceptable to sleep in it…?

"As in how?" Seamus frowned, like he didn't understand what she had said.

"As in I love her – no more questions about that, she's alright to go in, Viola said. Where's this crime scene?"

"The boss told me she was gonna call O'Reilly to have a look from Seventh."

"That was before _I_ showed up," Jenny said, "Tell me what's so interesting about these crimes – I heard something about people being turned into a 'substance'?"

"Ah, I wouldn't know how to describe it, Miss DeLacey – ain't no one does. Best you see for yourself."

"Why is Viola interested in it, though?"

"Because this is the third in a row, looks like the beginnings of a serial killer," Seamus explained, "A murderer like that's the last thing we need, bringing unwanted attention to the family. The boss wants it monitored because the first two were found on Big Sal's turf, and the second one they figure was Carlito. Course, Sal blamed the boss so the Scarpellis have been after the O'Haras ever since. That musta been a month back. The boss has closed up shop in a couple 'a joints this last week to avoid the backlash since she got Johnny to steal Sal's fancy new wheels just recently."

"All this because someone whacked Carlito?"

"And some other broad in Sal's neighbourhood, though Sal didn't care at all for it until Carlito was iced." Jenny sighed.

"Well I'm not bothering myself with that. I'm here to catch whoever the real culprit is."

"Or _whatever_. If you don't mind my saying so, I'm not sure there's a person alive who could do _that_ to another human being – but I'll let you be the judge, Miss DeLacey," he said, "It's just this way." He motioned for them to follow him, which they did, meandering down the damp alleyway until rounding the corner and being faced with what could only be described as a puddle of goo. That was what Viola had meant by 'substance', surely.

"Huh," Jenny crossed her arms and looked at it, "And – how can you tell that this used to be a person?"

"There were clothes in it," he said, "In the others, too, but they got taken to evidence. Covered in that stuff." Jenny had never really seen anything like it before. "Funny thing, though – Carlito and the other broad ain't nowhere to be found, 'cept in here we found the ID of a dame called Kitty Winthrop, lives just in the block here, Apartment 19."

"So this is Kitty Winthrop, then?" Jenny said, nodding at the green goo. It just sat there, like putty, sort of shiny.

"Naw, Kitty Winthrop ain't dead, she's been seen around since this showed up. Best we can figure someone tried to burgle her and ain't reporting it for whatever reason," Seamus shrugged, "That's all we know. Anyway. I was only holding the scene for O'Reilly. I'd better be leaving yous now." Then Jenny waved him off as he wandered away down the alley and around the corner. She wondered if he was actually on duty, or if Viola had just bribed him to stand there in his uniform for hours.

"I can barely keep track of all this mafia stuff," Clara sighed once he was gone, "Who knew organised crime could be so complicated?" Jenny didn't answer, she was looking at the goo. "Do you know what it is, _Miss DeLacey_?"

"No. I was hoping _you'd_ know what it is. I haven't a clue," Jenny said.

"Me either, _Miss DeLacey_."

"Why are you calling me that?" she frowned, arms crossed.

Clara shrugged, "It sounds pretty? Prettier than Harkness at any rate."

"Well you would say that – and every time I do I ask if you'd prefer it if I took _your_ name instead." Clara pulled a face. Jenny went to crouch down by the goo. "What does it smell like? Ooh, can you track it?"

"Like a dog?" Clara questioned, and Jenny faltered.

" _No_ , not… well… but in a good way! You know, like a bloodhound."

"Just because it says 'blood' in the name doesn't mean I'm the same as it," she said, "No, I can't track whatever this is – it smells like dead person and alien. I don't know how to follow scents anyway. I'm still unclear on what this has to do with the mafia, anyway."

"Okay – there's clearly an alien going around killing people," Jenny said, "It killed a woman in one of Big Sal's districts, but since this woman was anonymous to the mob, he didn't care. And _then_ whatever it is killed Carlito – Big Sal's consigliere."

"And what's a one-of-those?"

"Like, advisor to the don, very important, a prime target for a rival crime family to kill – so Big Sal blamed the O'Haras and came after them. The O'Haras at the ones _we're_ working for, remember?" Jenny explained.

"I wouldn't say we were working for them…"

"Well, we are. Guilty by association. You, that is. I'm guilty for a bunch of other things as well. So the Scarpellis come after the O'Haras and the O'Haras retaliate by stealing a bunch of cars, that's what Seamus just said, and Viola didn't care until this person here, this Kitty Winthrop, ended up dead in _Irish_ territory. I don't think that this alien has anything to do with the mob at all, it's just bad luck they killed Carlito and started this new blood feud," Jenny said, "And now Viola's closed some of her front businesses so that her customers don't get blown away by the Scarpellis if they want to come and shoot them up, and she's taken Eddie Mancini to hit Sal first. And _I_ just had an idea…"

Clara, still a little confused, watched Jenny silently take off the transdimensional bag she was carrying and reach into it to find something, drawing out when she did that funny old mirror her father had given to Ravenwood nearly a week ago. It was a good thing Seamus had left.

"What are you doing with that?"

"Dad told me it was a species identifier before he modified it to show vampires," Jenny said, looking at it, "There must be some way to get it to work again…"

"Wait," Clara grabbed her wrist, "What if you break it?"

"You mean what if you can't stare into your own eyes anymore?" she said, "I'll draw a picture of you. What do you care about more, your own reflection or catching whoever's killing these people?" Clara couldn't argue with that, and resigned to let Jenny mess around with the species identifier as she saw fit, Jenny getting her sonic screwdriver out again to try and fiddle with the settings, wondering what her father had done to it initially. "You know, dad said that 'a godmother' of his gave him this as a present," she talked while she messed with the mirror, "That makes it the closest thing we have to a family heirloom."

And then the thing started to display white pictures on its screen so Jenny turned the screwdriver off and held it between her teeth. When Clara came to peer over her shoulder, her face was still visible on its surface. The pictures just looked like very detailed pencil drawings, and when Jenny showed it to Clara the drawing morphed into a human-esque shape, which then turned into a bat.

"Ah! It knows you're a vampire," Jenny, amused, said. Or rather, mumbled; she still had the screwdriver between her teeth, which Clara promptly took so that she could talk properly.

"This has your spit on it now," Clara commented, looking at the slender, silver thing. Way cooler than her dad's, Jenny thought. Looked more like an actual screwdriver.

"Your mouth has my spit on it," Jenny retorted, "The rest of you too, probably."

"That's _different_ ," Clara whinged, and Jenny rolled her eyes and crouched down, pointing the mirror in the direction of the green blob.

"Can you walk around to see what it shows on the other side?"

Clara did, still holding the screwdriver with her fingertips as though it was diseased, leaning down to squint at it through her shaded glasses lenses.

"You know I can't see very well."

"Well we can swap and you can come hold the mirror if you want, but I'd rather stay behind it since it gets confused by me," Jenny said. Clara said nothing on the topic of swapping, so Jenny just assumed she didn't want to.

"Uh… it's hard to describe."

"It's showing something, though? That isn't a big bat monster?" Jenny asked, and Clara scowled at her.

"Don't call me a bat monster. And it's sort of… did you ever see that _Futurama_ special?"

"What's _Futurama_?"

"Never mind… it's kind of like a ball. But with loads of tentacles. D'you think the mirror's broken?"

"It identified you correctly," Jenny said, turning the mirror quickly so that she could also get a look at this tentacle-ball-thing. Clara was right, though. That was exactly what it looked like. A tentacle ball. Then the image vanished and was replaced by a stream of messy lines, because it couldn't quite work out what she was. "I think it's meant to tell you what the thing is, too, but it's too far gone to do that anymore. Dad's done a number on it." She put the mirror away in the bag. "Why would it have Kitty's clothes if it isn't Kitty? If she's not dead?"

"Yeah – and doesn't it seem funny that nobody's seen a tentacle monster rolling around New Orleans?" Clara said.

"Well, we don't know how big it is. It could be tiny. Or invisible. And besides, all sorts of things live in the swamp. _I_ used to live in the swamp," Jenny said, then she took her screwdriver back from Clara and took her hand. "C'mon, let's go have a look in Apartment 19 where this Kitty Winthrop lives."

"You know, Jen, you're being a bit touchy to say we're in the 1940s," Clara said, freeing her hand from Jenny's as they walked back around to the front of the building, "And you keep introducing me as your girlfriend, is that, you know, wise? Isn't everybody homophobic now?"

"We'll be alright," she said, trying to ease Clara's worries about the period, "We're not hanging around, so it should be okay. Besides, people aren't… _so_ bad… they want to shame you, is the thing, you have to not let them." Jenny held open the door for them to go into the apartment block, Jenny smiling kindly to the receptionist before slipping past to go towards the stairs. It was modest, but not squalid, a decent sort of area. Then again, all of Viola's territory was decent, because she wouldn't touch the slums. Too much of a bourgeois snob.

"So, do you think of Louisiana as your home?" Clara asked curiously, and Jenny laughed.

"How do you mean?"

"Well – if I asked you where you're from, what would you say?"

"Uh… I know that I definitely _wouldn't_ say I'm from New Orleans," Jenny said, perplexed by Clara's question as they mounted the scuffed stairs. It was five apartments on each floor, so they were heading to the third. "I don't think I identify with any specific place. Born to be a transient. Do I _have_ to have a home? I think we have different concepts of what home is."

"I don't know. Somewhere you want to go back to? Somewhere you feel safe?"

"You're what I want to go back to, and I feel safe when I'm with you," Jenny said, taking Clara by surprise with her tendency to casually drop rather romantic statements.

"That's ridiculous – two of the three times you've regenerated I was there," Clara pointed out.

"Then I suppose I'm a fool in love. Look, here's Apartment 19," Jenny said, nodding to the door as they just got to the top of the flight of stairs. It had Kitty's name on it, _Katherine Winthrop_ , scrawled there on a piece of paper and stuck above the doorbell, which Jenny went and rang, just in case she was in. "Do you hear anything in there? With your bat-hearing?"

"Would you stop referring to me as a bat?"

"You love being a bat!"

Clara grimaced, but paused to listen anyway, before answering that no, she couldn't hear anything coming from inside Kitty's flat. Jenny proceeded to reveal her sonic screwdriver again and held it at the lock, where it buzzed and glowed pink.

"You really are just like your father sometimes," Clara commented, and Jenny smiled at her when she said so. The lock clicked and Jenny turned the doorknob slowly, but all she saw was an empty and very cosy flat. Stowing her screwdriver, she stepped inside, leaving the door open for Clara, peering about. She didn't spy anybody though, and then Clara cleared her throat loudly. Jenny turned to see her standing there in the hallway still.

"Aren't you gonna come in?" Jenny said.

Bitterly, Clara reminded her, "You have to invite me."

"Oh, sorry – I forgot about that," Jenny said, glancing around at the room.

" _Jenny_ ," Clara hissed.

"Right – um – you can come in?" she said, and Clara stepped over the threshold, closing the door behind her, "What happens if you try to walk into somewhere and you're not invited?"

"I just can't do it. It's like I freeze up," Clara shrugged, "Like – if you tried to fly. You can't fly. You'd just be sort of… stood there."

" _You_ can fly."

"Alright, yes, fine, _I_ can fly, but I meant _you_ specifically. Do you have any blood in that bag?" Clara asked, knowing full-well that Jenny did have an entire flask full of blood, "People are starting to morph into rare steaks in front of my eyes at this point."

"Why didn't you say anything?" Jenny asked, unzipping the bag again and rooting around in it for the black flask designated for human blood, which she passed to Clara. Clara, unscrewing the cap, didn't even bother to use the lid as a cup, she just drank from the rim, "You're an animal. That's unhygienic."

"Nobody else drinks out of this flask except me. Unless _you've_ suddenly got a taste for human blood?"

"Of course not. Now, let's look around." It was tiny and pleasant; clearly, Kitty Winthrop lived there alone. Or _had_ lived there alone, there was still a bit of ambiguity surrounding if she was dead or not. There was a lot of plush, pink furniture and girlish ornaments strewn about; fancy high-heels littering the floor, a nice dress hung over the back of the small sofa to dry. It had all the signs of being lived in. Clara idly switching a quaint, chunky radio on made her jump, but it was only playing _Let It Snow_.

"Funny, didn't think a radio station in Louisiana would play _Let It Snow_."

"I've seen it snow here before," Jenny said, "I had enough to build a snowman about a foot tall in 1929."

"That's cute," Clara said, leaving the radio on while Jenny went into the adjoining kitchen (the apartment only had a kitchen/living room, bedroom and modest bathroom) with Clara on the other side of its small bar to see what was in the large pot on the stove, because whatever it was, was still cooking. At least, the hob was still on. She lifted the lid and smelt something foul.

"Eurgh, this is rank – and this coming from a girl who used to live off meat stew that was sometimes weeks old. Although, I'll have to make us a meat stew one day; the longer you let it simmer the juicier the meat," Jenny said.

"Old meat. I'll look forward to it. What's in the pot?"

Jenny switched off the heat and moved the whole pot onto a rung that wasn't turned on and picked up a ladle from the side, fishing out some frankly horrible-looking dregs of meat.

"It's beef stroganoff," she answered, "But it has to have been here for two days at least."

"You _just_ said you would brew meat stew for weeks."

"Yeah, that's just like, meat and water. There wasn't a lot to eat on Tungtrun, alright? It was an ice planet. It's not as good as my classic alligator meatballs…" Jenny mused, "So, Kitty Winthrop is apparently not dead, but she's left this cooking here for days? And her clothes in the alley? And Seamus said they thought it was a burglary, but this place hasn't been burgled. Are you _sure_ you can't pick up her scent?"

"The only scent I'm picking up is whatever's in the pot – are you sure it's stroganoff? It smells like bleach to me."

" _Bleach_?"

"Yeah," Clara said. Jenny dipped her finger in the stuff in the pot, still very hot, and licked a drop tentatively, then pulled a face.

"You're right. Ew."

"That's one hell of a way to commit suicide – bleach stew."

Jenny put the lid back on the pot and carried on looking around, when she was, all of a sudden, struck by what a resemblance this small apartment bore to a _different_ small apartment she had once inhabited. She stared at their surroundings, and spoke without thinking of the implications such a comment might have: "This reminds me of where Astrid used to live."

"Who's Astrid?" Clara asked, and Jenny faltered. She had never mentioned Astrid to Clara before – she didn't think she had really mentioned Astrid to anyone before, except in passing; once when she had compiled a vague list of the reasons people in the past had broken up with her. She hadn't referred to her by name, though.

"An ex-girlfriend of mine. Astrid Eicher," Jenny answered uneasily. She felt like she was tearing an old wound open, and sighed afterwards, contemplating, looking at the floor instead of at Clara.

"When you lived in New Orleans?"

"Uh, no, when I lived in Berlin, in my eighties. Over a hundred years ago now. Back when I was Jenny Kitzler – nobody could tell me apart from a native German," she said, shrugging, "I used to smuggle between East and West Berlin after the Soviets built the wall. I don't want to talk about that now, though."

"Okay. I'm not gonna force you to," Clara said. She was smiling softly when Jenny looked up to meet her eyes, and then she went back to investigating. Outside, the light was dwindling, melting away into night time with stars hanging in the sky. "What if…" Clara began, then trailed off, getting Jenny's attention. She was thinking, then she started again, "What if it's some sort of shape-changer?"

"How do you mean?"

"Well – if that out there is a dead body, what did it do to it? And there has to be some reason nobody has seen a tentacle-thing rolling around the streets," Clara said, "And why people think that Kitty Winthrop, who is apparently dead outside, is still alive."

" _Oh_ – it's wearing her face…" Jenny said, "That would make sense…"

Just then, there was knocking on the door, loud, and a voice called through addressing Kitty, a woman's voice. She had heard the music on the radio and assumed Kitty was home. Jenny and Clara shared a look of confusion, before the former moved back through the apartment to go and open the door, trying to think of a convincing lie about what they were doing rifling through Kitty's things as she did. She put on her best friendly expression and pulled it open.

"You're not Kitty," an old lady said abruptly.

"No, sorry – we were actually just looking for her," Jenny said, holding the door open so that the woman could see they hadn't been ransacking the place, just nosing about, "My friend and I." Clara smiled, but Clara had an odd effect on people sometimes. The old woman squinted at her like she couldn't see her properly. Jenny hoped the woman didn't notice that Clara didn't cast a shadow. Though Clara had a generally creepy vibe about her undead person, they were both so petite and genteel looking that the old lady didn't think that much of them being there.

"You know Kitty?"

"Not personally. Are you her neighbour? We're worried about her," Jenny said. The old lady narrowed her eyes.

"You look funny. Are you O'Haras?" she asked, and Jenny was startled.

"Should Kitty know the O'Haras?" Jenny inquired.

"I know the Green Bayou is their front, I told her she oughtn't get mixed up with the likes of you. Has she got a debt to repay? She's been acting funny. Are you collectors? Funny-looking collectors if you ask me. I ain't scared of you mob-types."

"Kitty Winthrop works in the Green Bayou?" Jenny asked.

"How are we supposed to find her if she's run off to the bayou?" Clara interjected, and Jenny was confused for a moment.

"No, Clara – the Green Bayou is a club," Jenny explained, then asked the old lady, "Kitty doesn't owe the O'Haras any money at all, we're just… looking after our employees. Heard she might have been burgled."

"I know what's going on in the streets, you know. I keep my ear to the ground. You can't pull one over on me. You're British. That makes you O'Haras." Didn't even make sense, really, but Jenny wasn't going to argue with her. Viola and all of her cronies and her ancestors had come over from Southern Ireland, which was most definitely _not_ a part of the United Kingdom, and god help you if you ever presumed as much around one of them. She'd once seen Mahoney shoot someone for calling him 'English' by mistake (though, Mahoney was a famously loose cannon. Hence why Viola was such a big fan of him.)

"Kitty was acting strange, though?"

"Hardly even recognised me when I talked to her this morning, ran off somewhere, didn't even take her car, just walked," the old lady said.

"Right. We're leaving, Clara," Jenny said to Clara, who switched off the radio accordingly as some other swing number came on, "See if anyone at the Green Bayou knows where to find Kitty Winthrop."


	54. The Driver's Seat

**AN: Sorry you guys, but the thing is term has started again so I don't know how often updates are gonna be. I'm gonna try to be as regular as possible but I really have no idea what it'll be like, just to warn you. However the sparse, unpredictableness will only last til like this time in March, so only two months. And anyway it's a lot of fun chapters I have ahead. These mob ones are especially fun.**

 _The Driver's Seat_

 _Jenny_

It was well and truly night when they left Kitty Winthrop's apartment building, almost chased out by the old woman who had somehow put together that a 5'1" blonde English girl was actually a mobster. Jenny, irked by this, put her hands in the pockets of Clara's borrowed leather jacket and skulked down the pavement, casting a meek glare at the building as it slid away into the evening fog.

"How'd she know I'm an O'Hara?" Jenny questioned, not really expecting an answer. So she turned to Clara herself and asked outright if she looked like a nefarious criminal.

"You don't look remotely nefarious, Jen. It's very misleading," Clara joked, then her tone turned somewhat sultry, "You're definitely nefarious, in all the right ways. And she probably just can't tell the difference all that well between an English accent and an Irish accent. You know that Esther can never tell the difference between my accent and Sally's." Jenny could hardly tell the difference, but Clara always maintained that there was a very distinct one and 'I aren't no toff.' Jenny never asked what that meant. Clara was on her right, and Jenny paused while they were walking down the rather empty street back towards the Porsche. Lucky Kitty worked in one of Viola's establishments; she knew where it was.

"You and I should hold hands more," she declared.

"Well we can't hold hands _now_ , I'm on your right, that's your bad thumb," Clara pointed out, stopping walking as well, and Jenny pouted slightly.

"I know. I can't wait for it to heal. Martha refused me any of Oswin's Miracle Medicine, you know. Said suffering with it will help define my sense of self-preservation – as if a lunatic snapping my thumb off was because of me being reckless," Jenny complained about it to Clara, who had heard this sorry story a dozen times before, and still listened carefully whenever Jenny got to whining.

"Just don't think about it so much and the time will fly by. And, meanwhile, you have an excuse to stay with me," Clara said, "Besides, you have your hands in your pockets, how am I _supposed_ to take one of them, hmm?" Jenny wasn't sure if Clara was entirely aware of what she was doing, but as she spoke she put her hands on Jenny's waist, as if to pull her closer, right there in the New Orleans open. "Anyway, it _is_ still 1948. I'm still wary of if being openly gay is as good of an idea as you think it is."

"Are you joking? You basically have your arms wrapped around me," Jenny pointed out. _She_ still had her hands in her jacket pockets, but Clara's hands were, by this point, touching, around the small of Jenny's back. Clara seemed alarmed at the way she had moved without noticing.

"Oh, god – sorry," Clara abruptly apologised, trying to free Jenny from her grip. It was getting chilly and a thick fog was rolling in.

"Don't move," Jenny said, and Clara froze, hands on Jenny's hips, as Jenny leant in to kiss her.

Very loud, foreign swearing made them remember themselves – Clara, mostly – and they paused when they were about to touch, both glancing down the street, the way they were heading, Clara still holding her. Jenny frowned, but was finding it tricky to see through the fog. Eventually, though, she made out two shadowy figures wearing expensive suits, long coats and fancy hats, and noticed, when one of them made a move to do something to the buckle of his belt briefly, that he was carrying a piece. They were very involved with an object down the street, about as involved as Jenny would like to be with her girlfriend, and she made a start when she realised the flashy, red Porsche was the thing captivating them.

"Uh-oh," she breathed.

"What's the matter?" Clara asked softly, but when Jenny began to move towards the two men, Clara's hands slid away from her waist uselessly.

"They're Scarpellis," Jenny replied briefly, when she realised they were speaking to each other very quickly and in Italian.

Clara nearly shouted, "They're _what_!?" though, by this point, she was pretty clear on who the Scarpellis were and why Scarpellis lurking around an O'Hara-controlled neighbourhood was very bad indeed.

"Didn't you hear what Viola said? She said the car's hot. Seamus said Johnny stole Big Sal's 'fancy new wheels.' That total – gave us a car to drive that she stole from the don of the Italian mafia! That's just like her," she grumbled.

"Shit – then what're we gonna do? Don't they know you, aren't you an infamous criminal mastermind?"

"Aren't I _what_? Clara, I used to brew moonshine and play the fiddle," Jenny hissed, "No they don't know me. Look, it'll be fine, if worse comes to worst… well, I doubt they have any stakes, and I've got Aphra." She shrugged and made to approach them again, ignoring Clara's meek and desperate suggestion that they _walk_ all the way to the Green Bayou (which was at least five miles away on the edge of the swamp and would take nearly two hours.) " _Hey! What do you think you're doing to that car?_ " Jenny shouted at them in Italian. And Clara's jaw _dropped_ – Jenny didn't think she'd ever _seen_ Clara Ravenwood look so gay as she stared at her in that instant.

" _This car is property of Salvatore Scarpelli – and you'd do best to forget you ever saw us and it_."

" _That car belongs to the owner of the laundromat down the street!_ " Jenny protested fluently, " _He's had it for months, keeps it clean – washes it with his own spit, so I heard; I see him do it, every day, I live in the block just two blocks away after the other block. You know, the block by First – you know first?_ " she babbled as she got closer to them.

" _What're you talking about, blocks? Do you even know who Big Sal is?_ "

"Big Sal – Big Sal! He says Big Sal!" she said to Clara, but Clara was just staring, " _Of course I know Big Sal. Runs the laundromat. Or – launders. Launders something, what does he launder…_ " she was right in front of them now, Clara still completely enthralled by her capacity to speak another language so easily, "Money!" she declared in English.

"Wait a minute – you ain't no American."

"I know that broad, Tony," said the other one to the leaner of the two – Tony, "Seen her around when I was younger, looks the same then as she did now. The dame works for O'Hara!"

"Sonofabitch!" Tony exclaimed, but it was too late. Jenny slammed the base of her left palm into his face, his nose to be precise, and it snapped beneath the force. They all heard the crack. He was left swearing with blood streaming down his face and messing up his nice Italian suit. As the second mobster went to pull out his gun, in a truly comical fashion Jenny kicked Tony in his gut and sent him crashing backwards into his partner, throwing the pair of them to the floor. Immediately she rifled through her pockets and dragged out her screwdriver to unlock the door, ordering Clara to go around to the passenger side before they got up.

They managed to get into the Porsche in about five seconds, before the Italian Mafiosos even knew what had hit them. Jenny started the engine and heard the Scarpellis outside shout that they had to get back to their car to have any chance of catching the Porsche.

"They won't shoot us through the window, they won't want to wreck Sal's car," Jenny explained to Clara, then she floored the accelerator right away.

"Can you even use the gearstick with your hand the way it is!?" Clara exclaimed as they in their stolen sports car tore away down the street – in the opposite direction, Jenny knew, to the Green Bayou.

"Gearsticks are for cowards," Jenny answered.

"Oh my god – we're actually gonna die," Clara panicked. There was a bang, a gunshot, from behind them. Jenny saw the bullet strike the road in front of them and bounce off somewhere.

"I thought you said they wouldn't shoot it!"

"Well I guess they think I'm more valuable to Viola than this car is to Big Sal – I'm practically the O'Hara consigliere," Jenny said, then she slammed the brakes and the car whirled on a ninety-degree angle and they shot off again down a new road, the Italians drifting just behind. Their car was fast, too, sleek and black and designed for this sort of work. A real muscle car. "Icing me would be the perfect way to get even for Carlito."

"Will you stop speaking like one of them!?" Clara shouted.

"I didn't want to say murder!" Jenny argued. A bullet shot out the back window and Jenny steered them into the oncoming lane, trying to ignore Clara's screaming. She thought it best not to mention that the bullet itself was lodged in the headboard of her chair; she didn't think Clara would be very pleased to hear that. Jenny threaded the needle down the middle of the busy street for a few hundred yards, ducking and weaving in and out of the two lanes of traffic while cars honked their horns and flashed their lights and veered out of the way. All the while the mobsters chasing them kept shooting wildly, bullets hiding the body of the Porsche.

"You know I was never in a car chase with your father!" Clara yelled.

"I like to keep things fresh," Jenny argued, "It'll be good for our relationship!"

"I didn't realise you getting your head blown off would be good for our bloody relationship!"

"Won't you calm down?" Jenny turned to her.

"Keep your eyes on the road!" Clara shouted, and when Jenny looked back they were heading straight for an enormous lorry honking its horn, the beast unable to get out of the way in time. So Jenny had to swerve violently and turn left into a narrow alley with a flight of concrete stairs at the other end, flooring the gas pedal. The muscle car didn't have enough torque to make the same sharp turn, nor was it quite thin enough to slide through.

As she drove up the stairs at nothing less than seventy she heard Tony and his bigger friend yelling they had to go around, one of them saying he knew a way to cut through a backyard to get to them. The stairs acted like a ramp and they got a few seconds of airtime. Jenny turned right when they got onto the next street.

"Why do you keep driving on the wrong side of the road!?" Clara demanded as they wove in and out of the traffic, Jenny still sticking mostly to the left.

"It's like a game of chicken," Jenny said, "They'll be coming this way in their muscle car-"

"They'll _what_!? Why are you driving towards them!?"

"The time it takes for them to turn around in the middle of all this chaos will give us a chance to slip away!" Jenny said, "Listen to me, Clara Ravenwood, you're the love of my life and I'm not going to put you _or_ me in any unnecessary danger! Now, I didn't want to have to use them, but there's a box of .38s in that bag my mother gave me and I need you to get them."

" _What_ did you say!?"

"Bullets, Clara! .38s! In the bag! So I can shoot out their tyres!"

"I meant the part where you said I'm the love of your life!"

"Pay attention! I need to load the gun!" Jenny said, shaking her head, keeping her eyes on all the traffic. The heavy fog wasn't helping, either. As Clara made a fumble in the foot well for the leather shoulder-bag, headlights followed by whole cars and trucks appeared out of nowhere opposite them in the oncoming lane. But she was a fighter pilot, for crying out loud, evading people on the road, where they could only come out of horizontal directions, was far easier than getting involved in an outer space dogfight. In those you couldn't even tell which way was up, no gravity at all, people coming from above and below as well as front and back. Clara finally found the bullets.

"I don't like guns, you know," she said.

"I've been alive for two-hundred years and I've never missed a shot, if I want to hit their tyres then their tyres are all I'll hit, don't worry," Jenny assured her, trying to keep a softer tone of voice, which was very tricky when she was having to shout over the thunderous engine of a 1940s sports car. Quickly she pulled Aphra the Revolver out of the back of her jeans where she'd been keeping it – _just_ hidden by the bottom of Clara's borrowed jacket – and flicked it so that the cylinder fell open again.

"What – you want me to load it now?"

"Clara! Guns don't kill people! People kill people! I swear to you I am _not_ going to kill anybody, now _please_ load her before they show up!" Clara did as Jenny begged her to, though somewhat reluctantly, and she fumbled with the bullets a few times like they were liable to explode in her hands. Clearly _somebody_ had never been brought up around live ammunition…

Out of the fog the yelling of Tony reached them again, quickly followed by the big Italian muscle car swerving through the gloom right ahead. The entire world slowed down; Jenny grabbed the revolver from Clara and, passing it into her left hand, ordered Clara to take the wheel. With her elbow she smashed the window apart and hauled her whole self halfway out of it, taking off the safety catch.

"What are you doing!?" Clara screamed.

"Keep the wheel steady! Turn left when I tell you to!" Jenny shouted over the wind, taking careful aim with the revolver as Tony did the same thing. But along with being a dab hand at shooting bullets, Jenny Harkness was also very adept at dodging them. And nobody could match her when it came to aim.

" _Left_!? The proper lane is on the right!"

"I SAID LEFT!" Jenny fired the gun. "NOW!" Clara veered left as the front-right tyre of the muscle car blew up, sending it spiralling in another direction. Tony fired too but shot out the window of a house on the side of the road, missing their stolen Porsche by a mile. Jenny clung to the top of the car while Clara did exactly what she asked. They were heading right for a garden fence once Jenny slid back in through the window, not knowing if the Scarpellis would be able to pursue them properly now. She could have shot out a vital part of the engine if she knew the mechanical layout of the Oldsmobile they were driving.

Heading for the fence, Jenny floored it, and they crashed through the wood and into somebody's garden, tearing down a washing line as she did, but she didn't let up on the gas. She knew where they were, and soon enough these gardens would back onto an underpass they could drive beneath to get onto the highway.

"These are peoples' gardens!"

"They can plant the flowers again!" Jenny argued, but the Scarpellis would easily be able to follow them by the chaos they left in their wake. And they did, too, even with their busted tyre, veering left and right, the Scarpelli car was still right on them. If she hadn't renounced swearing when she had last regenerated, Jenny would be able to think of a whole lot of _very_ colourful phrases.

Things had changed since Jenny had left in the autumn of 1939, though. The highway above was still there, but underneath it had since flooded and morphed into a swampy little river, crested by thick mud on either side. They were heading straight down a hill towards this green, algae-covered water.

"Uh-oh."

"What!? _Uh-oh_!? What do you mean, 'uh-oh'!?" Clara demanded. Jenny looked around desperately, keeping her foot to the floor on the accelerator, and finally noticed through the fog and the dark that the river bank around this marsh was not, in fact, a river bank, but rather a raised, concrete levee. It must be a flood-risk zone – then again, practically all of Louisiana was a flood-risk zone. "What is that!? You can't just drive into it!"

"I'm going to drive _over_ it," Jenny said, "Just hold on. I'm an amazing driver." She thought, just before they shot over the levee-cum-ramp, that Clara swore. But Clara swearing turned into Clara screaming very quickly. The levee worked very well as a ramp, in fact, as they soared over it in the high-speed Porsche. Glancing in the rear view mirror, Jenny saw the Scarpellis chase them down the hills and through the gardens while they were almost suspended in the air. The only thing was, the Scarpellis didn't make the jump over the new shred of river. Their Oldsmobile wasn't as fast as the O'Hara Porsche, and whichever one of them was driving wasn't pressing the accelerator. He chickened out of the pursuit too late to prevent both of them flying up into the air before sinking like a lead balloon into the river. It wasn't deep enough to drown them, but it was deep enough to wreck the engine.

The Porsche hit the opposite levee in the middle and jerked violently – the suspension was dire. They were going fast enough that the momentum, Jenny finally taking her foot off the pedal, to just be carried a way up the other hill. She saw the two Italian mobsters scramble to get out of the car, wading into the middle of the dirty water. They went to draw their guns and began shooting wildly at the Porsche, but she had turned right to head back towards the road onto the highway, the underpass casting a dark shadow over everything. Her left arm felt strangely hot.

"I told you," Jenny said when they were safe and sound barrelling down the highway a few minutes later, cold air getting in through the two broken windows, the hood of the Porsche thoroughly dented and scuffed from crashing through a dozen fences, "I'm an amazing driver. Not a scratch on us."

"You're bleeding," Clara told her a little monotonously.

"What?" Jenny asked.

"I can smell it, your arm." Jenny glanced down at her left arm, where that hot feeling had been, and saw that she _was_ bleeding.

"Ah, that's fine. It's a flesh wound, just nicked me. Barely hurts."

"Martha's right," Clara sighed, "You really do have terrible self-preservation instincts."

Jenny beamed, "Thanks."

"It wasn't a compliment…"


	55. The Gator Racket

_The Gator Racket_

 _Jenny_

Viola didn't often frequent the Green Bayou. Perhaps, when Jenny had told Clara it was a club, she was being generous. When one thought of the 1940s definition of 'club,' an old shack perched precariously on rotting supports hanging over the back of a swamp wasn't what immediately sprang to mind. Clara looked at it with a tiny morsel of disappointment when the Porsche trundled up and Jenny cut the engine. The neon shamrock flickered fitfully, the place was mostly made of wood, but the cars lined up out front were all brand-new and high-end. It was a glimmering, emerald beacon out there in the Louisiana sticks. Jenny, clutching her broken right hand to her bleeding left arm, got out swiftly, followed by Clara.

"This isn't a public kind of club," she began to explain as they trudged through the wet dirt to get to the run-down squat of an establishment, Jenny hurrying because, truth be told, her arm was beginning to smart a bit.

"I'd hardly even call it a club; why is it so isolated?" Clara asked, glancing around like she was worried some Scarpelli might come slinking out of the shadowy trees to pick them off from a distance. Sniping people and sneaking around wasn't the mafia style, though.

"It's the mob bar," Jenny answered.

"Isn't the Three Hearts the mob bar?"

"No, the Three Hearts is a where all the bigwigs Viola pays off – company executives and police commissioners and senators and the like – go to do 'business.' _This_ is for the grunts. The Scarpellis would never hit it, because of a sort of, mutual respect kind of thing." Jenny went to hold open the door into the Green Bayou, but Clara reached it first.

"I'm not going to get shot at, am I?"

"Of course not. You're with me."

"Yeah, I was with you half an hour ago and we got shot at _then_."

"Ha, ha," Jenny said dryly, stepping inside the Green Bayou for the first time in a long time. She had rarely frequented it, though, truthfully. Only sometimes, when she had to take Conor Finnegan deliveries of moonshine from that old shack of hers in the swamp, and she would hang around late. It was just as stale-smelling, dimly-lit and empty as usual. She'd kind of missed it.

"DeLacey!" a heavy Irish accent shouted at her right as she entered. Her searching eyes found, marching out from behind the bar, Conor Finnegan himself. An old friend of hers – her favourite mob acquaintance. Jenny grinned broadly. She liked Conor because he was the owner of the Green Bayou (in the eyes of the law), he took care of all its business, and he still worked the bar as well.

"Oh – Clara – this is Conor Finnegan," Jenny introduced, glancing at Clara. Conor made a start – he mustn't have noticed her. It was something to do with the way that light passed through her – causing her sunlight aversion and her near-blindness in the day and her lack of reflection and shadow – that also made her terribly difficult to see if she was skulking around in the dark. "You remember hearing Viola mention Conor; he's the one who can't recreate my moonshine recipe properly."

"Only because you never left any instructions behind when you ran off to Europe," Conor joked, the nodded at Clara, "Who's the girl?"

"Clara's my friend, she's a teacher," Jenny said, for once not introducing her as her girlfriend, since Clara seemed to be fretting so much about what them being openly gay might mean in the 1940s – understandably so. Clara probably knew more about her own planet's history when it came to gay rights than Jenny did, anyway.

"A teacher of what?" Conor frowned.

"Literature, mainly," Clara answered.

"…She's trustworthy?"

"Oh, yeah, completely," Jenny said, "She's my best friend. Uh – I need a first aid kit. Badly." When she revealed to Conor her bloody arm and her bullet wound (more of a graze, honestly) he told her to go sit down somewhere while he slipped into the back room to get what she had requested.

"Ooh, I'm your _bestie_ now," Clara whispered to her, "Friendzoned by my own girlfriend."

"I just can't win with you," Jenny muttered, then shushed her, going to sit by the bar. There was hardly anyone in the Green Bayou that night. Perhaps people were avoiding it because of this feud with the Italians. Just a pair of old men sitting at a table near the empty stage and a woman weeping silently right at the other end of the long bar, whom Jenny frowned at for a moment. The woman, whoever she was, didn't look up from the wooden surface she was leaning on. Smooth jazz was drifting through the room from the jukebox standing alone in a corner.

"I've always wanted a jukebox," Clara mused.

"What are _you_ gonna do with a jukebox?" Jenny asked absently, looking at her injury. Clara sat down on her right at a little circular table.

"I don't know – I could start to collect vinyls, or something. Dylan's thinking of opening a record shop," Clara said.

"What? How's he gonna do that? How does that bookshop even make money – you've had _two_ customers this week," Jenny said, "I don't understand it. And Sally has a ridiculous collection of vinyls, anyway. You know how she won't listen to anything written after 1950."

"Well I don't know where he gets the money from. Maybe he's secretly rich, or something. I don't really talk to him, and when I do it's usually because he's asking about you or Esther," Clara explained, and Jenny was alarmed to hear that Dylan Danvers kept asking after her. She had never met him, what did he want with her? Nevertheless, the conversation subsided when Conor returned with a treasure trove of unsensitised medical supplies, and Jenny peeled off the leather jacket borrowed from Clara so as to get a better look at the bullet wound. "You can keep that jacket now you got it shot."

"I got _myself_ shot, too," Jenny pointed out.

"Yeah. But I don't care if I don't have the jacket anymore, only if I don't have _you_ anymore," she said, which was quite smooth, and made Conor give her a funny look she wasn't that fazed by.

"Who shot you?" Conor asked.

"Some Scarpelli, I don't know," Jenny said, sighing and explaining the whole thing about Viola lending her the stolen Porsche to drive in and them getting chased down. While she did, she poured a modest amount of whiskey onto a wad of cotton wool balls to dab at her wound, clearing away some of the blood that had dried. It wasn't bleeding so much anymore, and really wasn't as bad as it could have been. It had barely even damaged the muscle; she'd be fine in a day or two.

"Will it need stitches…?" Clara asked guardedly, her eyes trailing over a rusty sewing kit in this box of Conor's. Conor sat with them and kept glancing back to the woman crying at the bar.

"Nah. It'll be fine, don't worry," Jenny said, getting a cloth and strapping it to her upper arm with a hefty amount of bandages, then pleading with Clara not to tell Martha Jones about _any_ of this or else there would be hell to pay, adding, "She'll blame you for it."

" _Me?_ "

"You're meant to be keeping me out of trouble," Jenny said, "That's why she told me I have to stay with you."

"I'm not the one who shot you. But when am I gonna see Martha to tell her? Just make sure to wear long sleeves around her, you'll be fine."

"Who's the woman at the bar?" Jenny asked Conor eventually. Ten years ago, Viola had come up with a theory that Jenny had a soft spot for Conor Finnegan – in the _romantic_ sense. There wasn't a shred of truth to it, he was just a decent guy, to say he worked for the mob.

"Franny Mancini," Conor answered quietly.

"What? As in Eddie Mancini's wife? I thought Mahoney had her in his rooms on Fifteenth?" Jenny asked.

"Nah, nah. That's just what the boss has convinced him of to try and get him to talk about Sal's fronts. The poor girl didn't even _know_ Eddie worked for Scarpelli, thought he worked for some law firm that dealt with insurance fraud til Johnny went and picked her up this morning. Nobody's harmed a hair on her head. Doubt I can say the same for Mancini."

"Yeah, we saw him earlier," Jenny said, "Called Mahoney a mick so she had Johnny take him down to the cellar. I only came to get a coat, you know, and look at all this I'm mixed up in again."

"That's this life for you," Conor remarked, "If I could give Eddie my advice, I'd tell him to talk. Nothing good would come of widowing a girl like that – she's a real gem. Anyway, things is slow. Don't suppose you'd be willing to break out your old charms, DeLacey?"

"Old charms?" Jenny asked. He laughed.

"You know what I mean. You look as though you haven't aged a day since I last saw yous, so you _must_ remember how the boss used to show you off all the time," Conor said.

"Show you off?" Clara inquired wryly.

"Oh, you mean the fiddle?" Jenny realised what he was talking about, then explained to Clara, "Viola used to get me to play the fiddle all the time in one of her speakeasies. The oldest one, underneath the tailor's shop of her father's, just _O'Hara's_. During prohibition, you know? How she got her big break into the mafia."

" _Mafia_?" Conor snorted, "I'm surprised at you using a word like _that_ in a place like _this_."

"…I don't get it," Clara frowned.

" _Technically_ the Irish mob can't be called a _mafia_ ," Jenny explained, a little bored, "Since the mafia is all Italians and Sicilians. But it's still an organised crime family."

"Ah, where'd you find such a sweet girl, DeLacey? Some might say she was a square."

"Seamus _did_ ," Jenny explained, "And she's not. You're not a square, are you?"

"What's the right answer?" Clara asked, and Jenny smiled and repeated to Conor that Clara wasn't a square. She got the sense that Clara might be beginning to regret going out that day. Conor broached the topic of Jenny's musical talents again.

"I can't, I've broken my thumb," she said, taking off one of the driving gloves she had been wearing nearly the whole day. Those and her scarf from Clara she still hadn't taken off, which she had also managed to successfully save from getting any of her blood on it. Jenny's right thumb was still a big bandaged lump she could hardly move. She hadn't changed the bandages since Martha had put them on a week ago, either. Clara kept telling her they smelt funky.

"How'd you do that?"

"Well, I didn't do it, there was just this issue with a Ukrainian who wanted information from me I didn't have," Jenny explained, "Broke my thumb." Clara wasn't listening to this brief story, she was looking at the jukebox again, which Jenny noticed and thought about. The Ink Spots' _It's a Sin to Tell a Lie_ was crooning.

"Your girl there's a big fan of that heap of rust," Conor commented, and at him referring to Clara as 'Jenny's girl', Jenny was taken by surprise. "Never really had you figured for a dyke, DeLacey."

"Well _I_ figure that if you don't call me a dyke I won't call you a mick," she snapped quickly.

"Huh?"

"Not a nice word, Finnegan," Jenny said coolly.

"Where are you heading after this?" he asked, "Whatever you're doing here. Getting a coat. When you get your coat, where you going?"

"Back to England," Jenny answered. It was true, they would go back to England, just England in the 2010s rather than the 1940s.

"DeLacey could fix up that broken thing no problem," Conor told Clara. Yes, she did like Conor, but he was still a gangster really. Still under Viola's thumb, still with the common aim of flooding Louisiana with booze and one-upping the Italians. Everything had a price, he wouldn't give her the jukebox out of courtesy. Especially think, as best as she could tell, it was working fine. And he was trying to pawn it off on Clara, for some reason.

"What do you want for it?" Jenny asked before Clara, who was confused, could speak.

"This car of Big Sal's," he said.

"What for? That's Viola's. She won't like me giving it away."

"You already got it wrecked. She wouldn't dare drive that thing, even if it got repainted and clean plates put on," Conor said, "She only took it to mess with Don Scarpelli, and Don Scarpelli's guys just tried to hit the O'Haras' most valuable asset; you."

"I haven't even been here for ten years."

"The whiskey is what keeps us afloat, and the whiskey is what you gave us," Conor said smoothly, "All I want's that Porsche. The boss won't mind once I tell her what I want with it. Don't you know who tried to whack you? That Tony's Antonio Vinci, he's their best new hit. And that car is the perfect bait." Jenny narrowed her eyes, then looked at Clara.

"What?"

" _You're_ the one who fancies the jukebox," Jenny said, "Do you really want it? In exchange for a car so that Conor can try to ice Tony Vinci?"

"No! That'd be like blood money, but… a blood jukebox."

"The car's gonna go back to Viola," Conor said, "After you leave. I'll just tell her my idea. One scenario your girl gets a jukebox out of it, the other you don't get nothin'." Jenny narrowed her eyes.

"The whiskey is what I gave you, you said?"

"Aye, it is, but what's that to do with the car?"

"Moonshine recipe for the jukebox," Jenny said.

"Jen, it's only a jukebox," Clara said, confused about this haggling.

"Nah, he'll give us it now. For the moonshine." Jenny was right, and Jenny was also planning to do something with that Porsche that would prevent Conor from fitting it with a car bomb to try and take out Tony Vinci. Conor left to go get a notepad and a pencil so that he could copy down the complicated instructions for how to brew moonshine the way _she_ brewed moonshine.

"Why'd you do that? I don't know what I'm gonna do with a jukebox," Clara whispered to her, "And I thought the moonshine recipe was in exchange for the coat?"

"Viola makes coats all day, and she couldn't care one bit about the jukebox in the Green Bayou. As long as Conor gets the recipe some way, it doesn't matter. And as long as we catch Kitty Winthrop."

"Well you've been sat here lollygagging with whatshisface for god knows how long – you haven't even asked about what she does here," Clara pointed out.

"I got a jukebox out of it!" Jenny protested, "It's fine, look, I'll get rid of the Porsche so they can't use it in their scheme. I'd rather not contribute to this little gang war of theirs. I'm only here for a coat – a coat! And all this just-"

Gunfire tore through the air and the wooden front of the Green Bayou, from something powerful and automatic. To Jenny's well-trained ears, she guessed it was a Thompson. It didn't really matter though; as bullets ripped above, Jenny tackled Clara to the ground and flipped the table so that it made cover for them, all the first aid material falling to the floor. Bottles of drink behind the bar exploded and Franny Mancini screamed. The bullets continued until the tommy-gun's whole drum was emptied into the front of the mob bar, and the noise of them was then replaced by crying. Then Clara, next to her, tensed up.

"Someone's been shot," she said, "A human." When she said that Jenny grabbed her wrist to keep her close and away from wherever the blood she could smell was.

"Don't think about it, get the flask out of the bag," Jenny said, prioritising Clara over whoever had just come to shoot up the Bayou, "You won't hurt anyone." Jenny glanced around and saw that it had been none other than Francesca Mancini who had been shot. In her gut, too. Clara saw this.

"Shit," she breathed, staring, but there was more empathy than hunger in her dark eyes. She held Jenny's right hand tightly, though, tightly enough to make the tender flesh around her thumb ache. But if it came down to Clara killing somebody or Jenny's thumb being gammy for a while longer, she would take the latter.

"Who's out there!?" Jenny shouted loudly. There was a clattering, splashing noise. Whoever it was had dropped the gun in the mud.

"It's them," Clara answered, "I can smell alien. And-"

"Kitty? Is that you?" Conor called, Conor standing up slowly from behind the bar. He must have heard them drop the gun as well.

"Yeah, it's Kitty," Clara finished what she had been saying, and Jenny pulled her revolver back out and made sure to turn the chambers so that it was on the empty one, in case she needed to bluff someone. Franny Mancini was bleeding out nearby. Jenny didn't know where Kitty had found a tommy-gun, but she took a gamble and assumed that Kitty didn't have any more firearms, so she stood up slowly, pulling her hand out of Clara's. Viola probably had guns stashed in all sorts of funny places around her rackets in the swamp anyway – Kitty had presumably found a cache somewhere close.

And there she saw a young girl, late twenties, standing out there in the swampy road with a submachine gun at her feet, crying into her hands, through the splintered wood now riddled with bullet holes.

"Go look after Franny," Jenny ordered Conor. In the mob she was still his superior by a long way, "Keep pressure on the wound, as much as you can. Tell me if you can smell anything bad while you're over there."

"Bad how?"

"Bad like her bowels or stomach have been shot open how," Jenny hissed at him, and he rushed over, her keeping her eyes trained on Kitty. Clara, struggling to keep hold of herself around the blood loss, had a hand around Jenny's ankle. At least Jenny knew she was still there if she did that. "Kitty Winthrop?" Jenny called, reaching down to get Clara to stand up.

"What?" Clara whispered.

"Aliens are your specialty as well," Jenny said, "Come help me." Clara did so, perhaps forgetting in the world of mobsters and hit squads and car chases that she was actually of use in some situations – just ones that didn't involve the criminal underworld. The pair of them slowly but surely walked towards the door, full of holes, and left the Green Bayou. "You're not from this planet, are you?" Jenny asked. The girl wasn't quite a girl anymore. There was some odd colour about her skin, a vivid green, and blemishes sprouting up across her. The closer they got, the more these blemishes looked like the suckers of an octopus, rising and sinking all over her body.

"What am I?" she asked, "Am I Kitty?"

"Do you feel like Kitty?"

"Sometimes," the stray alien admitted, "I killed people. And I didn't care."

"Who did you kill?" Jenny spoke softly. Clara was holding her arm.

"James Flannigan."

"Carlito Scarpa killed James Flannigan at his sister's wedding in 1936," Jenny said. James Flannigan used to be an O'Hara enforcer while Jenny was still involved with the mob's business.

"No, no, no, it was me, I remember it."

"You don't remember it," Jenny said.

"How could I have been so cold? How did I not feel anything?" the girl begged Jenny for the answer to that question. Carlito had been pretty cold, that was true.

"Listen to me, you're not a human. Kitty Winthrop, Carlito Scarpa – they _were_ humans. You're something else. You took on their shape."

"I just wanted to feel something again."

"You took on some of their memories, too – it doesn't matter, you're safe now, alright? I'm not a human, either, I was lost on this planet once, an orphan, and I got dragged into the mob as well. I can help you. I can take you home," Jenny approached still, carefully, with Clara at her side. Clara who, against what Jenny would expect from her, didn't say a word.

"Kitty's dead. I saw her, and now I have her face – is that right?"

"I don't know. Come with us, we'll help you, my name's Jenny, and this is Clara. It'll be-"

When Jenny reached out to possibly touch her arm, the girl let out a horrific noise from her mouth, more deafening than any human scream. Jenny was left a little dazed, but Clara with her sensitive hearing was nearly incapacitated.

"Don't touch me!" the girl, the alien, yelled, and she ran off. It took Jenny a second to regain herself enough to follow, seeing the girl disappear behind the back of the Green Bayou, into the shadows. Jenny made after her, dragging Clara along almost by force. Made woozy, she was having an evidently even harder time controlling her bloodlust. At least it was dark enough out for Clara to see.

The Green Bayou was used to smuggle hooch from Viola's moonshine racket (some alcohol she produced legally, but Viola O'Hara wasn't a big fan of taxes) out into other areas of New Orleans, via boats and canals. To accommodate this, the Green Bayou's rear was an old wooden dock, propped up by old wooden stilts being gnawed away by the saltwater. 'Kitty' had scrambled up the mud to get onto the dock, so Jenny and Clara followed suit, and then she was stood there in the light from the moon and the lanterns hanging at the edge of the dock, so that the smugglers would see where to go through the fog.

"Careful, Kitty," Jenny warned.

"I'm not Kitty, though! I don't even know what I am! I'm some monster – some _creature_! Look at me!" the girl shouted. By now some of these sucker-welts on her skin had grown, it was nearly as though she had tentacles protruding out of her in an oddly natural way. Jenny remembered the large tentacle ball shown on the species identifier earlier that evening; that must be what 'Kitty Winthrop' was halfway towards transforming into. "You can't touch me! Nobody can touch me! All I did was bump into Kitty in an alley, that's all!"

"This isn't your fault," Jenny said firmly, still trying to get closer, but 'Kitty' was matching her step for step, going backwards as she went forwards, "Stay away from the edge of the dock, you don't want to fall into the swamp."

"Stay away from _me_ , then!"

"Look, you're in danger over there! I promise nobody will touch you, just come with us," Jenny pleaded, "We can help you, none of this is your fault!"

"To hell with it not being my fault, of course it is! So many people dead…"

"Carlito Scarpa killed those people, he killed dozens before he became the consigliere," Jenny explained, then she said something she didn't believe herself, "It almost makes it worth you using him; you've avenged so many."

"But Kitty had never done a thing," she said brokenly, "I can't be forgiven for the damage I've done here."

"Of course you can, just take a deep breath and – no. No! _NO!_ " Jenny let go of Clara's hand and sprinted to the edge of the dock. Kitty Winthrop had taken a step back and let herself fall into the swamp, "Clara, help me!" Clara was at her side in a flash, Jenny flailing her bad hand uselessly at the black water. Then she heard a hissing noise and froze. As she withdrew her arm immediately, a green, scaly mass lurched forwards from underneath the dock. Jenny scrambled away, sitting on the damp wood now, Clara standing behind her. There was a gurgling scream from the depths of the bayou as pale green liquid floated up from beneath, sitting like oil on the top of the water until the great, thrashing thing came up again.

"Shit! That's a crocodile!"

"An alligator," Jenny corrected hollowly, "It killed her. It was hiding under the dock, probably waiting to get at the smugglers…" Between its jaws and its yellow teeth the beast was holding a mangled, fleshy tentacle. "That poor thing… she wouldn't even let us help her…"

"Jenny, don't watch," Clara said gently, touching her shoulder, "Come on. You can't do anything for her. Franny Mancini is nearly dead because Kitty shot her."

"Right. Yeah. You're right, you're right, come on, Clara. I'm going to save Francesca Mancini if it kills me."


	56. My Melancholy Baby

_My Melancholy Baby_

 _Jenny_

Viola got what she wanted from Eduardo Mancini. The fact that Jenny DeLacey, her second-in-command, had almost single-handedly saved the life of his wife after she had been shot through her liver and one of her kidneys, made him spill every bit of information he had on Salvatore Scarpelli's fronts. However, the catching of the murderer, a murderer who had done wrong by both the Scarpellis and the O'Haras by mistakenly killing Carlito Scarpa and Kitty Winthrop, had rendered the feud at a stalemate. When Jenny called on a payphone (she didn't want Viola getting hold of her mobile number _or_ Clara's mobile number, lest she get rung to do 'odd jobs' non-stop), Viola said she was going to send Seamus Mahoney as an emissary. Seamus Mahoney, being young, being a cop, and being both rather soft yet valuable as the son of her best enforcer, was the ideal emissary. The Scarpellis couldn't kill a cop, but using such a character was a show of good faith when it came to negotiating peace between the Italians and the Irish again.

Speaking of shows of good faith, all Jenny's deals with Viola had been straightened out. Viola didn't care about having the hot Porsche 356, it being too flashy for her criminal enterprises, and considering she only stole it from Big Sal in the first place to get back at him for accusing her of ordering a mysterious hit on his consigliere. It was all, Jenny was assured, going to be taken care of, as thanks for 'dealing with' their foreign murderer so quickly and efficiently – the 'efficient' part coming from how the whatever-it-was had been eaten by the alligator, thus disposing of the evidence without the need for something more time consuming, like an acid bath or a car crusher.

"It's all going to be taken care of," Jenny repeated Viola's words to Clara Ravenwood when Clara finally began to question her about what she had been doing over the phone for nearly fifteen minutes, and after she had driven them to a darkened tailor's in their battered old Porsche watching the punters file out of it. This tailor's was _O'Hara's_ , and O'Hara's had a speakeasy in the cellar, and one of the best chefs in New Orleans, because O'Hara's was Viola's pride and joy. The venue that had kick-started her in the world of organised crime syndicates and law-breaking.

"That sounds… suspicious," Clara said carefully. Jenny murmured a noise of agreement, the last of the people from the basement trickling out. Clara didn't really know where they were, though, or _why_ they were there. But when about a minute went by when nobody else left, she motioned to Clara to follow her, and lead her through a 'coat storage room' to an expensively decorated staircase. "That was basically a wardrobe – are you taking me to Narnia?" she joked.

"What's Narnia?"

"It's, um, from this book series… never mind…" Clara's remark fell flat on Jenny's ears, and Jenny felt bad about it, and made a note to ask her later on when things were not so melancholy. Downstairs was warm, the air swam with traces of cigarette smoke and the smell of liquor clung to the burgundy leather of the chairs and barstools, which went well with the mahogany wood of the bar and the trimmings, and the golden caps on all the bottles and the taps and the lighters and lamps in the centres of the tables. The modest stage where Jenny remembered playing the fiddle so many times was nearby, and rather a fancy gramophone, out of which the soft tones of Ella Fitzgerald swam from whatever vinyl Lucie had playing. "Is this a speakeasy?"

"Of course it's a speakeasy," Jenny answered.

"But – isn't prohibition over…?"

"Yeah, but this place is still illegal. She sells smuggled alcohol down here so that she doesn't have to pay taxes on it. I told her she ought to pay taxes – that's what they got Al Capone on – but she doesn't listen," Jenny shrugged, "As long as it doesn't get raided before we leave, I can't say I care…"

"And, why are we in a speakeasy…?"

"Viola's sorting some things – I'll explain, just, what do you want to eat? We haven't had dinner. I'm starving. My meal is hours late by now. Viola's had the place cleared out for me. Us. Only Lucie Cousteau is here, _le meilleur chef en Louisiane_ ," Jenny said smoothly, indicating a woman who looked to be roughly thirty standing at the door to the kitchen.

"Uh, I don't really… you're always so good at dinner. You pick something."

"Have you ever tried oysters?" Jenny asked, and Clara shook her head. She smiled a little, and then called to Lucie Cousteau - whom she knew because she had been the one to bring Lucie's culinary genius to Viola's attention – in French, " _A bucket of the most delicious oysters you have left in the kitchen, please. By which I mean –_ all _the oysters you have in the kitchen. But don't put any garlic on them, not even_ near _them, alright?_ " Lucie smiled and vanished. Clara was staring at Jenny. "What?"

"Was that French?"

"She's French. Well, she speaks English, but she came to America when she was a teenager and her parents mostly spoke French to her," Jenny shrugged.

"And earlier you were speaking Italian? And you speak German, too?" Clara asked. Jenny shrugged, nodded. "How many languages _do_ you speak?"

"Every language, more or less," she said, "It's just… this thing that I can do. It's like the translation matrix, only it's part of me. I assimilate immediately. It used to be hard to do it at will, I normally just end up speaking the same language back as whoever speaks to me initially." While she spoke, she led Clara to a booth, because after getting shot at when they had been sitting at an ordinary table earlier, she fancied a more secluded spot in Viola's basement speakeasy.

"It's pretty hot," Clara said, sitting down in the booth opposite her, "So, um, is this a date?"

"Uh… I didn't think of it like that. I thought of it like neither of us have had dinner yet and I want you alone," Jenny said, thinking, "Does that make it a date? Or do I have to ask you? I don't know, this seems like a big commitment, _should_ I ask you?"

"No, what you _should_ do is stop worrying about something that's not important and explain to me this stuff about Viola 'taking care' of things," Clara said, and Jenny groaned quite exaggeratedly, taking Clara by surprise, "What's the matter?"

"What's the matter is I'm _awful_ and I'm just waiting for you to inevitably break up with me," she grumbled, and Clara looked like she might as well have been slapped as Jenny slouched down in her chair.

" _Why_ would you think I'm on the cusp of breaking up with you?"

"Because you are! You must be! Because I'm a criminal, a mobster, I brew moonshine and don't intervene when my old sociopathic 'friend' takes someone down to the cellar to torture; I carry a gun and get us both shot at!" Jenny complained, "Why would you want to be with someone with deep ties to an Irish crime syndicate? A washed-up army officer stripped of her rank and accused of attempted genocide? Infamous member of an elusive thieves' guild? A smuggler who convinced herself she was doing something righteous by sneaking forged ration slips under the Berlin Wall? Someone so much of a coward that she ran away and joined the circus, and couldn't even stand up for herself when she was forced to kill people in cold-blood!" _What are you doing!?_ she demanded of herself internally. Was she _trying_ to lose Clara Ravenwood forever?

"Calm down, take a deep breath," Clara told her, getting out of her seat and coming to sit next to Jenny, both of them on the same side of the opulent booth, "Why do you hold yourself to these impossible standards of living? Your father is no moral beacon either." Jenny would be annoyed that Clara assumed all of her woes stemmed from something to do with the Doctor, if Clara were not correct. "Jenny, I don't look at you like you're some impossible angel sent down from heaven to show humanity how to be pure and perfect. I worry about you when you torture yourself like this."

"How are you not horrified by me?"

"Why would I be? I know you. Maybe not your history, but your personality I do. Even in your last regeneration, when you were bitter and full of spite towards Jack and the Doctor and whoever else, you were better than lots of humans could ever hope to be, and more long-suffering. Your father, he always used to repeat this old thing about life being piles of good things or bad things. Eleven. Used to say it a lot, actually, about things that weren't all that meaningful, like when I burnt a soufflé once. He told me he thought of it when he was still travelling with Amy and took the opportunity to recycle it… anyway. He says life is a pile of good things and bad things, and that the good things might not erase the bad things from existence, but the bad things don't necessarily spoil the good things or make them unimportant. And if I had to, I'd say your 'good things' pile is a lot higher than the 'bad things' one," Clara said, speaking softly, holding Jenny's unbroken hand while she did.

"I'm a murderer."

"You said they forced you."

"They branded me, on my foot, I couldn't walk for a week. Tried to turn me into a weapon," Jenny explained somewhat vaguely.

"Who did? Who's 'they'?"

"Assassins, a collective of them… thought my particular skillset would be very useful in their line of work. It was. I killed twelve people for them. If I didn't, they would have killed me, and if they killed me they would find out I regenerate, and they would have hurt me even more than they did to indoctrinate me to begin with," she said, feeling a torrent of information spilling out of her mouth like tears, though she sounded monotonous and disassociated, "I was ninety-nine when I escaped. I thought, I'm not going to turn a hundred years old and be doing this dirty work. It was some anonymous, concrete complex they had me in, locked up in the Alps somewhere. I managed to escape and get to Switzerland. Do you hate me?"

"I love you, I hate the people who did that to you," Clara said. Jenny didn't betray a lot of emotion when she talked about that darkest period of her life; working for Viola was nothing compared to _that_. She hated even thinking about it, even remembering it, would prefer to burn those bloodstains out of her life forever. "Won't you believe me when I tell you I've never loved anybody as much as you? You said I'm the love of your life earlier, you know."

"Yeah, I… remember…"

"Did you mean it?"

"I didn't think about it. It was just impulsive." Clara's face fell with a look of more sudden sorrow then Jenny had ever seen on it, and she hastened to explain what she meant, "I _did_ mean it, with both my hearts. Lies are the things that take effort; you don't need to think about what's true because it's always on the tip of your tongue."

Clara sighed, "The last time I said to someone I'd never love anyone so much as them, they died. Within seconds."

"Don't jinx it."

"It's disconcerting." Jenny heard noise coming from the kitchen, and when she looked over Lucie Cousteau appeared carrying two buckets; one of them was empty, the other was filled to the brim with oysters. "Oh my stars, that's a lot of oysters…" Jenny gently nudged Clara's leg so that she slid away from her slightly on the bench, since she had been so very close. Jenny thanked Lucie in French again, and Lucie disappeared off.

"I'm hungry, it's fine," Jenny shrugged, "You can have something else if you don't like them; I'm sure I could eat them all, and take home what's left. But, you know, I really think it's almost a crime to go to New Orleans and not taste some of the seafood. I'm gonna get an alligator fillet off of Lucie before we leave. It's so hard to get good quality alligator meat in England…" Talking about food, the sad tone of Jenny's voice nearly dissipated completely. But not quite.

She was cheered up somewhat by having to teach her girlfriend how to eat oysters, though, advising her not to just swallow the thing whole and to chew it. Clara made a remark about how she trusted Jenny too much that she kept letting her feed her 'weird shit.' Jenny thought that was funny, being as oysters weren't unusual in the slightest, and they weren't even from another planet. At least Clara liked them, though. Lucie had brought them colas to drink while they amused themselves like this, being as the oysters were particularly salty.

"If I didn't know you better I'd think you were trying to get me into bed by feeding me oysters," Clara remarked, eating another.

"You mean if you didn't know _you_ better. You're as easy as they come – no need for aphrodisiac shellfish to get _you_ to sleep with somebody," Jenny said, then changed tact again, "You're _sure_ it doesn't bother you that you're in love with a criminal?"

"Well when you put it _that_ way it sounds romantic. Kind of sexy."

"I told you you're easy. You practically seduce yourself, Clara. It's like, you know – batteries included."

"Wow, you make me sound like a dildo. Wind me up and watch me go." Jenny laughed slightly in between oysters and swigs of dark soda. "But, you still haven't explained about Viola taking care of things…"

"Oh. It's not as sinister as it sounds. We're down here having dinner, on the house, of course, while Viola is going to bring that coat and Josephine, and Conor will bring his jukebox, and put them in that Porsche up there, and then we'll leave and I won't come back," Jenny said, "I don't want to be involved in this anymore, in this sort of stuff, you know? I don't like being so shady, but I've never really had much of an honest job."

"What about the Alliance?" Clara asked. Eating another oyster, Jenny mulled this question over.

"Was it honest, though? When the Shadow still hasn't found Cargill, and everyone thinks I'm the one who sent a million people to their deaths? And anyway, who really says if a war is legal or not, or if that's just as illicit as everything else I've ever done?" Clara didn't know what to say, so Jenny sighed and talked about Viola again. "She congratulated me on my _efficiency_ in _dealing with_ Kitty Winthrop." Jenny spoke as though she had a bad taste in her mouth, and resentfully consumed yet another oyster to try and get rid of it. The waste shells they dropped into the second of the two buckets Lucie had provided, that one slowly filling up as the first one slowly emptied.

"What does that mean?"

"It means that because they don't have to do a body dump or stage an accident to cover it up, _I_ get a gold star," she grumbled.

"It's not your fault you got mixed up with this, Jen," Clara said, "You said it yourself, to Kitty. You were an orphan, lost, on a strange planet, in a strange country, didn't know anybody, illegitimate. Naïve. Besides, I'm sure Viola made joining the mob sound very glamorous. I'm sure that, being one of the higher-ups, it _was_ glamorous. More glamour than you, living in a swamp on your own for years, could ever dream of. It's not hard to understand why this all happened, and what kind of superficial harlot would I be if I didn't still love you? That would be like you deciding to leave me because I'm a vampire, because I drink human blood, and even though I don't have much of a choice about that, you can't stand it."

"Oh no," Jenny began sarcastically, "You're going to be eternally young forever, what a tragedy this is for me, somebody else who will remain eternally young forever."

"I can't believe you've taken me out to a have a candlelit dinner at a fancy speakeasy with everything on the house, cooked by an expert French chef, and have served me artisanal oysters, and you fail to see the romance in the situation," Clara said.

"Using my mob connections to get you free seafood isn't what I'd call romantic."

"Then I can't wait to see what you _do_ call romant-"

* * *

 **DAY 18,201**

"Okay, okay. This is just flirty chit-chat now," the Alpha Twelfth Doctor interrupted Jenny's story, "I'm not sure how relevant me hearing about a date you and Ravenwood had in 1948 is to the whole thing with the Khaolu. Is it going to come back, or something? Absorb the form of an alligator and go after you?"

"I hope not, I didn't have a conveniently placed roller coaster to drop on it," Jenny remarked.

"Hey! The roller coaster lizard story is a _classic_ anecdote," Thirteen said.

"I know, you tell it _all the time_. You met Charles II and the first thing you told him was about how you once killed a lizard alien with a roller coaster," Jenny pointed out, which was very true, Thirteen _had_ done just that. They were still in the console room, had been for the last few hours, while Jenny told her raucous story full of mobsters and shootouts and speakeasies and car chases – it was a real thrill-ride of a tale. Thirteen didn't believe half of it had actually happened, but couldn't be bothered questioning her daughter about the legitimacy of these claims she had beaten some made Mafiosos in a car chase, dangling herself out of the car window, leaving the car briefly driver-less, while she shot wildly with that old revolver of hers she had stolen from Chernobyl.

"Charlie thought that anecdote was amazing."

" _Charlie_ didn't have a clue what a 'roller coaster' was," Jenny said, mocking Thirteen for her colloquial way of addressing the restoration king.

"Is that it, though? Are you done?"

"Well, _yeah_ , I _suppose_. I just got carried away by that memory, it's a nice one, really. It's a shame it's kind of spoiled by the things that happened later on that evening," Jenny sighed, "I told you I didn't kill that Khaolu. I'm sorry about what happened, but I tried to save her. You believe me don't you?"

"Of course I believe you," Thirteen sighed. It was funny, Jenny mused, how she had practically been raised in America and now this next regeneration of the Doctor bore the same accent she had grown up alongside so comfortably (well, not _quite_ the same accent, Thirteen was more generic in her intonations than southern belle.)

"Hopefully no other family members of theirs come after us, else it would be like the Scarpellis and the O'Haras all over again."

"Wait, hang on – what do you mean the memory of you and Ravenwood together in the speakeasy is spoiled by something that happened later on?" Thirteen asked.

"Oh, come on. You remember," Jenny said. Thirteen looked blank, so Jenny sighed, "It was spoiled because that was the night Danny Pink reappeared."


	57. Ain't That a Kick in the Head

**AN: Okay, you guys don't know this because I've never put it in an author's note or anything, I preferred to let you all imagine for yourselves what Thirteen looks like - but Thirteen does, in fact, look like Rose McIver in my head (though Rose McIver when she's doing an American accent like in** ** _iZombie_** **as opposed to when she's doing her real accent being as she is from New Zealand. She's also Tinkerbell in** ** _Once Upon a Time_** **if you guys watch that.) And I mention it now only because one of my damn lecturers at uni is the freaking. Spitting image. Of Rose McIver. And it's like - okay, now Thirteen, Clara Oswald's wife, is teaching me about aestheticism, what is my life?**

 _Ain't That a Kick in the Head_

 _Jenny_

It was true what they said about oysters being an aphrodisiac. While it may be a matter of some scientific speculation whether the hormone-boiling chemicals contained in the things quite affected vampires and Time Lords in the same way they affected humans, or whether it was more of a general, sensual placebo, finding out the truth wasn't on either Jenny's nor Clara's mind when they returned to Hollowmire at round about three in the morning. No. Jenny and Clara cared about one thing and one thing only – who would win in the race between them of who could get the other's clothes off faster. When they came tumbling through the front door together, leaving the Porsche 365 with the jukebox rammed into the boot outside, Clara was the one losing more garments more quickly. Maybe this _was_ because she didn't have as many layers on as Jenny, Jenny with her scarf and new coat and leather jacket and jeans, but Jenny was still winning. As Jenny won at everything.

Lip-locked and tangled up they staggered through the house, not even turning the lights on in a vague, unimportant quest to find the bed. Could she really be _bothered_ having to go down a whole flight of stairs in order to _really_ get down to 'business'? The nitty gritty? The inevitable? (Those were some very potent oysters.) Their surroundings were meaningless, dull and boring against the throes of passion they were both, at present, drowning in, Clara dragging Jenny with her arms wrapped around her whole body into the living room, half-lifting her and pushing her onto the table with the landline and the wireless router and a notepad and other knick-knacks and bits of old rubbish onto it. These bits of old rubbish were thrown to the floor in their rather desperate fervency to get at each other, Jenny with her legs around Clara's waist, her mouth on Clara's lips and her hands trailing over Clara's everything.

And _then_ somebody coughed. An incredibly loud, exaggerated, stagey cough. Not just a cough, it extended, elongated, turned into some mocking imitations of dry-heaving as the mood was killed as easily as flicking on a light switch and, accordingly, somebody _did_ flick on a light switch, for the reading lamp next to the armchair. It was a very compromising position they were caught in now.

"Oh, no," said an older woman with cruel, smug features, sitting in said chair with her fingers laced together rather dramatically, "Don't stop on _my_ account – I was so enjoying the show." Jenny did not know who this woman was, but got an odd feeling about her. She and Clara were frozen, still locked in the shape of what they had been trying to do. Her new coat, her scarf, one of her shoes, Clara's skirt and tights; they were all strewn about on the floor. They'd done quite well, really. Jenny was the more modest of the pair of them, but Clara was the least embarrassed. She looked more offended, still half-kissing Jenny, Jenny having to turn her head around to quite an odd angle to get a look at this intruder. "What? I heard a rumour in the village about this house being haunted. I suppose 'haunted' can extend to all manner of dead things, though. Not just ghosts. Now, Clara, when exactly were you going to tell my boyfriend that you're still kicking?" She sounded faintly Scottish as she talked, Clara silent, stunned to silence. She still had Jenny more or less pinned to the small table, arms on either side of her, Clara held by her waist between her girlfriend's thighs. Like Jenny had said – a _compromising position_. "Or, even better, when were you going to tell him you're bonking his daughter?"

"Well," Clara finally broke her silence, "You break into my house, in the middle of the night, doing god knows what, and you go and use the word ' _bonking_.' I'm disgusted."

"God, you say? I didn't think your kind were supposed to use words like that." Clara narrowed her eyes. Why was she not more surprised? It was almost as though she expected this. "Now, while I _would_ like to hear the very interesting story of how… _this_ came about," she waved a dismissive hand at the pair of them, "I actually came here on far more generous business." And then she nodded at the other side of the room, and Clara, with her flat expression, glanced over. They had been so involved with each other, and then so involved with the mystery woman, they had both failed to notice the fourth person in the room, standing there alone. Clara's face was impossible to read when she saw this ghost; it was an abstract collage of possibly a hundred or even a thousand different emotions, crammed into a hundred more microscopic facial expressions and twitches and movements as she stared. And Jenny looked, too, but Jenny was merely shocked and confused. She had no idea what was going on, why this woman whom Clara knew had dredged up this old spectre and dumped it in their living room to stand there, ogling, his face a picture of pure horror and outrage.

"Danny?" Clara asked in a broken, empty tone. She was hollow. She had not moved. Jenny was still partially wrapped around her, becoming increasingly more uneasy and awkward, feeling almost naked with these strangers observing quite an intimate moment.

"Admittedly, I would have liked this reunion to be a little less, er, what's the word, what's the word… unfaithful? Treacherous? Adulterous?" the woman rattled off a string of negative adjectives, "I feel like I'm definitely witnessing a very callous display of debauchery in front of your… whatever you humans call life-partners. Or were the two of you not married? I forget. In love, though, I'm sure? Wouldn't ever love anybody else? Wholly sincere? You might want to unwrap your legs from around her," the woman spoke to Jenny then, Jenny who had not said a word yet.

"…Clara," Jenny whispered. Clara didn't even seem like she had heard the words of the mystery woman, she was staring at Danny Pink's ghost, and Danny Pink was staring right back. Jenny didn't understand. Danny Pink was dead. Danny Pink had had his brain scooped out and stuck into a Cyberman. Danny Pink's consciousness was supposed to live in a decaying data cloud of an afterlife. "Clara – move, Clara." Jenny had to push her a little until she actually realised what was going on, what Danny was seeing; her wrapped up in the embrace of another woman. Even then it was a bit of a chore for Jenny to fully disengage herself from Clara, Clara was just _that_ shell-shocked.

"Thank the lord, I was beginning to think the two of you were glued together by the genitals and I might have to rip you apart," the mystery woman commented, idly examining her fingernails. All the while she didn't stand up from Clara's living room chair.

"What are you _doing_?" Danny Pink asked Clara Ravenwood. Clara said nothing, and neither did Jenny.

"I didn't think they got around to quite doing anything yet – or did I miss a bit of sleight of hand? A slip of the fingers? Oh, wait – it's tongue, isn't it? Slip of the tongue? Tongue or fingers? Which slipped in first?" she mused, her words getting progressively more explicit as she spoke. She clearly found herself very funny.

Clara stammered, "I was… I… don't… I…"

"I'm confused," Jenny said finally, looking at the mysterious woman, "Who are you?" The woman stared at her like she was a slimy streak of dog mess on the bottom of her shoe, and then turned her impetuous gaze on Clara instead.

"Really, Clara? How long have you been shacking up with this child for without telling her who your greatest influence and mentor is? I taught you everything you know about being a womaniser," the woman remarked, which finally seemed to get Clara's stunted attention.

"Sorry?" she frowned.

"Thank you for apologising."

"I didn't…"

"Well then I _don't_ thank you for _not_ apologising. Remarkable how she shuns me now, don't you think? I'm practically a mother figure to her, after her own mother turned out to have that horrible aversion to laser weaponry," the woman said.

"Don't talk about Clara's mother like that," Jenny said, feeling rage boiling underneath her skin.

"It's fine," Clara sighed, pressing her fingers to her temples and scrunching up her eyes, "Just ignore her."

" _Ignore_ her? Why should you let her talk about your mother like that? I wouldn't let someone speak about _mine_ that way. Who is she?"

"Don't mention your own mother…" Clara said. Clara seemed to be having some sort of meltdown, and Danny Pink himself was hardly speaking, just looking at her and sometimes looking at Jenny.

"Your mother is probably the worst Draughts player I have ever encountered. The last time I played with her she tried to castle – you can't castle in Draughts," the woman remarked, and Jenny stared at her, "And then she told me she had a royal flush! In _Draughts_!"

"You know my mother?"

"Intimately."

" _Intimately_?"

"Yes. Some might even say we were… BFFs. Or lovers. They're interchangeable, really. You'd know all about friends with benefits."

" _What_?"

"The poor child has raised by uneducated animals, clearly. That father of yours has never been any good for you," she said coldly, slouching a little in Clara's chair, like she wasn't getting enough amusement out of the scenario she had invented.

"Jenny," Clara said eventually, clenching her jaw and looking furiously at the woman when she spoke next, "This is Missy. The Master. _The_ Master. The evil Time Lord."

"I would hardly say I'm evil!" she protested, "I'm clearly just misunderstood!"

"What about the time you became the dictator of Earth and tried to butcher its entire population?"

"Yes! A misunderstanding!"

"How could anyone misunderstand that!?"

"It was in your best interest to be butchered. I'm talking about the greater good."

"Bullshit."

"I did it for love."

"Love of what?"

"Of… general compassion and an all-round sense of charming sympathy and a desire to do-good."

"Still bullshit."

"Suppose I was bored. Nobody appreciates a bit of good, old-fashioned ethnic cleansing these days," she shrugged, "You kids and your… _morality_."

"What were you doing with that girl?" Danny finally questioned, snapping out of his lesbian-induced trance. Probably a bit jarring to see your ex-girlfriend getting off with a member of the same sex, really.

Clara froze up again.

"You're the Master?" Jenny was asking.

"Clara?" Danny implored.

"Yes. Well, the Mistress now."

"It's tricky to explain…" Clara mumbled.

"But… Master isn't a gender exclusive title," Jenny frowned.

"You had your tongue in her mouth!" Danny exclaimed.

"And being a smarty-pants isn't a gender exclusive hobby, but you're still doing it," she snapped, "I'm a Mistress of all sorts of things."

"Maybe I did!" Clara half-shouted.

"Mistress of your father, for instance," Missy remarked.

"You definitely did – how is that tricky to explain?" Danny persisted.

"It's just tricky to explain anything when you have your tongue in another woman's mouth. I know that from experience," Missy commented, winking at Jenny.

"Who even is she!?" Danny shouted at Clara, feeling the full force of his anger now, as though Clara had somehow been unfaithful to a man who had been dead for more than a year.

"She's-" Knocking on the door interrupted Clara and the criss-crossing bickering. Clara glanced at Jenny first, like Jenny might have invited someone to visit. Jenny shrugged, and volunteered to answer it, desperately wanting an escape from the living room. In the back of her mind she convinced herself it was her mother, Thirteen – it must be, she thought, coming to clear all of this up. But it wasn't. It was worse.

"Oh my god," Jenny hissed, " _Now_!? We're doing this _now_!?"

"Why? Are you suddenly too busy to kidnap people?" none other than Ashildr herself remarked, handcuffed and chained and held the scruff of her jacket by the Shadow. The Shadow was nearly invisible in the night-time gloom. "You can't go kidnapping people and then changing your mind about it later, Major." It wasn't even just Ashildr, either; the even juicier target, Austin Cargill, the brains behind the Polaris Death Charge and the biggest loss of life in the entire history of the Homeworld Alliance, was also being dragged along by the Shadow. Only, Cargill was unconscious.

"Wow. This is it. This is the worst day of my life."

"She says to the girl she's paid a cannibal swarm to kidnap!" Ashildr exclaimed. The Shadow, unlike Clara Ravenwood, did not ask for permission to enter the house. He and his two charges entered the house, and in a way it was lucky that Ashildr was there again, out of the blue. "Nice to see you're still keeping house with your stepmother, Clara," Ashildr said. Clara looked like she had been punched in the face.

"What's going on!?"

"I told you I paid the Shadow with an Arcadian Diamond to bring me Ashildr and Cargill," Jenny said.

"Well can you give him another Arcadian Diamond so that he takes them away again?" Clara hissed.

"I'd waltz with you if you gave me two Arcadian Diamonds," the Shadow commented dryly, speaking through a voice modulator with that hive mind of his.

"What _is_ that!? And what did she mean stepmother!? Who is she!? Why is that man unconscious!?" Danny was yelling. Missy had sunk into silence, merely observing again. Things were interesting enough without her needing to comment.

"Why _is_ he unconscious?" Jenny asked.

"He didn't want to come with me," the Shadow told her.

"What? And _she_ did?" she nodded at Ashildr.

"Well, I just heard the name 'Jenny' and I could _help_ but swoon over my ex-girlfriend's new girlfriend," Ashildr grinned.

"Your _what_!?" Danny demanded, and she looked at him and frowned.

"You're very loud."

"What do you want me to do with this one, Harkness?" the Shadow asked her.

"I don't know – leave him anywhere, just make sure he doesn't run off," Jenny muttered.

"I don't understand what you mean," Danny said to Ashildr.

"It's pretty simple, I'm Clara's ex-girlfriend, and now Jenny is Clara's new girlfriend," Ashildr said.

"Okay, you can't prove that you're my ex-girlfriend," Clara interjected.

"You mean we never broke up!? I always thought that you dying was your way of telling me we're through. And I can, there's pictures of us doing it that got circulated around during the 1870s and caused quite the commotion in Brighton at the time," then she turned her attention back to Danny, "Why? Who are you?"

"Danny Pink," Danny Pink said through gritted teeth. Ashildr turned and looked at Clara.

"Your dead ex-boyfriend is in your living room. Why?"

"I thought it would be nice!" Missy protested.

"Seems more emotionally confusing than anything else. Which Bond villain are you pretending to be sitting dramatically in the armchair like that?" Ashildr question, and Clara nearly laughed, "And yes, I know who you are, _Mistress_. You don't live to be as old as me without learning the names of the biggest alien maniacs in history."

"And who might _you_ be?" Missy was affronted.

"Not someone as infamous as you," Ashildr said.

"What's all this shit about girlfriends, Clara? My death affected you that much? You're a lesbian now?" Danny questioned.

"No!" Clara protested.

"Don't swear at her," Ashildr said coolly, then asked Jenny, "Why aren't you defending her?"

"I can defend myself!" Clara argued.

"You're doing a bad job of it," Ashildr said, "Why are you half naked? And what's this gun on the floor?" Ashildr peered down at a long rifle.

"Oh – Josephine," Jenny said, going to retrieve the rifle and make sure it was okay. She was fond of Josephine, and had been missing her for a hundred and eighty years. What she mainly liked was the spyglass she had attached a little wonkily to serve as a better sight for when she was alligator hunting from a distance.

"She has a gun!?" Danny exclaimed.

"I have a lot of guns," Jenny answered him. She put Josephine down carefully on the coffee table and went to pick up her brand new coat from where it had been thrown, brushing it off and not really knowing where to hang it. Ultimately, since Clara's house was cold while people argued behind her, and because she was still mostly dressed, she just put the coat back on, and the scarf. Clara didn't seem inclined to re-dress herself, though.

"What kind of a woman is she!? And why do I feel like I know her?" Danny asked Clara. This was not a particularly lovey-dovey reunion – and Jenny didn't know how to feel about that. She didn't like that Clara was distraught.

"You've met her before," Clara admitted, and then she looked meekly at Ashildr, out of everybody, wanting the latest arrival to bail her out of this situation.

"Jenny's the Doctor's daughter," Ashildr finally said. Jenny felt like she was on trial.

"She's _what_? The Doctor!? Who puts you into so much danger!? His _daughter_?"

"I'm not sure whatshisname has all the relevant information," Ashildr said.

"I have all the information I need! She's bad for you," Danny said firmly to Clara.

"You don't know anything about her," Clara answered.

"I know enough. She's related to the Doctor. That means trouble. And since when were you gay?" he asked.

"I'm bisexual. I always have been. I just… never got around to telling you. It never seemed too relevant being as you're… you know, a boy. And – what the hell are you, anyway? You're dead! You died! And now you're in my bloody house!" Yeah, Jenny thought, though she didn't speak, what _was_ he?

"And you're not even pleased to see me! You said you'd never love anyone else, that I was it for you."

"And you would have been, but you died, and then there was… there were a lot of people, maybe, alright? And… Jenny," Clara said, "But seriously, what are you?"

"He's just a hologram, that's all. About as harmless as a shop window dummy. Isn't that right, Clara?" Missy remarked. So he was like Oswin, only soft-light, so he couldn't pick anything up or attach prosthetic legs to himself. _Or_ touch Clara.

"I'll slug you if you say anything else like that to her," Ashildr cut across Jenny. The last time Jenny had encountered Ashildr, she had not liked her. She had been murdered by her, in fact, run through with a very sharp katana. But Jenny was caught in a stalemate where she didn't want to say anything that might paint her in a bad light in front of Danny Pink, and here was Ashildr saying and threatening all the things that she herself could not. Ashildr knew what she was doing, too, going by the knowing look she gave Jenny for the tiniest fraction of a second.

"You're handcuffed," Missy pointed out.

"Don't think that'll stop me. What's with the scarf, Major?" Ashildr turned back to her.

"Clara knitted it," Jenny mumbled. Ashildr scrutinised the scarf from where she stood, perhaps trying to deduce what the silvery blots were supposed to be.

"Why are you calling her 'Major'?" Danny interrupted.

"She's a Major," Ashildr answered. Jenny smiled, not at anybody in particular, a little uneasily.

"Military officer. Of course she is. Ordering men to their deaths, never facing the front herself," Danny said.

"Excuse you, Sergeant," Jenny grew angry at this accusation against her and brought up Danny's own rank, knowing it from conversations with Clara, "I'll have you know that no man or woman or other ever died under my command, not once, not in two-hundred years have I gotten a subordinate killed or ordered anyone to their death." Danny glared.

"She's right. _He_ did, though," Ashildr pointed at the unconscious Austin Cargill, slumped against the staircase in Clara's hallway with the Shadow standing guard. "And I blamed Jenny for it and stabbed her! But it's alright now."

"I can't believe it. You're _gay_ and you never told me."

"Danny…" Clara groaned.

"What else have you lied about?"

"I didn't lie! I never said I was straight!"

"You let me think it."

"Why should it be _her_ problem if you just assume everybody is straight?" Ashildr questioned. Jenny lurked in half-shadows near the door to the cellar; Missy sat in the armchair and just watched the fireworks; the Shadow observed calmly from the hallway with Cargill dozing behind him. Clara Ravenwood and Danny Pink had centre stage, with handcuffed Ashildr interjecting in the dim lighting.

"She should tell me!" he argued.

"She never told _me_ ," Ashildr said. Danny squinted at her.

"How old are you?" he asked.

"She's millions of years old!" Clara protested, "Immortal."

"She looks twelve," Danny said, "You've slept with a twelve-year-old?"

"I died when I was eighteen," Ashildr argued.

"You've slept with an _eighteen-year-old_!?"

"It's not illegal! And I don't actually remember!"

"And how old is _that one_?" Danny pointed at Jenny with his thumb. Jenny would rather not exist.

"I'm two-hundred and eight."

"Practically an infant," Missy commented.

"How many people _have_ you slept with since I died? Did you even wait until my body was cold?" Danny persisted, and Clara seemed offended.

"None of them meant anything," Clara said. In her quest to try not to offend her _ex_ -partner, the result was that she offended her _current_ partner, turning around to explain to Jenny, "I don't mean you – I mean those ones whose names I don't remember, who I never called back."

"How many of 'those ones' are there!? Come on, Clara, how long was it until you started putting it about?" Jenny thought that if _she_ was Danny Pink she might be a little bit happier to see Clara, and especially to see that Clara was moving on and coping with his death. But did he not want her to get over him, ever? Did he want her to wallow forever, cease to function? Have the same nightmares about him that she had about her mother? If he had only looked where he was going when he crossed the road the two of them might still be happy – and the thought of Clara being with somebody else bothered Jenny a whole lot less than the thought of Clara never being happy.

"It's a coping mechanism!" she protested.

"Since _when_? Since you became a lesbian slut?"

"She's always been promiscuous," the Shadow, who was apparently very involved in all this, commented, "Going by my research."

"Why? Have _you_ slept with her?" Danny asked the Shadow. The Shadow didn't have a face, or in fact any kind of facial expression or way to convey non-verbal emotion, but he managed to give Danny a flat, deadpan gaze, staring him down and intimidating him with his opaque, glassy features. Danny turned to Clara and then had the gall to ask, "Have you ever cheated on me?"

Clara couldn't find the words to express her outrage aptly, "I've never cheated on anybody." She had moved on from shouting now. Danny Pink was not living up to the angelic, glittering imprint on her memory, clearly. Jenny remembered now that Danny Pink had given her father a black eye before, had decked him right in front of _both_ the Claras, just for his being married to her in another universe. No longer was he a pristine, unblemished image she kept tucked away inside her cold, non-beating heart.

"And I'm meant to believe that? Do you still love me?"

"I do!" she exclaimed, "I did! I don't know… why are you doing this!?" she rounded on the Mistress.

"Because I thought you had a love that could transcend mutual death," Missy said.

"What do you mean 'mutual'?" Danny interrupted, but Missy ignored him and continued.

"Maybe you would want to carry on your apparently wonderful relationship full of lies and deceit about who you were with and what you were doing even after both of you suffered grisly ends. How was I supposed to know it was a _different_ relationship full of lies and deceit you wanted to carry on?"

"Neither of us were deceiving each other," Jenny said, finally speaking on her own behalf.

"I didn't say anything about deceiving _each other_ , but a little bird told me you were cheating on your husband," Missy said, "A little bird called Captain Jack."

"Why were you speaking to Jack?" Jenny asked. She shrugged.

"He often finds himself drunk in some very unusual places."

Jenny sighed, "Sounds like him…"

"And what if you get bored and decide to cheat on Clara?"

"I've regenerated since then," Jenny said coolly, "And it's different."

"As long as you're on good enough terms with Harkness to get the Arcadian diamond, Harkness," the Shadow remarked.

"Okay, could you call me by some other surname instead of calling us both Harkness?" Jenny asked him.

"When am I getting my diamond, Young?"

"You'll get your diamond when I'm ready to give it to you," she said coolly.

"She's a cheater, then?" Danny addressed Clara, "You can't trust cheaters, Clara. Or people who pay to have other people kidnapped, people who aren't even human."

Ashildr scoffed, " _Clara_ isn't even human."

"It's a good thing Pink doesn't know about how you're a master thief who used to work for the mob," the Shadow said dryly, and Jenny hadn't glared at anybody so much for weeks.

"The MOB, Clara!? Are both of these two criminals!?" he included Ashildr, "What sort of people do you associate with!? I didn't think it could get worse than the Doctor – him putting you in danger, you blindly going along with it, lying to me about what you were up to. And you've been putting it about! Opening your legs for every random bloke who buys you a drink! And you said you _loved_ me, more than anybody else, more than you ever _would_ love anybody else, or were you just lying then, too? Like you lie about everything? Well, go on then, let's see. Let's see if you were lying. Let's see you choose. We could still make it work, my feelings haven't changed – but who's this new flame? Just another firefly in your life? Who do you want? Me or _her_?" It was a hellish spiel he gave Clara, and it was a hellish turmoil she was thrown into, dizzied and nearly stumbling, like the room around her was spinning. Jenny didn't know what to do, whether she ought to comfort Clara or stay quiet, argue with Danny or calmly make her own case, and in her indecision she just remained silent. It wouldn't have made a difference if she was there or not.

The room was filled with thrumming. A noise that washed Jenny with a feeling of relaxation, of brief calmness. It was mechanical and painful, the sound of the breaks being left on, but there was no doubt about it – outside somewhere, just at the edge of Clara's front garden, the TARDIS was warping into being. And the TARDIS brought the Doctor, and the Doctor was the only one who could straighten out everything that had happened and put an end to the chaos.

 **AN: What did you guys think of the 1948 mob storyline? I thought it was one of my better ones, personally, and I enjoyed it a lot more than some of the others, so I'm curious.**


	58. Ground Control to Major Jenny

_Ground Control to Major Jenny_

 _Jenny_

Yes. It was the TARDIS alright. A blue police box from back in the Sixties, standing on the slanted hill on the outskirts of Clara's front garden. They all spied it out of the window when Jenny took it upon herself to pull the curtains back a smidge, dousing the living room in harsh moonlight. Yes, it was the TARDIS. But it wasn't the Alpha TARDIS. That would have been too good to be true.

The last time Jenny had seen 'Old Twelvey' had been when he had caught her hiding in Clara's wardrobe, before they were officially a 'thing.' He had wandered around her flat making deductions about all sorts of stray clues – the two toothbrushes, the peach yoghurts Clara didn't like, sturdy boots she wouldn't be seen dead in, two sets of crockery left out on the draining board. Traces of somebody who could actually cook having been in the kitchen. Then Clara had managed to spin the lie, which he somehow believed, that Jenny was, in fact, a spy, that she perhaps had someone else over – Courtney Woods from a few floors down, maybe, showing up where she wasn't wanted. Jenny had been chased out of the flat. That was the last time she saw Clara before she died, and it made her angry now that their time had been cut short like that, that Clara had sunk into her melancholy undead-ness with a job that left her unsatisfied and none of her old contacts, even if they _were_ a couple now. Would they even be a couple for much longer, though, with Danny Pink, and Ashildr, all in the same room causing this kerfuffle?

In the instant she saw the Beta Twelfth Doctor all of these thoughts ran through her head, and an irrational fury that Eleven had changed into this wispy old man instead of her young, kind mother rose within her. By her silence and her cold expression, they all deduced what she saw.

"Is that my boyfriend showing up when he's not invited?" Missy called, "He just can't get enough of me." Ashildr almost seemed liable to hit the Master in a moment, and Jenny thought that she might not do anything to stop her if she tried. Jenny felt differently about Ashildr now that she had been defending her to Danny, and felt that, even including Clara, Ashildr may be her only ally in the room. Funny considering the only other time they had met she had run her through with a samurai sword.

"How did he find me?" Clara asked, knowing who it was, then she turned to Missy, "And how did _you_ find me?"

"That man you have unconscious on your stairs told me," she shrugged. Jenny cast a glare at Austin Cargill's sleeping body, and hoped his wife wouldn't show up to try and rescue him any time soon. The Shadow was more than a match for Ashley Cargill, though.

"He and his wife have been leaving all sorts of people clues about your whereabouts, Clara," Ashildr reminded her, "He was the one who told me to come to Hollowmire to slay a dangerous vampire."

"A _what_!?" Danny exclaimed, but nobody answered him.

"I _am_ sorry about killing you, by the way," Ashildr said to Jenny again, "But you _did_ sort of steal my girlfriend. So it evens out. Considering she's pretty great, really."

"Well I'll find out exactly who he's been talking to and what he's been saying when he wakes up," Jenny said quietly, looking at Cargill with a great amount of darkness, which she knew Danny noticed and probably didn't cast her in a very good light.

"I think finding out what the Doctor wants is the more immediate issue, Major." Ashildr and Clara were both looking at her as though she was the one in charge.

"What?" she asked.

"Do something," Clara said, sounding desperate. Jenny let the curtain drop back down.

" _Me_ do something? Like what? I can't go out there, he'll recognise me," Jenny said.

"He's your father," Danny said.

"He isn't my father, I'm from a different universe," she snapped, then said to Clara, "If anything, you should be the one to speak to him."

"She's right," Ashildr said, "He'll know me. And obviously he knows Eva Braun over there."

Missy scoffed at this, "Eva Braun was a hussy. But she can't go out there either, he'll kill her as soon as he figures out what she is. _I'd_ kill her if she wasn't so cute."

"…Thanks…" Clara mumbled, while Danny Pink asked something about what Clara supposedly was which, again, did not get answered, "Why can't the Shadow go speak to him?"

"She's not paying me enough to do that," the Shadow said, arms still crossed, still watching, still waiting for his Arcadian Diamond.

"We could ring Esther. Get her to come up?" Clara suggested, "He'd recognise Sally."

"Why are you avoiding the Doctor? Why would he kill you?" Danny persisted.

"Esther's just as undead and unnatural as you are, she can't come," Jenny said, "Can you hear him?"

"Not from here," Clara answered after a pause, "I'm not Rory. I can't hear _that_ well." In the background of this conversation Danny kept asking incessant questions, questions about Clara's hearing, Clara's alleged death-sentence if she were to leave the house, the word 'vampire,' the claim of her being 'undead and unnatural.'

"Oh, be quiet Rupert, the grown-ups are talking," the Shadow told him coldly. Jenny didn't understand why the Shadow called him 'Rupert,' but Danny was stunned to silence by it. The Shadow knew all sorts of things about their little sect. It was a bit creepy. Jenny opened the curtains again and peered down the street, seeing Twelve wandering around with some device in his hand that was flashing and aimed in the vague direction of Clara's lonely house. He was clearly looking for something, but what? Or who?

"…Maybe we _should_ get Sally?" Clara suggested.

"Just because you fancy her is no reason to go waking her up at four in the morning," Jenny said.

"She's always awake at four in the morning. And so what if he recognises her? She can just tell him the truth – that her fiancé left her so she moved away from London to come to Yorkshire," Clara said. But it didn't matter, because that was when Jenny got an idea, and looked at Clara for a long few moments. Under her scrutiny, Clara shifted a little uncomfortably, "…What?"

"Maybe there _is_ a way you can go out there," Jenny said, "Just as long as you don't _walk_ out there. If you _flew_ out there, out of the back door-"

"No," Clara said immediately, while Danny piped up again asking how the hell Clara would be able to fly.

"Oh, come on, Clara, it'll be easy, he wouldn't even see you, you could stay way above him, and it's a foggy out," Jenny said. The storm that had been raging when they had left Hollowmire that evening had, in their absence, died down, a heavy fog settling over the moors outside.

"No!" Clara continued.

"Just fly out and eavesdrop – he's talking to himself, after all," Jenny said, "You'll be safe. I wouldn't let him hurt you if he tried, regardless of him recognising me."

"Unless that machine he has is some sort of Dracula-detector," Clara said.

" _Dracula-detector_!?" Danny exclaimed.

"Then just stay high above him, he won't have anything to catch you with, he doesn't think that far ahead," Jenny said.

"Are you implying about her what _I_ think you're implying…?" Ashildr asked carefully, "The last time I saw you, you said you _couldn't_ turn into a-" There was a loud, funny noise outside and a flash, and Jenny looked back out of the window to see that Twelve had tried to come into the garden and had been rebuffed by the fancy security system Oswin and her boyfriend had installed a while ago*.

"Please, Clara, for me?" Jenny pleaded. In their company, and Clara's current crisis of conscience, Jenny didn't expect begging Clara to turn into a bat for her would actually work. What shocked Jenny was that it _did_. Clara didn't even register that Danny Pink was asking her questions, all of them questions, when she finally said fine, and Jenny went to open one of the kitchen windows; there was no way Twelve would remain unaware if he saw a huge bat flying out of the front door.

Clara's transformation into a bat was practically instantaneous. You could blink and miss it. Danny Pink saw enough of it to scream, though, which Jenny thought was nearly amusing. A seasoned soldier, war veteran, screaming at the sight of a bat? Despite all of her recent practicing, though, Clara still wasn't all that great at being a bat. She flew right into the side of the window first and toppled, and Jenny had to hold out her hands to catch her.

"Be careful," she said quietly, the Bat crawling over the backs of her hands. She held her arm with her bad thumb out of the window, like she was releasing a stray moth, and Clara flew out into the night. Typical vampire.

"She's not very good at that, is she?" Missy commented. Jenny scowled at her and returned to the living room, where Danny Pink might as well be having a heart attack if it wasn't for the fact he was already a hologram. "He's lost his breath a bit, hasn't he? Do you have a set of bellows? Pump him back up again?"

"What the _hell_ was that!?" Danny demanded, "What just happened!? Who is that pretending to be my girlfriend!?"

"If I promise not to run away can I take these handcuffs off?" Ashildr asked, a question Jenny was more inclined to answer than anything Danny was saying.

"What? What do you mean can _you_ take them off?" Jenny frowned, and Ashildr did some fancy movement with her hands and the handcuffs just slipped off. She held them up for Jenny to see, and Jenny snatched them. "How did you do that?"

"I'm trained in escapology," she shrugged. Jenny sighed and then tossed the handcuffs back to the Shadow, who caught them easily.

"Fine, but don't run away or the Shadow will come and get you again. No Arcadian Diamond if you escape," she said, but she looked at the Shadow while she spoke.

"I'd _never_ run away from _you_ , Major," Ashildr said sultrily, which Jenny was unnerved by.

"…What's your rank?" Jenny asked. She had never asked Ashildr that, all she knew is Ashildr had been part of the Homeworld Alliance Ground Force in the Polaris Death Charge.

"Lieutenant," she answered.

"Oh my god!" Danny Pink yelled, "Will somebody tell me what the f…" He was about to swear, but couldn't manage it, " _What's_ going on?"

"It isn't _that_ complicated, only that after you died Clara became friends with benefits with Jenny and then at one point Clara died because she took a chronolock from somebody else when she wasn't supposed to, which _I_ couldn't remove, so she got herself killed. It was her own fault, being reckless and trying to act more like the Doctor. After that he brought her back frozen in time, but we erased all of his memories of her and travelled together in a stolen TARDIS for nearly ten years, until she had to go back to the Time Lords and accept her death," Ashildr explained, vaguely filling in the gaps of Clara's memories. "Then her parallel universe doppelgänger, Jenny's stepmother, found out about it and decided to use the smartest girl in the universe to resurrect her. And then they went to Whitby in the 1880s and she got bitten by a vampire and has been living here in hiding from the Doctor ever since."

"Did you say _vampire_!?"

"Amazing, that's the only part of the story he picks up on," Missy shook her head.

"You were with Clara for _ten years_?" Jenny asked in disbelief.

"I wouldn't say I was… _with_ her," Ashildr began, not looking at anybody in particular into space, her eyes a little unfocused, "She was sort of, somewhere else a lot of the time. Since you broke her heart."

Missy fake gasped and then sat forward with her chin on her hands eagerly, "Lesbian drama!"

"I never broke her heart!" Jenny argued, "I wouldn't hurt Clara, not ever."

"But you'd hurt other people, I'm sure," Danny said, "And what about her? Is she a killer now? Does she drink blood?"

"It was after I told her you were responsible for the massacre on Deftan," Ashildr said, ignoring Danny. Again. Everybody was ignoring Danny, "That was why she never called you in those ten years to tell you what had happened to her. Clara was never really with me; she's always been with you. Even if you didn't know it." Muttering the word 'vampire' to himself, Danny Pink lapsed into silence, and Jenny did the same thing, though her quietening was the result of this revelation about Clara's feelings for her, one Clara herself was no longer aware of. She had been hung up on her for all the time she had been with Ashildr?

"Then why are you not more angry at me? If you're so in love with Clara?"

"It was a long time ago," Ashildr said cryptically, "And anyway, I already stabbed you through the heart once. I could always stab the other one to match, Major?" Jenny grimaced. She would rather not get stabbed again, even if getting stabbed _did_ mean her fresh bullet wound and her broken thumb would heal instantly.

But she remembered something else, spawning from Missy's earlier comment about playing draughts with Thirteen, and turned to speak to the Master, instead.

"Have you ever heard of Laophis?" Jenny changed the subject completely.

"What-phis?"

"Laophis. The planet." Missy shrugged. Jenny narrowed her eyes.

"Why do you ask, child?"

"I'm not a child," she said coolly.

"No, the years in your eyes attests to that," Missy said, holding her gaze, but that comment made Jenny self-conscious and she looked away for a second.

"What about Fiovis Ichors?" she asked now, and the Master went sour.

"Where have you found a Fiovis Ichor?"

"On Laophis. Mum destroyed it. Cargill and his wife have been using it for years to keep eternally young, that's why they look so similar – because it changes your appearance," Jenny explained**, "You were playing Connect 4 with her that morning and you dropped the hint, told her to go to Laophis and investigate something to do with geology."

"Well. I think that what's happened _here_ is we've met in the wrong order – but I'll be sure to pass the message along the next time your mother and I are entangled," she said wryly. There was a moment of nothing before Jenny realised what this meant, and she almost staggered, like she had literally been punched in the face.

"It _was_ my fault…" she said hollowly, then raised her eyes to Ashildr, "The Polaris Death Charge. _I_ told Missy about the Fiovis Ichor, she told mum, the Doctor and I went to Laophis and destroyed it and that was what made the Cargills come after us for revenge. The reason Cargill infiltrated the Alliance to destroy my reputation…"

"You can't blame yourself for butterfly effects, Young," the Shadow advised.

"Cargill killed them, Major. Not you."

"Why do you keep calling me Major?" Jenny questioned abruptly.

"I'm being optimistic about your inevitable rank-reinstatement after you finally turn that sorry excuse for a man over to the Homeworld Alliance," Ashildr said, "You're not really a major, not anymore, Major."

"He sent a million people to their deaths while _I_ was distracted fixing the stupid sanitation system," she complained, clenching and unclenching her left fist with the desire to hit something very hard. But she couldn't break her other hand as well.

"Pssht. You're as bad as your father," Missy said dismissively, leaning back in the chair again, "Get over yourself."

"I'd kick his teeth in right now if I wasn't a pacifist," Jenny grumbled, looking at Cargill on the stairs. Danny laughed coldly, nervously, the hallmarks of some kind of breakdown.

"A pacifist? With that gun?" he pointed at the rifle lying down comfortably on the sofa.

"That's only Josephine," she said again, "Josephine is my alligator rifle." Then she remembered something and her eyes widened, and she muttered a watered-down swear word that could never really be an _actual_ swear word, since Jenny Harkness no longer swore, following Esther Drummond's shining example. She fetched the transdimensional bag from where it lay in the hall, thrown off earlier while she and Clara had been… _busying themselves_. She reached into it all the way to her shoulder and found a paper bag, something cold inside it covered in more paper wrappings, and this enormous parcel she pulled out.

"What _is_ that?" Danny asked, watching her take it through into the kitchen.

"An alligator fillet," Jenny said, "I was going to marinate it but I got… distracted… have to put it in the fridge." And she did put it in the fridge, too, rammed it in there on one of Clara's many, empty shelves, because Clara never really stocked an awful lot of food.

"You hunt alligators!?"

"Oh, alright, Mr Morality, why don't _you_ try living in a swamp for five years without hunting any animals, hmm?" she countered, "They're not an endangered species, and they make good meatballs."

"Did you really ask Clara to choose between you and Jenny before she left?" Ashildr asked, "The ridiculousness of that question is only just hitting me _now_."

"It's not ridiculous. She knows who she'll choose. Just because I'm a hologram and she's a… _thing_ , doesn't mean it can't work." Ashildr laughed harshly.

"Sorry – you think-? You _genuinely_ think that anyone – including Clara – would choose _you_ over _Jenny_? Have you _met_ Jenny? Have you _looked_ at Jenny for more than five seconds? You don't stand a chance if you pit yourself against her," Ashildr said scathingly.

"And maybe don't call her a 'thing' if you want to be with her so badly," Jenny said.

"She's a creature."

"She's _my_ girlfriend. Not yours. Not anymore. And she can make her own decisions without you trying to control her, and not accepting her for what she is." Clara was often worried that her vampirism may turn Jenny away from her, may make her re-evaluate her commitment and her feelings, and here was Danny Pink making all of those fears a reality.

"You want to be with her again, but you're repulsed by the fact she's a vampire? Honestly, I think Clara joining the hordes of the undead is only an improvement – her bone structure gets more intense by the day, something to do with her transformation, I assume. Her jawline alone, and I barely even noticed those collarbones of hers before," then Ashildr laughed briefly, "I'm kidding, though. Of course I noticed them. I've licked them." Jenny turned her nose up at the thought. "Anyway, what was my original point? Oh, yeah. Jenny's amazing."

"You've met me _once_ and you stabbed me."

"And then I did some research," Ashildr said, "It's harder to find things out about you than the Doctor, since you change your name a lot. I'm a big fan of your smuggling operation in Berlin. Kitzler, wasn't it?"

"Mmm," Jenny confirmed, but she didn't say much more than that.

"She has pretty good reflexes, as well," Ashildr spoke to Danny, Missy and the Shadow watching again, "Always a sign that someone is good in bed, that level of agility. Watch." Without warning, Ashildr swung a punch at Jenny's head, which Jenny barely managed to dodge. She did dodge it, though, and Ashildr's other hand came to give her an uppercut she also avoided.

"What are you doing!?" she shouted, Ashildr coming for her, reminding her of the first time they met.

"Making you look good in front of Danny!" Ashildr said, Jenny ducking and weaving out of her way and backing towards the kitchen, sometimes hitting away Ashildr's kicks but otherwise remaining entirely defensive. This amused the others, until Jenny stumbled on the leg of the armchair, unprepared for a fist fight, and another punch came for her face. She grabbed Ashildr's arm with as much strength as she could with her weakened left arm and broken right hand, and swung Ashildr around her, managing to throw her to the floor.

But what followed was a lapse of concentration on Jenny's part, Jenny thinking that Ashildr would stop now she had ended up on the floor. The feeling of Ashildr wrenching on her battered, stitched-up thumb was more painful than getting shot a few hours ago, and she involuntarily shrieked when it happened, and then Ashildr was torn away with great force while Jenny staggered and almost fell to her knees.

"Don't you _dare_ hurt her," she heard Clara speak, and looked up to see her girlfriend holding Ashildr by the throat, lifting her off her feet. Danny looked on in horror. "You might be a million years old, but you're still human enough, and I haven't had a drink for a while." Jenny hadn't ever seen Clara threaten somebody before as she held onto her bandaged thumb. Her eyes were practically black.

"Clara…" Danny said, staring at her, but she didn't seem to hear him.

Ashildr managed to speak hoarsely with Clara's hand gripping her, "Oh lord, lead us from the unreal to the real; from darkness to light; from death to immortality. May there be-" Clara dropped her immediately and clutched her hands to her ears, and Jenny realised Ashildr had begun to say a prayer. Clara tentatively removed her hands, and then Ashildr began, "In the name of the father, the son and the holy-"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!" Clara covered her ears again, "Don't pray at me."

"I'll throw garlic bread at you if you lay a hand on me like that again," Ashildr said coldly, "I'm already immortal, I don't need to add bloodlust and an inability to sunbathe to my list of traits." Fists hammered against Clara's front door, Old Twelvey yelling through the letterbox that he had heard somebody scream within the house.

"Look, you've brought the mob to my door now," Missy said, Jenny watching Clara carefully as Ashildr reaffirmed herself, "Just when things were starting to get interesting and I thought she might bite somebody."

"Clara wouldn't bite anyone," Jenny snapped, then she spoke softly and quietly to Clara, "How did you get back so quickly?"

"…I'm a vampire," she said, "I can move quickly. I heard you scream. Nothing else mattered. He can march right in here for all I care, as long as you're not hurt."

"You're a monster," Danny Pink declared, looking at Clara like he was seeing her for the first time. Twelve kept banging on the door. Clara's expression became broken.

"What does the Doctor want, though?" Missy interrupted, and it took Clara a second to answer.

"Oh. I told you he might come looking for that bike, Jen," Clara said coolly, addressing Jenny, though her tone of voice was more to do with the others in the room, "The anti-gravity one I have in the garage I kept. He was muttering to himself that he couldn't remember where he left it. He didn't see me."

"I can't believe you would drink someone's blood," Danny continued, not caring about this, " _Blood_ , Clara! A real person's blood!"

"I'm not sure if Ashildr counts as a real person anymore," the Shadow said.

"Oi! I'm more of a real person than you, you're just a swarm," Ashildr argued. Missy was getting to her feet, collecting her things, Twelve continuing to hammer on the door. Oswin's security was designed specifically against him, though, so his attempts to use the sonic screwdriver to get in were futile.

"It's awful. I told you, Clara. I don't do weird," Danny said.

"I'd rather not wait around until he finds his way in, that's enough entertainment for one night, I think," Missy said, "Perhaps I'll enlist Danny here as my own companion. Do you know I once launched his frozen heart out of a cannon at your mother?" She spoke to Jenny, but it was Danny who was outraged by this.

"Yes," Jenny said stiffly. Thirteen had told her about that before.

"You're just going to leave then? You literally just came here in some sort of attempt to fuck up my life, did you?" Clara asked.

"Isn't it _after_ life now?" Missy asked, and Clara scoffed. Twelve still battered his fists against the door, yelling that he was coming to help whatever defenceless woman had just been attacked by the imaginary motorbike thief. Then again, Jenny had already practically stolen a Porsche that day, so perhaps she was being hypocritical.

"Don't come here again, not ever," Clara said, "If you even dare, I'll bite you, then you'd need the blood of a Time Lord to live, and even if you fed on the Doctor, he'd still die eventually and then you would as well. It's a curse."

"Maybe I'll just drink the blood of your pretty little girlfriend," Missy said.

"I suppose I'll just have to break your neck with my fangs then. Headless Time Lords can't regenerate." Missy narrowed her eyes, Danny stammering at this show of threats from Clara, who was usually so gentle and so opposed to violence and conflict, perhaps against her vampiric nature.

"You really are a monster. An animal. I don't ever want to-" Jenny presumed Danny was going to say he did not ever want to see Clara again, didn't want to even hear anyone speak her name, didn't even want to remember that Clara Oswald had ever existed and been a significant part of his life. But Danny's words were cut off as he was dragged away with Missy in a blue blur of light; a teleport beacon. Typical. She didn't even care where they went.

"That's a shame. She has a huge bounty on her head I could have collected," the Shadow said. Clara stared at the floor. Jenny needed to talk to her, but they needed to be alone. She began to say something, but Old Twelvey crashed through the door. Apparently Oswin's security system didn't bank on him just kicking it down, and now Adam Mitchell was going to have to pay for a new lock.

"Your house isn't very secure," Ashildr remarked.

"What's all this?" Twelve asked, looking around, looking face to face. His eyes passed over Clara and he said, "Aren't you a waitress?"

"I beg your pardon?" she asked.

"You just posed as a waitress once. To check his memory wipe worked," Ashildr explained quietly.

"I've never had a memory wipe," the Doctor declared, "But you! The Viking. Trouble. That's what you are, trouble, and…" his eyes finally found Jenny. Time was, she may have felt some attempt within her to scrounge a sense of relatability from this man, but she had met her mother, and she loved her absent mother dearly, so she no longer felt anything when she looked at him, other than anger that he had gotten Clara killed by setting a shoddy example. "Jenny? Is it really you? It's been… I don't know… thousands of years…"

Jenny didn't know how to answer. She didn't need to. A thudding sound accompanied the rolling of the Doctor's eyes back into his head, and he crumpled to the floor with the Shadow standing behind him, the Shadow who had just hit him very hard around the back of his skull. Jenny winced, knowing what that felt like. Jenny stared at him, still tacitly in charge.

"I'm sorry, Clara," she said finally, "…I have to call Jack. Get him to bring the TARDIS down here, and the diamond for the Shadow. Not to mention enough retcon to brainwash an elephant so that this idiot doesn't remember seeing me… go give him his motorbike back while he's here. My dad has the same one and he's never used it, he'll let you have it, promise." Clara didn't smile, not really, just sighed, and went to do what Jenny asked while Jenny took out her phone to call down her ex-husband to rescue them all.

* _chapter 926_

** _chapter 949_


	59. Another Girl Another Planet XIX

_Another Girl Another Planet XIX_

 _Jenny_

Jenny Harkness hadn't even returned to the TARDIS for more than ten seconds before she walked into Nerve Centre and was attacked by someone who looked just like her girlfriend, but who limped towards her and launched herself into Jenny's arms. Jenny was taken aback by Oswin basically jumping at her with her cane and her fake leg.

"And you wonder why people think you're in love with her," somebody remarked coolly, Jenny not even having time to take in who else was in the room. Or _why_ anybody was in the room, for that matter – had Jack announced her homecoming and gathered the crew at four in the morning? She hoped not.

"I'm not in love with her, Ni," Oswin said pointedly, letting Jenny go finally. The Shadow had gone, given his Arcadian diamond by Jack, leaving Jack to be the one to drag Austin Cargill's limp body into the room by the elbows as though he were disposing of a corpse. Ashildr lingered at the back of the group, while Clara Ravenwood stayed right at Jenny's shoulder, silent and melancholy. She didn't want to say, but Oswin's hug had made the bullet wound on her arm agitated, and now she was trying not to wince.

In response to Oswin's claim she was not, in fact, in love with Jenny, Nios rolled her eyes, sitting on the sofa. It was an odd collective, she thought; Rory Williams, Martha Jones, Oswin, Adam Mitchell. And, the person she was most grateful to see, her father, Eleven, who looked unsure of whether or not he was allowed to hug her. She ultimately put him out of his misery and wrapped her arms around him for a few seconds, before she asked what was going on and why there was such a conglomeration in the living room.

"What's going on?" Martha asked suspiciously, not knowing who Ashildr was, nor Cargill.

"Isn't that Austin Cargill?" Nios asked, then she asked the Doctor, "Wasn't he in 1893, trying to kill Thomas Edison*?"

"He's a… friend of mine," Jenny lied. It would take too long to explain what Cargill was doing there, really, and they knew she wasn't telling the truth, but nobody really pursued it. She suspected that her father might at some point, though, but they all seemed preoccupied. "Just ignore him. He fell asleep. Why are you all awake?"

"The cat is giving birth," Rory answered. He seemed tired. He had probably been woken up.

"What!?" Jenny exclaimed, and Adam Mitchell pointed out for her an old cardboard box in the corner. When she squinted at it, she could just about make out the ginger fur-ball within that was the heavily pregnant Princess Sparkle Tutu. It made groaning noises, and she flinched. She was sometimes very glad she couldn't get pregnant. Apart from if a facehugger was involved. "Are you all just watching it?"

"Yeah, it's gross," Oswin said, beaming. Jenny didn't say anything, just turned to Clara to speak to her very softly, touching her arm for a moment.

"Maybe you ought to go wait in my room? You might unnerve the cat if you're in here, and you can't go home while the lock is broken," she half-whispered. Clara did not say a word, she was still very out of it after the events of the last few hours of the evening, and probably dreadfully tired. She nodded and assented, drifting away in her quiet, vampiric fashion to leave the room. Jenny watched her go with a rather forlorn look on her face.

"Why is Clara staying?" the Doctor inquired. He was in pyjamas. Presumably he had been disturbed by the chaos of Princess Sparkle Tutu going into labour – it was rather a dramatic occurrence. At least, going by the way the cat was growling, it seemed that way.

"The lock on her front door is broken," Jenny answered.

"…Why?" Oswin asked, "What have you done?"

"I haven't done anything!"

"The lady doth protest too much, methinks," Ashildr muttered, and only then was she noticed by the people in the room.

"Who's that?" Eleven asked first, eyeing Ashildr with not unwarranted suspicion. She was a very suspicious-looking character, generally. Jenny sighed, forced to answer.

"This is Ashildr. An ex-girlfriend of Clara's. She's the one who stabbed me the last time I regenerated," Jenny explained briefly. She didn't think that through. She should not have told her father that Ashildr had killed her before, because the fury that rose in his eyes almost scared her – and Jenny was never frightened of the Doctor. "But – it's alright now, dad," she said quickly, stepping between Ashildr and the Doctor, "I told you about it, Cargill framed me for the Polaris Death Charge. Ashildr stabbed me because she thought I was responsible. But now she's going to come with Cargill and I to the Homeworld Alliance in the morning so that I can have my name cleared."

"I am?" Ashildr, who had heard none of this, asked.

"Yes," Jenny said through gritted teeth, "That's alright, isn't it, father?" The Doctor narrowed his eyes and glared at Ashildr.

"If you hurt her again I'll throw you into space," he said definitively.

"That's if Clara doesn't beat you to it," Ashildr remarked, "And what kind of company am _I_ in?"

"Oh," Jenny introduced the others when prompted, "This is Rory, Martha, Nios, Adam Mitchell, my dad – obviously – and Oswin, the smartest girl in the universe. Please don't talk to her."

"Why can't she talk to me?"

"No one wants to talk to you," Nios quipped, and Oswin pretended to be offended.

"What's with the scarf?" Oswin changed the subject, nodding at Jenny and her soft, woollen scarf she had put back on now, along with her fancy new long coat. The broken Porsche and the jukebox were still on Clara's driveway in Hollowmire.

"…Clara knitted it."

"What are those blobs on it?"

"They're bats."

Oswin squinted, "Are they?"

"Yes, shush, it was made with love," Jenny snapped at her, "Leave it alone." Oswin raised her eyebrows.

"Well _you're_ in a mood."

"Yes. I am," was all she said, "I'd go to the Alliance right now, but I'm tired and worried about Clara."

"What's happened to Clara?" Adam Mitchell asked, looking away from the yowling cat for a moment. And then Jenny sighed, and decided she had best just tell them lest Rory overhear certain things later and get the wrong end of the stick. So, as quickly as she could, she explained the bare minimum; the bare minimum being everything that had happened _after_ the Master had shown up at Clara's house, not mentioning at all her business with the Irish mob.

"He called her a monster? That's awful," Martha said.

"Almost makes me feel bad for the woman who stole my wife," Jack grumbled.

"Shut up, Jack," Jenny said coldly, shaking her head, "I'm not in the mood to put up with you if you're going to be pathetic."

"Bloody hell, calm down," Martha told her, "I thought this version of you was supposed to be nice? Or have you regenerated again?"

"No, I have not regenerated, I've just had a bad day," she said. Getting shot, failing to save the alien possessing the form of Kitty Winthrop from being eaten alive by an alligator, then Danny Pink, Old Twelvey and Missy showing up… it was too much to handle. Not to mention her paranoia about Clara's feelings for her cropping up now, as she worried if maybe something between them had been broken in the last few hours. If only she hadn't gone to get that coat… "What have I missed?"

"Shitloads," Oswin answered, "Nios is a lesbian."

"You already texted me and told me that," Jenny said.

"Stop telling everyone I'm a lesbian," Nios said coldly.

"Stop being such a lesbian then," Oswin shrugged, "And I'm basically the god of the Cybermen now."

"Yes, a venture I wholly disapprove of…" Eleven muttered, "I went to a theme park. Also, Clara's father wants to meet you." Jenny was confused, until he specified. "In the Alphaverse. That one. Your… step-grandfather. He's very interested in what sort of a woman I'm related to."

"Great."

"We ended the Manifest crisis, as well, with some help from our old friend Liam Kent," Martha said, "Not that Oswin enjoyed speaking to him much."

"He just said a load of cryptic crap I don't care for," she muttered, though Jenny sensed there was something deeper at work. She wouldn't be surprised if Oswin saw a lot of herself in Liam Kent.

"Cryptic stuff like what?" Jenny asked, not wanting to repeat the word 'crap.' Oswin then made a very big show of clearing her throat to begin this story, though Jenny would rather quit the small-talk and just go find Clara as soon as possible.

"I'll repeat it, shall I? Perhaps my eidetic memory is good for something after all. Kent said, 'How is my creation doing?' when he was locked in his cell, and Martha said locking him away like that was inhumane, then he said, 'Drummond was my greatest failure, you know. I'd love for one of you to ask me what my greatest success is.' Elliott told him to shut up, Martha asked what success, Kent said something about me being Clara's favourite, and he didn't say much else until he sang, 'under the name of Jones,' at us. And I left," Oswin said.

"Hold on, he said what? His greatest success under the name of Jones?" Captain Jack interrupted, a note of desperation and urgency coming through in his voice. Oswin just sat idly by on the sofa now, after relinquishing Jenny from her earlier hug.

"Yeah. Probably just talking about Martha."

"N-no," Jack said, "Esther's his failure. Because she's not properly brought back to life. So… his success… Jones…" and then Jack grabbed his coat from over one of the tall dining chairs where it had been left and dashed out of the room. They all watched him leave.

"He's been acting so odd lately," Martha sighed, glancing at Jenny when she said that.

"Oh, I'm sorry for not wanting to stay in a dead-end relationship," Jenny quipped.

"Time to look at your thumb, I think," Martha countered, getting irritated at Jenny's sullen attitude. Jenny groaned.

"Why do you have to look at it? It's fine." It hurt.

"Is it? I pulled on it quite hard earlier," Ashildr said.

"Yeah – let's not tell my dad that you tried to re-break my thumb, shall we?" Jenny said as Martha went towards the kitchen cabinets to fetch a pair of scissors to cut off these bandages. "Do you have a death wish?" Ashildr was not the Doctor's biggest fan, obviously. She just crossed her arms. Rory and Adam still paid more attention to the cat, Nios merely observed, Oswin waited to make an inappropriate comment at any opportunity. The Doctor was watching Ashildr closely.

"C'mere," Martha said, holding out her hand to take Jenny's. Jenny relented, holding up her hand for Martha, who made a face, "It doesn't half stink."

"Where have you been sticking your fingers now, Jenny?" Oswin asked crudely. Jenny didn't respond.

"I just haven't changed the bandages," she said to Martha.

"That's grim." Then she began to cut through the wrappings carefully, not with as much aggression as Jenny feared she might use. She did not want Martha to find out about her new bullet wound, she'd rather get shot all over again than face Martha's wrath. Martha made things explode with her mind, and couldn't always control it. Understandably, that frightened Jenny. It would frighten anybody.

The thumb was revealed to the open air for the first time in nearly a week, and it was a sorry sight indeed. It was still a little swollen now, and she could feel it throb when she looked at it, the craggy, white scar from where the stitches had been blotched purple on the edges, the skin on the tip of her thumb a bit yellow. It didn't sit right, either; when she relaxed her right hand, her thumb was stuck awkwardly pushed back, and she daren't try and make a fist with it. Just the sight made her flinch.

Oswin nosily peered at it, and then said, "Flek made Mitchell a brace for his bad ankle the other day. If you want, I can use the same principles and material to make you one? Didn't all the ligaments get torn?"

"Yes, they did," Martha said, "Broke the proximal phalange and the metacarpal, dislocated it at the basilar joint. Ligaments destroyed. I told you, until you regenerate your thumb won't move properly again."

"That's nasty, how did you do that?" Ashildr asked, "I wouldn't have touched it if I knew it was that bad."

"I didn't do it, it was done _to_ me, by a very angry Ukrainian," Jenny said, "A long story. Involves mutants and Chernobyl. Don't go to Chernobyl."

"I'll do you a brace," Oswin said.

"Are you not going to put more bandages on it?" Jenny asked Martha.

"No, just make sure you wash it, and the brace is a good idea, you do that," Martha told Oswin, then turned back to Jenny, "Wear it during the day, leave it off when you're asleep. I have a friend who's in physiotherapy, I'll ask them for what exercises you can do to help it heal."

"Brilliant," she muttered, "I have to go to talk to Clara."

"What about Cargill?" Ashildr asked as she made to leave.

"Uh…" she thought, then said to the Doctor, "You know the room Kent was locked up in last week? And where Clara was shut in after she got bitten by a vampire?"

"Yes. It's my ship."

"Show Ashildr where it is," then back to Ashildr herself, "You take Cargill there and you don't let him out of your sight or leave him at all until the morning, otherwise the Shadow will be after you again. I need you as a witness to the Alliance that I'm telling the truth about him scapegoating me or I'll be arrested on sight. You don't leave him until I come to get you. Feel free to knock him back out if he tries to talk, though. Understood?" Then Ashildr made a show of saluting very formally.

"Yes, Major," she said. Jenny cringed at this display.

"Don't salute," she shook her head slightly, and Martha laughed. "What?"

"The Doctor is always telling people off for saluting him." Jenny met Eleven's eyes for a moment.

"Sorry," she said to him, "I can't stay to talk. I have to check if Clara's okay. You understand." And she left promptly, before another word could be spoken to her about anything that had happened that day, not wanting to stay and watch Princess Sparkle Tutu produce her kittens, not even curious about where Jack had run off to post-haste.

Jenny had not seen her bedroom at all for nearly two weeks; that was how long her residency at her girlfriend's had lasted. But now she seemed destined to break that streak, and looked at the sky-blue walls and the soft cream sheets with a sense of mild disdain. Or maybe that was just her bad mood. Her bad mood, however, melted away when she saw Clara sitting down on the floor against the wall, head hidden in her arms. Then Jenny just stood, quite useless. She had never been good at this kind of thing; _emotions_. She thought, in retrospect, she must get that from her father somewhere along the line. What a pitiful trait to inherit.

"Clara…" was all she managed to say, and Clara looked up. Her eyes were red rings from crying, the black irises almost indistinguishable from her pupils. Jenny didn't know if Clara wanted her there, not really, but she took a risk and a deep breath and went to sit by her side. Clara did not object.

"He called me a monster," Clara stammered. Wordlessly, Jenny put an arm around Clara and pulled her into a tight hug, holding her shoulders while she began to cry again.

"He's gone now," Jenny said softly, "He was just a ghost, that's all."

"But he wasn't just a ghost, was he? He was him. He was Danny."

"Missy could have done anything to him," Jenny said, "The dead should always stay pretty in our memories." She didn't believe her own words, though. She had never thought a lot of Danny Pink, and rejecting Clara now on the basis that she was a vampire didn't seem too farfetched. And she thought Clara might know this, too, but pointing it out wouldn't do either of them any good.

"I feel guilty."

"What could you ever have to feel guilty about?" Jenny was surprised, and spoke with more tenderness than she had ever spoken to anyone with before. Clara sat up enough to look at Jenny, who couldn't stand to see her cry and who wiped her tears away with her unbroken hand.

"Because he asked me to choose."

"You don't have to choose," Jenny assured her.

"That's not what I mean. I mean that I loved him, at the time I never… I didn't think I would ever love anybody else, I thought the void he left when he died would stay there forever, and it wouldn't heal, that it would grow until there was nothing left of me anymore. That I might never recover, it would be like when mum died all over again…"

"And you don't have to pick," Jenny repeated.

"No, you're not… I feel guilty because I said all those things, and I meant them, but it wasn't a choice. I didn't even think about… it's just you. You're everything now. I could never leave you for anyone, or anything, and I feel like it _should_ have been a choice because I said all of those things…" So Ashildr had been right in her prediction of Clara's 'choice.' Jenny didn't say anything, she couldn't, she just stared. To her great surprise, Clara smiled. "Look at you. You're always so oblivious to everything."

"What?"

But Clara did not answer that, she put her head back on Jenny's shoulder and began to say something else about Danny Pink. "He always told me he didn't do weird. A vampire must be too much for him."

"He's shallow," Jenny answered coolly. Clara didn't speak. Jenny sighed. "Are you okay to stay here tonight? You could always go to Sally and Esther's."

"I want to be with you. You won't go, will you? In the night?"

"I'm not going to leave you," she said firmly, "Not if you want me to stay. Ashildr is going to watch Cargill until the morning, then I'll go to the Homeworld Alliance tomorrow to try and clear my name. But I'm tired, and I want to make sure you're going to be alright."

"But if you want to see your father-"

"My father is twelve-hundred years old, he can wait a few hours to speak to me, I'm sure. Besides, he ought to keep an eye on the cat."

"Why?"

"Exposure to the time vortex is what creates Time Lords, especially when they're in the womb. That's what happened to River," Jenny said, "Who _knows_ what Princess Sparkle Tutu is going to produce? Regenerating kittens?"

"I suppose what they say about cats having nine lives is true after all." Jenny laughed for the first time in hours. For the first time since they had left Viola's speakeasy.

"Are you alright?" Jenny practically whispered the question to Clara, still resting her head in the crick of Jenny's neck.

"I'm just sad. But I have you."

"You'll always have me."

"Anyway," and here, in the middle of her sentence, Clara yawned and curled up more, "If you base it purely off of scientific credibility, I'd have to pick you."

"Why's that?"

"You're the best shag I've ever had."

"…Thanks…"

* _chapters 914 & 917_


	60. Another Girl Another Planet XX

**DAY 145**

 _Another Girl Another Planet XX_

 _Ravenwood_

She didn't remember going to sleep. This, when she awoke some hours later, rendered her incredibly confused, the night's events hazy and not at the forefront of her mind. What was at the forefront of her mind was a bad dream consisting of Danny Pink berating her for her newfound, monstrous nature – that being, of course, that she was a vampire. It was only a bad dream, though. Not a nightmare. For Clara, nightmares were an entirely different affair, and generally involved reliving her mother's death over and over and over and over. Until she woke up screaming.

But that morning she didn't wake up screaming, just disoriented and tired, because she didn't really know where she was. She squinted around the dim room at the blue walls and the cream sheets, but most importantly she squinted around at Jenny, who was sitting up next to her with a notepad and pen in hand, deep in thought. Clara had been sleeping half with her head on her girlfriend's middle, using her as a curiously muscular and very warm pillow, arm across Jenny's waist. Clara could hear her two hearts beating. Jenny noticed Clara was awake almost instantly.

"Bit early for you, isn't it?" she asked.

"There's no sun here," Clara grumbled, hiding her face against Jenny, "It's hard to tell."

"It's only ten o'clock," Jenny said.

"Why aren't you asleep?" Clara asked, dimly aware that Jenny was meant to be sleeping that night, she hadn't slept at all since recovering from her sickness last week.

"I couldn't sleep. You were being restless, and I have things on my mind," she sighed. Then Clara noticed something else, some other reason why she was so vastly uncomfortable in Jenny's bed.

"Am I wearing clothes?"

"Well _yeah_ , you were still dressed when you fell asleep," Jenny said.

"You didn't change me?"

" _What_? I'm not going undress you when you're sleeping, that's so creepy! If you fall asleep in your clothes you can deal with the fallout," Jenny said, then looked down at her and asked, "Are you okay?"

"I had a bad dream."

"One of your nightmares?" she asked seriously.

"No. Just a bad dream. About Danny. It's not important." Clara rolled away to get out of the bed from the other side, leaving Jenny alone with the idea she ought to get changed. As soon as she stood up, she felt faint, and yawned. "Is there any blood?"

"Of course there is," Jenny nodded at a flask on the bedside table on the side Clara had been sleeping on. "Are you getting up?"

"I'm just getting changed… I can borrow your clothes, can't I?"

"Always," Jenny said. Clara smiled at her, though she was still dazed and haggard, and the bloodlust was taking hold. It always did after waking, she would need at least an entire pint of blood to stop her from potentially killing the first human she came across. So the blood was the first thing she went for, and Jenny went back to poring over whatever she had in that notepad. That was when Clara noticed that Jenny was holding her pen in her right hand, and that her right hand was not bandage-clad. This left a grim scar in full-view, surrounded by purple and yellow blotched bruises.

"Your thumb," Clara said, looking at it.

"Martha took the bandages off. Oswin's making me some sort of brace," Jenny said.

"Have you been writing?" she asked, trying to take off her tights.

"Well, I'm swamped. I'm making a to-do list," Jenny explained. Clara stopped what she was doing in the middle of pulling off her tights, standing awkwardly on one leg, and raised her eyebrows at Jenny. "What?" She didn't say anything, managing to free herself from the tyranny of her own tights eventually, then came to kneel on the bed next to Jenny to get a look at this alleged list.

"Wow. It looks like it was written by a child. Or Oswin."

"Oi!" Jenny protested, and Clara laughed and leant over to kiss her girlfriend's disgruntled cheek.

"It's cute though."

"You say everything I do is cute."

"So what?" Clara countered, and then Jenny smiled. Making her way over to the wardrobe, Clara inquired, "What's on your list, then?"

"Number one; _get a boyfriend_."

"Oh, very funny."

"Number one is actually _Homeworld Alliance_. Because I have to go there as soon as possible to sort all this Cargill stuff out. Then number two; _fix Porsche 356 for Clara_. Number three; _fix jukebox for Clara_. Number four; _fix lock/security system for Clara_. Number five; _spend time with the Doctor_. Number six-"

"Hold on, why is most of your list just doing things for me?" Clara asked. While Jenny had been talking Clara had been searching through the wardrobe for pyjamas, resolving that one pair of Jenny's knickers would probably suffice for her lower half. Aside from that, Jenny happened to have a myriad of identical t-shirts, all black, to match the abundance of leather her wardrobe possessed.

"Well, _you_ can't fix the Porsche or the jukebox or the lock."

"It's Adam's job to get the lock fixed, he's the landlord, and the security system is Oswin's."

"I _know_ , I just thought I'd go ask them."

"I can ask them. They're only across the hall. And don't worry about the jukebox or the Porsche. Catch." She took Jenny by surprise by throwing her bra she had just carefully removed at her head. Jenny held up the notebook in her hands to block it. It just landed on the duvet next to her.

"What'd you do _that_ for?" she looked at it funny.

Clara shrugged, "Felt like it? Do you not like women throwing their bras at you?"

"I never understand the point of it – bras are expensive, and what's the person you threw them at meant to do with them? It's not like I could wear it, it isn't the right size," Jenny said, picking it up with her left hand and dropping it on the floor by the bed.

"I want it back. You can't keep it forever."

"I don't _want_ to keep it forever."

"I just don't want to sleep in it."

"I'm not critiquing your decision to take it off, it's the bit where you _threw it at me_ I find weird."

"You need to learn how to take a compliment, Jen."

"And _you_ need to learn how to strip in front of your girlfriend better," she jibed as Clara got changed, "You need more finesse."

"I'm not stripping," Clara argued, pulling the shirt down over her head, "I'm just getting changed. Don't be a perv."

"I'd never be a one-of-those. Anyway, back to my to-do list: number six; _make sure Clara is okay_."

"I don't know if she's okay – you'd have to go next door to ask her," Clara joked.

"Are you okay, though?" Jenny asked seriously. Clara sighed and scratched her head, thinking about if she could be bothered brushing her teeth yet that morning. She resolved that brushing her teeth could wait until she _actually_ woke up in a few more hours, since she had all intents to go back to sleep as soon as she got bored of talking to Jenny. Not that she ever really got bored of talking to Jenny, but she was _very_ tired.

Comfortable in pyjamas now, Clara came and threw herself down onto the bed a little over-dramatically.

"I'm fine," she mumbled into her pillow.

"Are you sure?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You just collapsed onto my bed."

"I'm just tired."

"You're very melodramatic," she commented, and Clara looked around at her and scowled. Then she went to the tremendous effort of actually rolling over and sitting up properly, though her eyelids were heavy and stinging with sleep. She yawned again.

"I'm alright," she finally answered, "Don't worry."

"How can I not worry?" Jenny continued with her seriousness, "Your ex-boyfriend was-"

"I know what happened. I'm sad. But I'm not broken. I have you."

"But I'm-"

"Perfect," Clara finished her sentence, not wanting to know what kind of argument Jenny was going to make up, "You're perfect. You always will be. You don't have to worry, just don't leave me."

"I would never leave you!" Jenny protested, as though Clara had genuinely just accused her of doing such a heinous thing. She nearly laughed; in fact, she would have laughed, had the conversation not made her more melancholy again. Both of them, really.

"Good to know. What's eating you, anyway? Apart from me, obviously."

"Ew." Clara smiled. "A lot of things." Her smile faded.

She shuffled closer to Jenny, so that their hips were touching and Clara could feel the warmth radiating from her skin, and asked softly, "What things?"

"I couldn't save that alien yesterday."

"I keep telling you that wasn't your fault – let me hold your hand," she pleaded, and Jenny put the notebook down on the floor next to the bra and let her, Clara being very gentle with the battered, blueing thumb. She could feel the strange angle it had healed at now, though, like someone was pulling Jenny's thumb back and holding it there.

"Your cold hands will be great to help the swelling go down," Jenny said.

"I thought the swelling _did_ go down already?"

"It did – then Ashildr tugged on it," she winced slightly when she spoke. On a whim, and perhaps because she was intolerably tired, Clara lifted Jenny's hand and lightly kissed the jagged scar running across her thumb knuckle. "Your lips are even colder than your hands."

"It's a wonder you can stand to sleep next to me. Is it all better now I've kissed it?"

Jenny feigned examining her hand for a moment, then said, "Oh yeah, definitely. Fine now. I appreciate it. You're adorable sometimes."

"Anything else bothering you? I'm here to help," Clara said, "What sort of a girlfriend would I be if I didn't let you confide in me?"

"A cruel but beautiful one," Jenny answered, "Classic vampire. And it bothered me the way he spoke to you, and about you, like he owned you – had some kind of a claim on you. Like you couldn't even make your own decisions. I don't care that you used to date him, he shouldn't say those things to upset you. Ashildr dated you for ten years, and she didn't say a thing against you or me."

"Wait – _ten years_!?" Clara exclaimed, gawking. She hadn't heard anything about this 'ten years' malarkey. Ten years with Ashildr!? _With_ Ashildr!? An entire decade!?

"Oh, yeah. That's what she said. She said something else, too…" Jenny began carefully, as though she were gauging Clara's response.

"What did she say?"

"She…" Jenny paused a moment before finally resolving to answer, "She said you were never really hers. You were always mine. Even if I didn't know it. Saying you were 'somewhere else' a lot of the time. And she accused me of breaking your heart."

"My heart barely even beats. But what have you ever done to break it?" She was very interested now in these truth-bombs Ashildr had been dropping willy-nilly.

"Apparently my being a mass murderer responsible for the Polaris Death Charge," Jenny said grimly, taking her hand away from Clara and crossing her arms in a moody sort of way. Clara reached up to play with her blonde hair instead; she always got plenty of amusement out of that. She loved Jenny's hair. "Because she told you that and that's why you never called me for those ten years. Couldn't stand the fact I always acted so high and mighty even though I-"

"Hey, it's okay," Clara said, "I don't think that about you, and I don't even remember this period of heartbreak. Those ten years aren't important – to be honest, I thought it would be a lot longer than that – what's important is now. That's what you always tell me, the present is what counts. And now we're together."

"Finally."

"Yeah," Clara laughed a little.

"Oswin used to accuse me of fancying you."

"You do fancy me."

"No, I mean, before we were together."

"You _did_ fancy me."

Jenny made a face, "That's not what I mean."

"What's this about Oswin being in love with you, anyway?" Clara asked.

"That's nothing, it's just a… thing. Ghost, kind of…" she said awkwardly, and Clara raised her eyebrows. Clara didn't know that she had just painted Jenny into a corner, though, and that Jenny now felt forced to admit something to her she would much rather not ever admit in her current regeneration. "You _know_ I used to like her."

"You what?"

"Oh my god!" and Jenny then hid her face. Clara thought this was quite funny, "You totally know that!"

"Not really. What're you so bothered about it for – you said _used to_."

"Because it's _weird_ because you look the same."

"But you slept with me as part of some weird competition with Jack about who could sleep with the most Echoes," Clara pointed out, "Having a tiny little baby-crush on Oswin isn't all that bad in perspective." And now Jenny Harkness had gone red.

"Don't talk about it like that… I'm sensitive."

"It can't be any worse than my infatuation with Sally Sparrow."

"But your infatuation with Sally Sparrow is not, never has been, and never will be, a mutual thing," Jenny said.

"Oswin used to like _you_ as well?"

"It's not important! We never talked about it. We're friends. She's in love with Adam Mitchell, I'm in love with you, it doesn't matter," she grumbled, "Adam Mitchell is pretty great, really."

"Oh, so now you fancy my landlord as well as my sister?" Clara only said that to piss Jenny off. And it worked _wonderfully_ as Jenny in all her embarrassment at this admittance of her minor affections for Oswin was appalled, hiding her whole face from Clara's view as Clara burst out laughing. But they were doomed to be interrupted as somebody knocked on Jenny's door, and they both fell silent. It took Jenny a moment to realise that this was her bedroom and so _she_ ought to be the one to answer.

She cast Clara a dark look, Clara smirking, and got out of the bed, very careful to pick the stray bra back up and throw it into Clara's face. She was surprised to see it was Donna Noble at the door, and not Oswin or Eleven or Nios, perhaps. Martha after her for her thumb again. It was a good thing it wasn't Martha when the bandage covering her bullet wound on her left upper-arm was fully visible.

"Hey!" Jenny said brightly. Clara knew she was still blushing slightly, as she moved the bra away. "It's been ages!" She hugged Donna, Clara glancing at the messy handwriting in the notebook. There she saw ' _number seven; make mayonnaise_.'

"When did you get back? Nobody told me, I wouldn't have known if I didn't hear you talking next door," Donna said.

"Uh, only a few hours ago. What do you mean next door? In my dad's room?"

"Oh – I forgot, you wouldn't know… Jack swapped rooms with me. Well, the place where the room is, not the actual room. I don't want to see some of the stuff he might have in there…" she said, speaking as though Jenny didn't know _exactly_ what kind of kinky stuff Jack kept in his room. Not that Jenny would ever tell Clara about it, as often as she asked. Her lips were sealed.

"Swapped with you? Why?"

"In case you brought _her_ home," Donna nodded at Clara, who heard Jenny scoff.

"Seriously? That's petty. Did we wake you up? Clara was just going back to sleep now, anyway," Jenny said.

"Is she alright? She looks ill," Donna said.

"You could ask her directly?" Clara sarcastically suggested.

"Are you ill?"

"No, I'm just undead. Haven't been drinking enough of the blood of the innocent lately to keep that healthy glow in my cheeks. Isn't that right, Jen?"

"Yes, yes," Jenny dismissed her, "You're melodramatic, we already spoke about this."

"And I'm still offended by it."

"I thought you hate when people call you 'Jen' and not 'Jenny'?" Donna asked carefully, glancing between them both like she was trying to solve a puzzle.

"I do. Unless they're Clara," Jenny answered, "She can call me what she likes." Jenny's dislike of the nickname 'Jen' came as a great surprise to Clara, who called her it frequently and was never told off for it.

"Are you two actually going out then?" Donna asked, perplexed. Jenny was taken aback.

"What? We've been going out for a month. A month to you. It's about three months to us, I think," Jenny explained, "How do you not know that?"

"I just thought it was some sort of trick you were playing on Jack."

"Oh, I don't care enough about Jack to play a trick on him for so long," Jenny said indifferently, "You know, Donna, I hate to sound like I'm being rude, but Clara has to go back to sleep. Since she's nocturnal, and stuff."

"Are you trying to get rid of me? Why is she holding a bra?" then Donna gasped very theatrically, "Are you two about to _do it_!?"

"No!" they both exclaimed, then Jenny sighed and said, "Why don't you go see if the cat's given birth yet?"

"Don't _patronise_ me," Donna said coolly, "I'm not a child."

"And what? I am? I'm two-hundred. And I have to talk to my girlfriend," she said. Her reiteration of the fact Clara Ravenwood was her _girlfriend_ made Donna leave, and Jenny felt bad for doing so. She would make it up to her later. She would make it up to everyone later. Absently, she called behind her, "Add onto the list – _number eight; make dinner for the whole crew_. Please." Clara picked up the notepad and pen and did so, her own perfectly neat and legible handwriting making Jenny's broken scrawl look like a farce. It was amusing, though. Jenny closed the door.

"What do you have to talk to your girlfriend about, then?" Clara inquired as she finished writing.

"I don't know. How pretty she is? How I forget there's no privacy on this ship…"

"Then let's just not do anything private. Listen, Jen," Clara began, Jenny coming to get back into the bed, "I don't think I'm going to stay here very long."

"I didn't think you would, it's just, last night was chaotic…"

"Yeah, I know, but I'd rather go back home later today."

"You can. Anyway, I think I might… come back to the TARDIS," she said, "Since staying with you apparently doesn't keep me out of as much danger as Martha thought… but it is a bit disheartening thinking about not being with you all the time."

"It'll be fine."

"It's kind of like long-distance, though."

"Okay, you live in a teleporting space-box, it's not remotely long-distance," Clara told her, "Anyway. I'm so tired I think I might die."

"Can I go? While you're asleep? Try and sort out this stuff with the Alliance quickly? I've got to get through my list by the end of the day," Jenny said. Clara smiled.

"Of course you can."

"And you promise you won't go back to Hollowmire without seeing me?" Jenny asked.

"Yes, I promise – god, you act as though you're not my favourite person in the world. But seriously. I'm going to pass out in a moment. Good night." Again, she over-dramatically threw herself down in the bed, onto the pillows, pulling the sheets tightly over her.

"I think you mean good morning."

"No, I mean good night," she mumbled.

"So do I get a good night kiss?"

"Well I _guess_ , if you're _insisting_ ," Clara pretended she was put-out by this request as she sat back up, Jenny leaning down slightly to kiss her first. Bitterly, but with a note of cruel smugness, Clara thought to herself that Jenny was a much better kisser than Danny Pink had ever been. And a much better everything-else-er, too. It was these thoughts, of how lucky she was to still have Jenny in spite of it all, that lulled her back to sleep.


	61. Put Up or Shut Up

_Put Up or Shut Up_

 _Jenny_

Colonel Tabis was a portly, corpulent fellow who enjoyed his cushy position as a military officer who never left the sanctity of Nostraleo. Not for four years, ever since that tragic massacre in 4881; it was not a lie so much as an exaggeration that Tabis had been scarred by the great loss of life that day, a loss of life which occurred while he had been in the hospital suffering from some sort of acute bowel infection. He had left the two Majors in charge, and come back to only one Major and a million dead men. The worst military defeat in the history of the entire Homeworld Alliance.

But now Colonel Tabis was a pencil pusher, despite his high rank, and that was the kind of life he felt better suited to. Besides, ever since that incident with the bowel infection, he hadn't really been able to stay away from a toilet long enough to command an army. Most of what he did now was admin – signing off leaves of absences, sick days, authorising internal affairs investigations he never bothered to read the details of. He didn't expect for anything interesting to really happen to him, nor did he particularly desire it. So when his rather large office was filled with an unearthly, metallic, thrumming noise, when gusts of ghostly wind blew the papers from his desk and his opulent fountain pen onto the floor, and when a blue box made of some long-extinct material with a flashing light on top began to materialise in front of the door, he was nothing short of terrified. Teleporters, and any kind of teleportation device, were all outlawed, except for the Time Agency. This wasn't the Time Agency, though, and the object wasn't any sort of thing he recognised.

And then the noises died away, replaced by an ambient, quiet humming, and the thing just sat there until a door on the front of it creaked open. Letters above this door read _Police Public Call Box_. He didn't know what that meant. The police? The authorities? Nostraleo didn't have a police force, it was policed by the Alliance. But all of Colonel Tabis's fears were realised when a girl stepped out of this box. A sickening realisation washed over him when he recognised this short, harmless-looking girl, practically still a child. She wasn't nearly as innocuous as she looked, though. She _smiled_ , half-saluted.

"Colonel Tabis, sir," she said respectfully. She paused. "I know you recognise me. It's been a long time." Two more peoples stepped out of this very small blue box that had appeared in his office, one of them an even younger looking girl, brandishing a gun at the back of a tall, dark-haired, pale chap. Tabis didn't recognise the second girl, but the man he did, the man who was gagged and handcuffed.

"That man is a war hero!" Tabis exclaimed, standing up on his feet, feeling his intestines tremble in their weak way, and having to sit back down again in horror. The second girl kicked the man, Major Austin Cargill, in the back of one of his legs, so that he buckled and fell to his knees. He couldn't talk, but she kept the gun pressed to the back of his head, an old-fashioned revolver. The type he had only seen in those documentaries on antique weapons he was sometimes interested in.

"That man is nothing but a murderer," Young said. Austin Cargill rolled his eyes. He didn't seem very scared. "This is Ashildr, she's a Lieutenant. I want to tell you a story, if you don't mind, Colonel." She went and pulled out the chair opposite his desk and sat down, then leant on her elbows with her fingers laced together. Tabis saw something was the matter with her right thumb, it was bruised and scarred like she had suffered a nasty injury, and it didn't sit properly. She also wore a very indulgent, tailored coat, and a funny-looking scarf with weird blots all over it. There was something cold in her eyes.

And then she began to speak in a way as though she had rehearsed, slowly but carefully, all of her words already chosen. "My story starts on the 10th of August, four years ago. That was the day General Lahar died. She ingested a lethal amount of fohyde. The poor woman always did love the drink a bit too much, we all knew it. Everyone respected her too much, was too scared of her, to say anything, though. It was because of this fear that General Lahar never thought someone in her own unit might lace her alcohol with poison.

"This assailant, whom everyone believes to be Corporal Agost, who was executed for this crime in 4882, used too much fohyde on her. They didn't have enough left to do the job properly on you, Colonel Tabis. On August 12th, Lieutenant Austin Cargill brought Agost to you after planting evidence that Agost was Lahar's killer, even though he always pleaded guilty. The evidence was just too damning – the empty bottle of fohyde found in his footlocker, those incriminating diary entries that weren't even in his own handwriting. But it was wartime, you were in charge suddenly, and you were ill, weren't you? Because you had some of that fohyde as well, because for a few days Cargill was putting it into your coffee. It didn't kill you, but it sent you to the hospital behind the lines, after you gave Cargill a hasty promotion to the rank of Major, leaving he and I in charge.

"And everybody knows I didn't like Cargill, not after the way he threatened Private Adilai in June that year. And he didn't like me, either, not after I demeaned him in front of the enlisted men. He was bitter, unpopular. I was the favourite. I was better at my job, I had the soldiers' trust, and everybody listened to him-"

"You never made your case, Young," Tabis interrupted her, "A million people wound up dead under _your_ orders to charge at the Nomatee Base and nobody's seen you si-"

"I'm making my case now, _sir_ ," she said coldly. He was her superior, but he remembered Major Young. She waited to make sure he wasn't going to speak again before she resumed, the other girl, Ashildr, still holding a gun to Cargill's head. "As I was saying. I was the one with the soldiers on my side. But you gave him a snap promotion, left both of us in charge. And then what happened? Like you said. A million men died. And where was I? I'll tell you.

"The sanitation system was broken. Sabotaged. I thought nothing of it at the time, wondering who was responsible wasn't as important as fixing it. The waste that was leaking out of the toilet unit was practically toxic, a serious hazard, leaving the toilets for the whole squadron completely out of order. _I_ was wading my way through the soldiers' mess to fix faulty plumbing when the emergency charge was called in the middle of the night. It took my hours to fix that. I got back and I found Cargill, who _you_ promoted to a higher position of authority, the position needed to authorise the Death Charge.

"And do you want me to tell you what I did when I saw the entire base was empty? That all the soldiers had gone? _All_ of them? I went and commandeered one of the transport shuttles meant for evacuations and I flew it down to the front lines – I'm a Commodore in the Star Fleet, you know – and I managed to save a hundred. I know a hundred isn't a lot, but it was all I could do. I'm sure they spoke on my behalf, and I'm sure Cargill made it so that you only heard his version events. That I ordered it. Everyone who could argue with him was silenced. I've come here to clear my name."

"And why should I believe this?"

"Because he'll vouch for me," Young said, then she turned to the other girl and gave her a nod, and the girl promptly removed Cargill's gag.

"Oh, alright, I admit it," he said in his Irish drawl, shrugging, "It was me. I did do all that. You know, killed General Lahar, framed Corporal Agost, tried and failed to poison you, sabotaged the unit's toilets so that Blondie over there would have to fix them. I ran away nearly as quickly as she did. You people in this century aren't half stupid. And yes, I ordered the Death Charge, boohoo – but the people of Deftan can manage their own affairs without your Alliance getting involved."

"But – why? Why would you kill all those people? Go to such great lengths?"

"Ah, it wasn't about the people, they're just cannon fodder in the wife and I's bigger feud against girly and her mummy. That's time travellers for you, you can never tell _who_ might get caught in the crosshairs. I suppose a million of your finest soldiers were just collateral damage, but _she_ destroyed my fountain of youth!"

"It was a Fiovis Ichor and they're dangerous."

"Bah, you mean the Time Lords say they're dangerous. You're just as high and mighty as these Alliance hacks, intervening because you think you're better. That fountain of youth could have saved _billions_ of lives! Think of that, Colonel. Millions of lives lost because of me, _billions_ of lives lost because of her."

"It's a mutagen and a natural resource you were exploiting, and you only would have sold it to rich upper-class people who refuse to die anyway."

" _You're_ one to talk about people refusing to die." Young glared at him now. Tabis was shocked. Here was an admittance of a frame job, of using Young, who really had been an esteemed officer before the Death Charge, as a scapegoat. "Anyway, she's telling the truth, and I suppose I owe it to her to admit to this, since my tricking Lieutenant Teenager behind me into going vampire-slaying led to Blondie getting stabbed through the heart. One of them, anyway. The least I could do is admit to my murderous ways." He was cocky, and remorseless. This was not a man who had been forced to lie by Young. Young looked at him with reproach and disgust. Cargill just grinned.

"There you are, Tabis. The man responsible, wrapped up like a Christmas present for you. What's say you call the rest of the executive staff in here to get my name cleared and my rank reinstated, hmm?"

They didn't go right back home, instead Jenny moved the TARDIS to a different part of Nostraleo, the Alliance city that served as its main base in the Polaris System, because she wanted to get something to eat having skipped breakfast. She had dragged Ashildr and Cargill out of the ship the back way, avoiding Nerve Centre and whatever was going on with Princess Sparkle Tutu and her kittens, wanting to get all this over and done with as soon as possible, without anybody interfering.

"What plans do you have for me now, then?" Ashildr queried. They were in a restaurant in the food sector of Nostraleo. It was one of those cities that began as a space station, and then grew out to have different parts added, just like how cities expanded on solid ground.

"They used to call this the jewel of the Alliance," Jenny said, ignoring Ashildr's question, eating her food and looking out of the thick window at Polaris' green sun. Jenny had pick-pocketed a credit stick from somewhere and sonicked it to give her infinite funds. "No, sorry – the jade jewel, wasn't it? Because of the sun."

"I don't really know," Ashildr said, "But, really, Major, why did you pay the Shadow that Arcadian diamond to get me? Where did you even _find_ an Arcadian diamond?"

"Bar fight on Zeniph Nega."

"I know Zeniph Nega."

"Of course you do. Stole it off a corpse – Aldo Koltn's corpse, he was Cargill's aid. I was there with Jack to get information about this whole… me being blamed for the Death Charge thing. Bumped into the Shadow – you were a two-for-one, sort of, I just needed to talk to you. Clara did. To find out how she died. But you told us, so it doesn't matter anymore," Jenny said, "Are you going to run off now immediately?"

"Nah. You're easy on the eyes. For a kid."

"A _kid_?" Jenny asked. Ashildr smiled.

"Mmm. You're a baby compared to me. Still in a crib."

"And what does that make Clara?" Jenny asked. Ashildr was just amused, and she didn't answer. "I think I'll get us dinner while I'm here."

"You and I? I'm flattered, but I think your girlfriend might complain."

"I _meant_ my girlfriend," Jenny said, "Because she's going back home tonight, but we should have dinner... I'll do something romantic. But where do you take a girl who's been everywhere?"

"I can't tell if this is a serious question or if you're just talking to yourself," Ashildr said.

"Or maybe I'll get her a present… a new motorbike. I'll steal one, one with nitrous," Jenny said. Ashildr frowned at her. "What?"

"Why are you so insecure in your relationship that you rely on constantly making grand gestures?" Ashildr asked. Jenny dropped her fork in her bowl of alien stew.

"I am not insecure!" she exclaimed, "What would _I_ possibly have to be _insecure_ about?"

"Well, exactly, that's why I asked. If I thought you had a _reason_ to be insecure I would have just left you to wallow," Ashildr said, "I'm being a good Samaritan."

"By pointing out my flaws?" Ashildr shrugged. Jenny crossed her arms.

"I told you, Clara belongs to you."

" _Belongs to me_? Clara doesn't _belong_ to anybody. Anybody except Clara."

"And you."

"Not me!"

"Oh, please, she's putty in your hands, and you in hers. I only knew you for five minutes before you regenerated, but even _I_ can tell the difference. You're an odd one, Major," Ashildr said, "You remind me of your father."

"I remind everyone of my father."

"The Doctor can make armies flee at the mention of his name, but if a girl bats her eyelashes at him he'll just melt. And there you were, in Tabis' office," Ashildr leant towards her on the plastic table, space shuttles whizzing by outside, "telling him that very convincing story."

"A true story."

"It wasn't just the words that convinced him, he was scared of you. The great Major Young, too valuable to by a foot soldier but too modest and righteous to be anything more," Ashildr said, "Decorated but not celebrated. You have a very grey life, I've been reading up on you."

"Reading what, exactly? Nobody's ever written anything about me."

"Oh, there's a biography. Unpublished. I snuck into a friend of mine's attic and found it buried in her stacks of paperbacks, this old manuscript with yellow pages," Ashildr said, "The entire history of you."

"A 'friend of yours' has a biography about me?" Jenny asked incredulously.

"She wrote the biography about you! She's very good, really, an exhilarating read. I like the bit where you wrestle the alligator after crash-landing on Earth. How does the whole thing start? Something like, ' _A vibrant, blue sunset spread across the skyline and blurred brightly like electricity along the horizon, the white sun setting halfway below the edge of the frozen planet. It was a ball of ice_ *-'"

"Stop it," Jenny said, "Who is this 'friend'?"

"There's that coldness in your eyes you conjured up for Tabis – is it real? Do you just bury it when you're around her?"

"What are you talking about?" Jenny was growing uneasy with this conversation, with the ambiguity around Ashildr, her and her love of being cryptic and enigmatic. She probably knew all sorts of secrets. And what was this biography?

"I think she's called Clara."

"What?"

"My friend. Who wrote the biography. The one that she never tried to publish." Jenny narrowed her eyes.

" _Clara_?"

"That hasn't happened yet, though," Ashildr said, leaning back again, "Anyway – why join the Homeworld Alliance? Doesn't the Doctor hate the military?"

"Call it an act of rebellion," Jenny said coolly.

"Someone on Nostraleo owes me credits. An officer who paid me to break up a prostitution ring operating out of the illegal casinos in the Lows," Ashildr began telling her something completely different, the Lows being the lower, slum decks of Nostraleo, "I need to go collect."

"So you're leaving?"

"You told me I was free to go – and I've helped you, haven't I? You've had your rank reinstated, I've told you what you wanted about Clara," Ashildr stood up from the table, and Jenny stayed where she was, having not yet finished her stew. "Don't worry, Major, I'm sure you'll see me around. I know exactly where to find you, you're not as elusive as your father. Besides, maybe I'll wind up in Hollowmire anyway – it's a real hotspot for supernatural activity, you know. Probably something to do with that cult."

"Cult?"

"I'll be leaving."

"Uh-huh," Jenny said. She didn't have any reason to keep Ashildr there, and she still had a fair way to go on her to-do list.

"Thanks for buying lunch, though. Oh, and about Clara – get her something for dinner from here, and wear a dress. She'd love it if you wore a dress." And then Ashildr slipped out of the restaurant and away, and Jenny didn't bother pursuing her. There was no point. And she didn't want to have her thumb attacked again. But she was still left to wonder how much, exactly, Ashildr knew about the future, and about her.

* _What Ashildr is reciting is, in fact, the opening sentence of_ Jenny Who? _because, fun fact,_ Jenny Who? _IS this biography. I'm explaining it for you all because I'm not sure it'll ever be made clear or written in, but Clara (obviously) wrote this book about Jenny and chronicled her whole life. Just a little meta factoid for you. And Ashildr IS giving a minor spoiler about the next full storyline on Day 146._


	62. A Brain the Size of a Planet

**AN: Sorry about all these kind of random-seeming chapters, this whole Day is basically stuff to do with wrapping up or continuing some of the ongoing character arcs, a lot of different plot threads moving around right now, all necessary.**

 _A Brain the Size of a Planet_

 _Clara_

She'd never been overly-keen on animals. She didn't hate them, but she had never been the sort of child to beg her parents for a pet hamster because they were cute under the guise of learning to be responsible. When she was much younger, they had had a cat, but it had died when she was four and her mother had always said she didn't want another cat now they had a daughter. That was why she resigned herself to sitting in her room and reading instead of fawning over the new-born kittens in Nerve Centre, if they were even born yet. She wasn't following it that closely, nor was she fascinated with watching a hairball give birth. She was much more interested in re-reading _Sense and Sensibility_ with the new knowledge that Jane Austen had fallen in love with her.

There was a fervent knocking on her bedroom door though; Clara had been so caught up in her daydreams about what it would be like to live in Jane Austen's house being covert-queers at the turn of the Nineteenth Century that she had not been paying much mind to her connection to her sister, _or_ to the alarming lights of the Echoculum atop the piano. Absently, still not noticing, she held the book in one hand and wandered over to the door to open it with the other. But she dropped the book on the floor when she saw that Oswin was standing there, after hobbling over with her cane, tears streaking her eyes. No longer did Clara Oswald care about any pre-Victorian writers.

"Oh my god, what's happened?" she asked, seriousness taking over. She dragged Oswin into the room, Oswin who was trembling and unable to explain immediately what had taken hold of her. It couldn't be Adam Mitchell, could it? No, she didn't think so; Adam Mitchell couldn't upset someone if he tried, let alone his girlfriend, his girlfriend with five grown-up brothers and one _very_ telekinetic twin sister. "Oswin? Os, talk to me, please," Clara begged her, holding her arms to keep her upright.

"It's nothing," Oswin choked.

" _Nothing_!? What's 'nothing'? Nothing wouldn't make you come crying to me," Clara said, "Tell me what's happened, please, sweetheart." Oswin cleared her throat slightly.

"Nothing much. Fyn called. He found our dad." Oswin left out as much emotion as she could while she said that, on purpose, growing despondent, recoiling into the usual static melancholy it was a habit for her to adopt whenever the world got too much for her to bear. Which was frequently. And then, for a second, Clara was perplexed. She had to dig into the mental link between herself and her sister to find out if these tears were tears of sorrow or tears of joy, and she was harrowed to discover it was the former. Oswin was devastated.

"Why is that bad, Oswin?" Clara asked softly, pulling her into the room towards the sofas where she could sit down, "I thought you liked your dad?"

"Exactly! What would he think, having me for a daughter? _Me_?"

"He'll think the same thing I think, that you're wonderful," Clara said.

"He would hate me."

"Why's that?"

"The Doctor hates Jenny."

"The Doctor thinks the world of Jenny; he thinks she's god's gift to the universe."

"Fyn wants me to go see him. Fyn already saw him. Said he was excited to hear about me or… something… what kind of shit must Fyn have-"

"Oswin," Clara said, "You're going to go see him."

"No! No, I can't, I-"

"Yes. You will. And you'll go now, before you overthink it, and I'll come too," Clara declared.

"N-no. No, Clara, no! You don't know anything about-"

"Oswin," Clara said after she had stood up with the plan to get ready, seeing as she was still in pyjamas, "This will be good for you. And we're going because I'm telling you to, because you'll never go on your own and Adam wouldn't try to make you and you'd just ignore Fyn. So we're going now, and it'll be fine, because I'll be there, okay?"

"You can't be there! How am I supposed to explain who you are?" Oswin said frantically.

"Your father is a genius physicist or something, Os! I'll just tell him the truth. You're making excuses."

"He'll hate me."

"No he won't. Make yourself presentable now while I get dressed. You're not going to win this argument with me and you know it, and you know you want to see him and you want me to be right so you'll do what I say," Clara said, wondering when it was, exactly, that she developed such a stern way of speaking to her baby sister. But you couldn't make Oswin do something if you weren't stern, and _she_ was the only one who might ever get Oswin to do _anything_. Oswin was probably more scared of making Clara upset with her than her father she hadn't seen since she was two, though. And that was why she did what Clara bade.

"He'll hate me, he'll hate me…" Oswin muttered over and over. Clara had never been to Venus before; she hadn't even known of these Venusian cloud colonies, floating above the planet's boiling, hostile surface. True, they had walked past some credibly creamy, rosy views, but now they were in a creamy, rosy hallway that didn't have any windows and reminded Clara surreally of something you would see in Stanley Kubrick films.

"No he won't." They were outside of an apartment door. Clara wanted Oswin to ring the doorbell, but she didn't think she was going to. Fyn was not there, Fyn thought it would be good for Oswin to go without him. Clara disagreed, but it didn't matter now.

"I should've told Adam. Adam wouldn't've made me come somewhere I didn't want to…"

"Where _is_ Adam?"

"Oh, Other You came to bother him, something about getting the lock fixed on her front door. Maybe we should go see how he's doing? I'm the one who designed the security system, we should really-" Oswin tried to leave, but she was very slow hobbling around, and Clara just took her elbow to hold her there.

"Are you going to ring the doorbell?"

"No!"

"Alright, fine," Clara said, "I'll do it."

"Clara!" Oswin protested. Clara reached for the electric doorbell, but Oswin grabbed her hand to stop her. Clara pressed it telekinetically, and Oswin glared at her with more sudden hatred than Clara had ever seen in her eyes.

"It'll be fine," she whispered, "He will not hate you – and even if he does, which he won't, you've still got me, okay?"

"And what are you? A physical manifestation of my own ego following me around pretending it's my mother?" Oswin snapped, even snarled, and Clara was shocked. She could see Oswin regretted saying that, though, but it didn't matter. The door slid open, and there stood a man. A hologram, in fact, one who bore a startling resemblance to Fyn Kyris, and the same brown eyes Clara and her offspring all possessed. She didn't know why she was surprised at how young Oswin's father, whose name she didn't recall, looked, but holograms didn't have simulated ageing. He must look the same as he did the day he died, three decades ago. And he looked between them, and Oswin couldn't say a word, because it was probably very surreal seeing your father's ghost and him looking identical to how you remembered. She couldn't imagine what it would be like if she saw her mother again…

Clara resolved that she needed to speak.

"Hi," she said finally, still holding Oswin's arm, only now it was more out of trying to support her. The right leg, the one closest to Clara, was the mangled one, so it was probably good she was keeping her steady. "I'm Clara. This is Oswin. Your daughter. Do you mind if we come in? She has to sit down."

"You're identical."

"Yes," Clara said, "It's complicated. I have a lot to tell you about, uh, who your daughter is. About what she is." Oswin was shell-shocked, just staring. She was on the tipping point of going into one of her slumps, where she wouldn't move or speak for days. "I don't suppose you have tea in this century, do you?"

They did, in fact, have tea in that century. It was not very nice tea, but it was, nonetheless, tea, so she could cope with it. Apparently it came already in this flat, and had been there for quite some time with no organic person around to consume it, so Clara willingly took the bullet.

"Who are you, then?" he, whom Oswin told her psychically was called Rrob, asked.

"Right…" Clara summoned all her knowledge about Oswin's complicated family, "Um… well. You see. Oswin is kind of my… uh…"

"For someone with an English degree you're terrible with words," Oswin muttered. She didn't look at her father. She had seen too much of the negativity surrounding Jenny and the Doctor to be wholly un-cynical when it came to paternal reunions.

"Have you ever heard of Time Lords?" Clara asked.

"Everyone's heard of the Time Lords," Rrob Oswald said. It was odd he had her surname, it was almost like she was meeting an ancestor. Though, of course, she had no genetic ancestors, aside from the Echoes. And she didn't desire any aside from the Echoes, either. "They wiped themselves out."

"One of them survived, the one who did the… wiping," Clara said, making a mental note to tell her husband later what a travesty she was making of all this, calling him the 'one who did the wiping.' Oswin gave her a horrified look when she said it, like she was being indecent. Imagine that, Oswin Oswald, worried about decency. It was like seeing a pig fly. "The Doctor."

"I've heard of the Doctor," he said, and Clara braced herself for Rrob to say something awful and probably, unfortunately true about the Doctor, "Isn't he some sort of hero? A fairy-tale prince figure?"

"I'd say he's more like the wizard in the fairy-tale," Clara said, pleased to hear this, "Anyway, well, he's my husband, actually. And this creature-thing called the Great Intelligence-"

" _Creature-thing_?" Oswin questioned.

"He never really explained to me much about it," Clara said, "Anyway, it went into his time stream, which is like his whole life, or something, tried to kill him thousands of times, I went in to stop it and created Echoes to save him thousands of times. And-"

"Oswin is one of them?" he asked.

"Well, exactly. Not that that makes her less of a person, or something," Clara said quickly, "I'm not saying that, Oswin and the other Echoes are the most important things in the world to me. I got this scar protecting them," Clara held out her left arm to show off the burn that looked like tree-roots, bandages still over the nastier, third-degree welts on her wrist. "Not to say you're not her parent, also, but I see her like she's my own daughter, in a way."

"You're laying it on a bit thick…" Oswin grumbled.

"Is that true?" Rrob asked. He was asking Oswin. Oswin didn't notice until Clara elbowed her and she finally looked at him. She didn't speak though.

"This isn't anything like what happens in the _Odyssey_ when Odysseus and Telemachus reunite after decades of thinking Odysseus is dead…" Clara said. She didn't know how this sort of thing was meant to go. On _Jeremy Kyle_ they always got very emotional.

"Didn't you know I was here?"

"Mother kept your letters a secret. Fyn must have explained," Oswin said, "None of us knew."

"Does your brother know?" Oswin frowned. "Dret?"

"Oh. He's not… he disowned me. When mother did."

"Your mother _disowned_ you?"

"Yeah."

"Why?"

"For bringing misery into her life. She wrote me a letter about it on her deathbed, saying I was the worst thing to ever happen to her, me and my intelligence," Oswin said. Oswin hated talking about her mother. Clara supposed things were different with her actual dad, though. Maybe _she_ was too used to the tenseness of her husband and Jenny Harkness, those two always tiptoeing around each other. This wasn't very strained at all, really. She supposed there was no reason for it to be. Rrob Oswald had never abandoned his children, not in any way.

"Fyn told me."

"Told you what, dad?" Oswin asked. She was sort of clinging to Clara in an odd way, the two of them side-by-side on a small sofa, while he just stood, unable to really sit, or do much of anything. He couldn't touch things like Oswin could, but Clara was sure she would help with that as soon as the opportunity arose, if he so desired.

"About what happened on Horizon, in 5121, and how you died, he said it would be hard for you to-"

"He shouldn't have done that," Oswin said, "He shouldn't have – shouldn't have said anything." 'Calm down,' Clara thought.

"It wasn't your fault, Oswin," her father said, "It's the fault of whoever detonated the-"

"No, don't – don't talk about that, you shouldn't have to hear about it," she said, scrunching up her face.

"Did Fyn tell you she's sick?" Clara asked seriously. Rrob narrowed his eyes, meaning no, Fyn hadn't told him that. "Oswin struggles with, um…"

"Everything," Oswin muttered, "I struggle with everything."

"We look after her, Adam and I," Clara said.

"Don't mention Adam," Oswin hissed.

"Who's Adam?" Rrob asked.

"Adam's great, Adam Mitchell," Clara said on Oswin's behalf. Of course Rrob would love to hear about Adam – she could only imagine her own dad's joy if she were to bring a boy like Adam Mitchell home, "Oswin's boyfriend, he's from my time. The Twenty-First Century. He's a genius, and he's probably the sweetest boy I've ever met." Oswin glared.

"Fyn didn't say you have a boyfriend," Rrob said.

"No, well, Fyn wouldn't," Oswin said, "Fyn's like that. He'll leave something out to make my afterlife more awkward…"

"Don't say 'afterlife,' you can't dwell on death like that," he said, though he spoke fondly, "The state of living and being alive doesn't correlate to the acts of breathing and having a heartbeat. The only glum thing is your perception."

"Wow. Everybody else usually just lets her be morbid."

"Okay, Ravenwood is way worse than me."

"Ravenwood isn't all that good of a role model, sweetheart," Clara said.

"It's understandable that you'd be harrowed after the things Fyn says have happened to you," Rrob said, "I'll help in any way I can, though, I don't want to lose contact with you again, you or Fyn. It's a shame about Dret…"

"It's not, Dret's a…" Oswin stopped herself, "A not-very-nice-brother. I like the younger ones, I practically raised Reker when mother couldn't be bothered."

"Anyway, anyway," Clara said, "Nobody wants to hear you be depressing, Oswin, you ought to tell him something of the good things you've done that Fyn might not have heard about."

"I haven't done anything good."

"You freed those enslaved Cybermen and helped them build their own peaceful city? You cured the Manifest crisis? Helped me catch a serial killer? Rescued Squidzilla? Invented a serum that can cure literally anything? Invented the Echoculum? Built an entire spaceship from scratch and redesigned time travel technology?" Clara listed only the first things that came to mind, then added to Rrob, "I'm very proud of her, I'm sure Fyn is as well."

"I want to know about all those things! My daughter is the most intelligent human being in existence, why wouldn't I want to hear about her achievements?" he said, smiling.

"I wouldn't really say they're… achievements…"

"Don't argue with your dad. Do you know what would happen to Jenny if she argued with her dad?" Clara asked.

"Going by experience, her stepmother would probably have sex with her," Oswin remarked, "Or someone would try to rip her thumb off."

"Well, that's… fair…"

"Tell me. Tell me about the Cybermen – there's a peaceful Cyberman city?"

"Well, it's actually Atlantis, you know? The basis for the myth. It's a spaceship in the Bermuda Triangle…" and so Oswin, finally coming to her senses about all of this that was going on, began to tell these stories, stories she never told in a way that she might be proud of them. It was both funny and sad that the majority of the ego Oswin projected was an act; the only facet of it that _wasn't_ was that she knew she was pretty (of course, the pair of them were both _very_ pretty, in Clara's knowledgeable opinion). Aside from stating the fact that she _was_ the smartest girl in the universe, Oswin didn't really think herself above the rest of humanity. The only time she boasted about being clever was to put the Doctor in his place, and she had been so isolated in her lifetime she really wasn't used to showing off quite like _this_. But Clara thought this marked a turning point in the psyche of her favourite daughter, and she accordingly resigned herself to silence for the rest of their visit, which turned out to be very long indeed.


	63. Another Girl Another Planet XXI

_Another Girl Another Planet XXI_

 _Ravenwood_

A lot of things had been happening that day, and she had been trying to avoid most of them. The extent of her socialising with her girlfriend's housemates had been going to plead with Adam Mitchell to fix the lock on her door, and so she'd actually spent most of the day at home. It was almost annoying that she had promised Jenny not to go home until she saw her, because she had to traipse back onto the TARDIS with Adam, after she hurried him away because Sally Sparrow declared she was coming over and Clara couldn't be bothered dealing with her.

So she had left the TARDIS, then returned to the TARDIS, avoiding the alleged kittens in the main room because cat afterbirth didn't smell very nice to her sensitive bat-nose, and now she had left again because Jenny had shown up and whisked her away claiming she had a surprise. Clara didn't get a word in edgeways, Jenny taking her the long way around the ship to leave without causing a fuss, barely even noticing that the lock had been fixed. She was excited about something, and was talking a lot without really saying anything at all.

"Wait right there," Jenny ordered, sitting Clara down in the armchair of her own living room, the one Missy had occupied the previous night. Clara was puzzled but stayed there, trying not to look at the spot where Danny Pink's ghost had been standing so recently. So many bad things kept happening to her in that house… if it wasn't for the fact she was sure bad things would happen to her no matter where she was – and because the rent was so cheap – she might entertain the idea of leaving Hollowmire.

If Clara were to, in future, attempt to remember what else she had been thinking of that evening, she would not be able to. Her thoughts had possibly trailed off towards Hollowmire as its own surreal entity, and then Jenny had reappeared, Jenny who had disappeared with that bag of her mother's into the crypt bedroom below.

It was a lie that she couldn't remember what she was thinking that evening when Jenny had come back into the room, said "Ta-da!" in her sweet voice and did a twirl wearing a blue sundress with white daisies printed on it (and that black wool scarf Clara had made for her), because what Clara had been thinking was that Jenny Harkness was the most beautiful girl who had ever existed. Her jaw had dropped, and she had been staring, and feeling inadequate in all of her dull black clothes very suddenly.

"Are you okay?" Jenny waved a hand in front of her eyes, making Clara's attention swim back into the real world. Jenny had walked closer while Clara had been hypnotised, and was leaning down. When Clara snapped back to herself she took advantage of this immediately, pulling Jenny's face – and mainly her lips – closer with both hands so that she could kiss her. She could sense the surprise.

"You're the most wonderful girl in the entire galaxy, probably," Clara said when she let Jenny go, though Jenny didn't actually move away, just stayed tantalisingly close and warm.

"One galaxy's not so big when you're a seasoned time traveller like myself," Jenny said.

"I'm so close to asking you to marry me you have no idea," Clara joked. Jenny kissed her again for a moment.

"Please don't propose," she said, "We can't afford a wedding." Clara laughed.

"That's true, I suppose. Is there a special occasion, then?" Clara asked, wishing she was on the sofa so that Jenny could sit down next to her.

"The special occasion is that Ashildr told me you might like it if I wore a dress – I had no idea your brain would melt," Jenny told her, "What's the big deal? You wear dresses all the time and I don't drool. I only don't wear them much because they're impractical."

"Maybe I'm offended by your lack of drooling."

"You're very into girly-girls, aren't you?" Jenny toyed.

"I suppose – but I'm mainly into you," she said.

"Ooh, smooth."

"Thank you," she smiled.

"Come into the kitchen, I've got dinner for us," Jenny declared, moving away and holding out her hand for Clara to take, which Clara did, very gently, for it was her broken hand. "You'll like it, it's alien, and I haven't cooked. Plus I stole the money, so it's basically zero effort on my part, so I really haven't done anything special at all."

"This dress you've found is special enough," Clara said. She couldn't take her eyes off Jenny, and she hardly thought that was a crime. Jenny put her bag down on the table and had to dig through it to pull out another, larger bag, an insulated one people used when they were bringing takeaway to stop the food from going cold. It was a little more futuristic-looking, though. "Where _is_ Ashildr, anyway?"

"Food first, questions later, I'm starving. Thank god I got extra for myself," Jenny said. The polystyrene boxes misled Clara into believing she was just going to end up eating a curry or something, that it would be impossible to tell from the visuals that what she was eating was notably unearthly. That was not the case though.

"Oh my god," she said. It was a large dead thing that reminded Clara squeamishly of a very bloated leech.

"Looks aren't everything, Clara," Jenny told her sternly, "Those worms are the perfect gateway into alien junk-food. They look weird, but they're soft and they don't have any bones. And it's been deep-fried – think of it like one of those battered sausages you always get from the fish and chip shop."

"That's you who gets those; I keep telling you they're a heart attack waiting to happen."

"Well I have two hearts, so _one_ heart attack would be like stubbing your toe in terms of severity," Jenny said.

"It's that kind of attitude that got you stabbed through one of them."

"Are you going to trust your girlfriend and eat the worm, Clara?"

"…Yes," Clara said begrudgingly, "But only because I loved it just then when you called yourself my girlfriend." Jenny was right, anyway. Of course she was, being a master chef trained in Venice, and all that. It was a nice alien worm, in the end. Jenny was eating what looked like noodle soup, but Clara realised after a few minutes that what she thought were noodles were actually very thin, stringy tentacles, like those of a jellyfish. Jenny had really brought a _lot_ of space food for her to try. "So?" Clara entreated, "What's happened today?"

"I got my rank reinstated. I'm now officially Major Jenny again."

"That's great!" Clara beamed, happy for Jenny's victory. Jenny smiled a little, but not much. She had been very dour recently. "Isn't it?"

"I guess – but it feels a bit hollow. I still didn't stop Cargill from ordering the Death Charge, and it was _me_ who told Missy to tell mum about the Fiovis Ichor. If I hadn't have done that-"

"It already happened, Jen," Clara said, "It's not your fault. And that Fiovis Ichor was dangerous, you said."

"Mum said."

"Well, I trust Thirteen's opinion on what is and isn't dangerous, and so should you. Ask Eleven about it, he'll be able to tell you about Fiovis Ichors, I bet," Clara said.

"I can't ask him about it, it's his future."

"Look in the library. Ask the TARDIS," Clara said.

"Maybe I will. I didn't think of that…" she said.

"…You _are_ going back, then?"

"Yeah, I will," Jenny said, "I think. I think I should. I'll take the spaceship, too, it has a teleporter built in to go straight back to the TARDIS."

"Uh-huh… and when will you go, do you think?"

"We're still eating."

"I know, it's just, we haven't really had a chance to finish off what we started last night. Before everything happened," Clara said sultrily, "So I was thinking, maybe we could, continue? That is, if you don't have to go running off to the stars again right away."

"Well I was going to, but you're making an incredibly enticing offer… I'll see. It might cheer me up."

"I'd hope so, you've been glum since yesterday."

"I think understandably glum."

"I suppose. But who knows when we'll next see each other after you leave tonight? You have to take every chance that comes along."

"You definitely don't, and it'll only be a few days, I'm sure."

" _A few days_? How will I cope?"

"With _your_ porn stash? I think you'll cope fine," Jenny said, and Clara dropped her fork and balled her fist.

"Okay, it is not a 'porn stash', Jenny," she said coldly, "It's a _collection_ of _vintage Playboys_. They are worth a _lot_ of money and I do not use them for wanking."

"It's a porn stash, and you definitely do."

"I don't!" Clara protested.

"If it's definitely a _collection_ and not a _guilty dirty stash_ , why do you keep them all in a cardboard box under your bed next to the dildo crate?" Jenny questioned, raising her eyebrows.

Clara thought this over for a long time before saying, "Because exposure to light will damage them. Like how flash photography damages the _Mona Lis_ a." Jenny gawped at her.

"The _Mona Lisa_!?" she burst out laughing, "That's ridiculous."

"They're not for masturbating over, that's what the internet and pretty blonde alien girls are for," Clara said.

"Oh wow, you've just helped me finally discover my purpose in life. Getting you off."

"That's definitely your purpose in life, I didn't think there was any debate. Anyway, I'm thinking of taking the dildos out of the dildo box."

"And doing what with them?"

"Getting a shelf. Put one up, on the wall."

"There isn't enough wood in the world for the shelves you would need for all your dildos," Jenny remarked.

"Or a cabinet."

"Why?"

"Because the random strangers I used to bring home would get intimidated if they saw an entire cabinet of fake penises in my bedroom – plus, the Doctor used to barge in there all the time," Clara said, "But now the only person who goes into my room is my hopefully long-term girlfriend who has actually used some of those sex toys."

"Probably most of them if we're being honest."

"Plus, it's my house, and maybe I want to nicely arrange the dildos somewhere."

"Oh, like a flower bouquet. Will Adam Mitchell let you put up a shelf for them?"

"Probably," she shrugged, "Why wouldn't he? You should put up the shelf. You can do some DIY. It'd be hot, you can get a tool-belt."

"This seems like a fantasy of yours."

"You could wear it with your dress," Clara said, getting a glassy look over her eyes.

"Will I never be good enough for you as just me?" Jenny asked jokingly, and Clara laughed, but then she sighed and grew gloomy again. Clara was a little worried. She thought if Jenny did go back to the TARDIS and spend some time with the Doctor for a few days, though, that would cheer her up. Jenny was right, anyway, she did have reason to be out of sorts after yesterday. It was hard for Clara having to be the brighter one of the two of them, when Jenny was usually so much like sunshine. "Ashildr told me I'm insecure."

"Ashildr doesn't know you," Clara said, perplexed, "And you never told me where she's gone."

"She left," Jenny said, "She's not my prisoner, I can't make her stay. She had some kind of debt to collect on in Nostraleo, I didn't question it. I gave her a glowing recommendation to the Alliance, though. They wanted me for this post, see, one of their couriers found me again while I was getting us this food with this credit chip I stole. I don't know what it was, some elite task force kind of thing. I'm not interested, obviously, I can't go taking a job when I need to be on the TARDIS so I can spend time with you and my father. But I said they should get Ashildr for it. If they can find her again, that is."

"She acted like a know-it-all, did she?" Clara asked.

"She's _your_ ex-girlfriend."

"Yeah, not that I _remember_. Don't listen to Ashildr, she just likes to big herself up. She still has a human brain, it's a wonder she can still remember her own name after so many millions of years*," Clara said, "What did she say about you being insecure?"

"She said why am I so insecure about my relationship that I feel the need to make grand gestures all the time," Jenny muttered sulkily.

" _Are_ you insecure?" Clara asked.

"Nearly everyone else I've been with has left me. Maybe. Two-hundred years of getting dumped can develop a lot of inhibitions in a girl," she said.

"I'm not a princess, Jen, I'm only a lowly vampire. You don't have to shower me with gifts all the time, you're enough of a gift. And I'm not just trying to be cheesy or get into your pants, you're more than I could ever imagine in my wildest dreams, my own personal beautiful alien GF. Really, you can stop with the presents, you know – I feel bad because I can't match them," Clara said, reaching across the table to pick up the end of the woollen scarf Jenny was, yes, still wearing.

"What are you talking about? This scarf is the best thing in the history of forever," Jenny said defensively.

"I'd hate to argue with you and your impeccable taste," Clara said, dropping it, taking Jenny's hand across the table instead, like people did on dates in fancy restaurants.

"You don't have to get me anything."

"And you don't have to get _me_ anything aside from your regular company. You see, it's a mutual thing," Clara said, "Although I _am_ a big fan of the alien food you bring over – which I do think is fair enough, because I'm the one who pays for all the food that's here, and you eat like an entire extra family is sleeping next to me." Jenny continued to eat her food for a while longer, until something else came to Clara's mind. "So, what happens to Cargill now…?"

"Um…" Jenny did not answer.

"If he's responsible for a million deaths, does that mean the Alliance will… you know… execute him?"

"…That's a yes and no question."

Clara asked seriously now, "How is that a yes and no question?" and Jenny sighed.

"…He's sentenced to be executed. Obviously. But he won't be. His wife, Ashley Cargill – they're kind of a double act – will break him out. As in she _will_ break him out. I read the news reports on the TARDIS last night when I couldn't sleep," Jenny explained.

"What if you didn't check? What if you didn't know he won't die?" Clara persisted.

"Clara, I don't agree with capital punishment," she said firmly, "That's _why_ I looked it up, not out of benign curiosity. If I hadn't known Ashley would break him out, I wouldn't have taken him back to the Alliance. I might have had him locked up somewhere forever, until his 'Fountain of Youth' juice ran out. I don't know. My father knows a lot about cruel and unusual punishments." That was a true enough statement about the Doctor, Clara supposed.

"…Okay, I'm not… I'm not asking this to be an arse, alright?" Clara said, "I'm not judging you for the things you've done before, I just… how can you be against capital punishment when you've killed people?"

"It's different," Jenny answered. She didn't say anything else, but neither did Clara. When it struck Jenny that she possibly owed Clara a genuine explanation, she resigned herself to speak, playing absently with the scarf hanging loosely around her neck as she did. "Right, when you're… in battle, or it's a fight or flight moment, in the heat of warfare, or something just as immediately endangering, it's still wrong, but it's understandable. Yes, I've killed people, and I'm not proud of any of it. All I feel is shame. When I wasn't even two years old, someone shot and killed Emmett DeLacey in front of me, and in an _instant_ I pulled the trigger on my crossbow and they were shot through the eye. I didn't make a decision. That's a reflex, an immediate response.

"The justice system shouldn't be about punishment. No justice system should. People should be better than the ones on trial, shouldn't stoop to their level of wanting to see someone suffer. The justice system should prioritise keeping the rest of society safe, and on rehabilitation. Capital punishment isn't like when I shot the kid who killed Emmett – because they _were_ a kid, and for two-hundred years not a day goes by that I don't think there could have been something I could have done to save both of them, just like there could have been something I could have done to save Kitty Winthrop. The death penalty isn't a reflex, it's a torture. It's a load of bureaucrats playing god while hiding behind legislation. They fabricate their own right to say who gets to live and who gets to die; lock Cargill up to keep him from hurting anybody else, but you should never kill someone out of revenge."

"Is that why you keep his ashes still? Because you feel guilty you couldn't save him?"

"Yes," Jenny answered. "Besides, you know what it's like. You threatened to kill Ashildr yesterday."

"She hurt you."

"I know, and I know you didn't hurt her and she started praying at you, I'm just pointing out the way instinct works and how it's different to any human legal system I disagree with. Anyway, Oswin proved ghosts exist, who knows that Emmett hasn't been travelling with me for all this time?" Jenny said.

"Well I hope he doesn't show himself any time soon, I've had enough of ghosts for a while," Clara grumbled.

"Doesn't it bother you? That I've killed before?"

"It would only bother me if you thought it was alright," Clara said, "Or maybe not, not if I was with Ashildr for a decade. She'll kill anything that looks at her funny. Probably got it into my head that I could 'fix her' or 'make her better' – that sounds like something I would do. I can get a bit of a complex about that sometimes. What day is it?"

"Saturday."

"Oh, right, my day off tomorrow then," Clara said.

"Do you want me to stay?"

"What? No, you're going back to the TARDIS, it'll be good for you. I have an idea to convince Esther to come out and buy new crockery with me at the outlet mall about an hour's drive away," Clara said, "There's a Burger King there. I could buy some new shoes…"

"Well, you and Esther have fun doing that," Jenny said, "I'll be doing some cool space stuff."

"Crockery is very cool."

"Oh, yes. Definitely."

"What time is it?" Clara continued to ask Jenny boring questions just because she couldn't be bothered checking her phone and seeing for herself.

"Nearly midnight."

"So there's still a few hours left until it's time for either of us to go to bed… I haven't any idea what the two of us might do to occupy that time…"

"Looks to me like you've had a few _very_ good ideas of what we might do for a few hours," Jenny said, smiling slightly now they had left darker topics behind, "And I look forward to hearing _all_ of them, in _excessive_ detail."

* _Yes, I know Ashildr cannot remember her name and they call her "Me" in the canon, but the syntax of having to call her "Me" in narrative is dreadful and so, like so many other things, I will ignore that_

 **AN: I was gonna end the day here and move right onto Day 146, but I feel like throwing in a chapter of Adwin fluff to end things. So do you guys want a cheeky Adwin chapter next?**


	64. Nerd Flirts X

_Nerd Flirts X_

 _Adam_

He didn't know where Oswin had gone. When he'd gotten back to the TARDIS some hours ago now with Ravenwood after fixing her door, she'd practically vanished. She hadn't been answering her phone, and Clara was missing, too. If she had left without a word alone, he may have worried, but since he assumed she was with Clara he was sure she was fine. It didn't snuff out his desire to wait up for her, though. No, the thing that snuffed _that_ out was just his overwhelming tiredness, as he had trudged over to the bed to 'rest his eyes' for a while when it was almost midnight.

Adam Mitchell didn't know if he had actually managed to get to sleep or not, but he supposed that since he was definitely woken up by _something_ throwing itself down onto the other side of the bed, he must have done. He certainly hadn't heard anybody come through the doors, and was plenty startled by the sudden shape crash-landing onto the mattress.

"Sorry," said a voice meekly.

"Who's that?" he asked.

"Your girlfriend."

"I haven't had a girlfriend for a long time and doubt I'll ever have one again, not since the only girl I ever loved walked out on me one day, and all she left me with was her broken, spare prosthetic leg," he said in a voice he would have liked to sound faux-forlorn, but which really came across as sleepy and slow. Still, Oswin laughed a little, her face half pressed into the pillow. He was on his back and he yawned drowsily and turned to look at her on his left.

"Did I wake you up?"

"I don't know. Maybe? I don't mind," he told her. He still had his colour-blindness correcting glasses on, the plastic frames sticking to his face, and in the dark Oswin still seemed to be vibrant, which was funny since she wore all black all the time. "Where did you go?"

"Doesn't matter, go back to sleep."

"I'm not even tired," he lied, and she smiled and looked away, "Tell me?" She looked back at him and narrowed her eyes.

"You're pathetic, honestly, just lying there and begging me for things."

"You only give me stuff when I beg."

"It's a bit like I have a pet dog. Teaching you tricks, and stuff. I already taught you that trick you can do with your tongue when you go down on a girl last week," she said.

"Where did you go, though?" he persisted, desiring to turn the subject away from anything sex-related. He was not the biggest fan of talking about sex, which was shocking when one looked at how crude Oswin always was.

"I left a note," she said, then thought, "Didn't I?"

"If you did you must have hidden it because I didn't find one."

"Maybe I didn't write one…"

"Don't you have an eidetic memory?" he toyed with her.

"Okay, it's not the same thing, shut up. And I was just out with Clara. Fyn rang me," she said, then she turned and pushed her face into the pillow, mumbling, "He found our dad." Then she turned back again and spoke clearly, "That's where I was."

"Wait – your _dad_?" he asked, sitting up on his elbows and looking at her through the gloom. She nodded. "You found him? That's great! Isn't it? Is it great? Is it not great? Did I say something wrong? That's horrible, I can't believe you found your dad. Ew." She laughed.

"You're so adorable," she said, then she held out her arm in a vague sort of gesture, "Lie back down babe, come over here." He did, and she came and cuddled up next to him with her head on the same pillow.

"Are you still dressed?"

"I can't be bothered taking my clothes off. Take them off for me, if you want."

"Well, uh, they're _your_ clothes, Oswin… I couldn't possibly go… undressing you…" he mumbled. She had her eyes closed but was smiling.

"You're frigid."

"I will choose to take that as a compliment."

"It was an insult."

"But I'm _choosing_ -"

"I'm insulting you, deal with it," she reiterated firmly.

He paused for a while in silence, then said eventually, "I'm taking it as a compliment," which made her laugh. "Tell me about your day, though. Your dad? Haven't seen him since he died when you were two? What's that like?"

"Weird," she said, "He looks the same as he did the last time I saw him, like a ghost. I suppose he is a ghost. Clara made me go. He wants to meet my boyfriend now." It took Adam Mitchell a good few moments to realise that she meant _him_ , her father wanted to meet _him_.

" _Me_!? Why?"

"Because you're obsessively stalking his only daughter."

"Obsessively stalking?"

"Yeah. Waiting in my bed for me while I'm away."

"It's our bed, and this room was _my_ room originally, so you're the stalker coming in here in the middle of the night," he argued, "Which you've always done – you've basically never been away from me since the second time we ever kissed. Kind of clingy."

"I'd dump me if I were you."

"I wouldn't have to meet your dad if I dumped you."

"Why don't you want to? He's nice and he's clever. He died before mother had her brainwave about my IQ, before he knew I was… you know, _me_."

"He wouldn't like me," Adam said, and then she sat up next to him slightly and stared.

"What? Of course he would – how could anyone _not_ like you, Mitchell? And it wouldn't change _my_ opinion of you anyway, even if he didn't; nothing could stop me from loving you, you obsessive stalker," she joked, "But really, you _were_ always a bit creepy."

"Yes, you're always telling me how everyone called me 'Creepy Adam' _just_ because I had a crush on you. Well, _I_ still think it was love at first sight-"

" _La, la, la, la,_ can't hear you, _la, la, la_ ," she said loudly, clamping her hands over her ears then then throwing herself back down onto the linen next to him.

"You're in a good mood," he said, watching her lie there. She was smiling. He hadn't seen her smile properly for a long time, thought, without that trace of sadness in her eyes, the hint of guilt that she should be allowed to be happy when – though it pained him to admit – she didn't think she deserved to be. She was on her back looking at the ceiling, and he was on _his_ back looking at her. But her smile disappeared.

"Fyn told him everything. Everything I did."

"Oh, right."

"He said it's not my fault."

"Everyone says it's not your fault…"

"He said it's the fault of the people who asked me to build the bombs, of the Cluster Spores, and he said that he would have done the same thing if it was the only thing to do to save my brothers. Because he could have, you know – my dad could have built bombs like that, if he spent time on it like me, he's a genius as well, he's as smart as you are," Oswin said. Adam didn't know if he would be any good at building explosives, he hadn't ever really tried, nor did he want to. "And he knows about Clara, who she is. What _I_ am."

"Oh yeah? And? Is he alright with that? With you being… you know?"

"What?" Her brow creased slightly when she looked at him.

"I don't know, but it must be a bit weird to find out that who you thought was your biological daughter is actually kind of the sci-fi space-offspring of a girl born three-thousand years ago and an alien grave," he said.

"I think he would have been weird about it if Clara didn't look after me," Oswin explained, "If she just didn't care about her Echoes. You know, like Ravenwood. She has Echoes, too, and she's never even met any of them."

"Ravenwood can barely even look after herself, let alone Echoes," Adam sighed while Oswin repositioned herself again so that she had her head on his shoulder. He wasn't all that tired anymore, he would rather stay up late and talk to her than go to sleep anytime soon. "She wouldn't let me meet Sally Sparrow earlier. You know, when I was fixing her lock."

"Is that _all_ you were 'fixing'?"

"How do you mean? I'm the landlord."

"Ooh, sexy."

"…I don't get it…"

"I mean, that's how porn always starts. You could bounce loads of innuendos off a broken door – 'Have a lot of people smashing your doors in lately?' 'With the front door wide open, I'd like to see what kind of a state your back door is in as well.' 'Anyone could _cum_ right in here with this lock so loose.'"

"Is this how you get girls, then?" he questioned her, "You go drop lines like that at them? Which is a trick question, obviously, because I do know the story about how you and Flek got together, and I know it was a lot of awkwardness rather than anything so smooth. And gross."

"Okay, I am totally smooth. _You_ are the one who just a few minutes ago refused to undress a girl who threw herself into your bed. And you're still refusing," she pointed out.

"I'm not undressing you," he mumbled, "You're better at getting girls' clothes off than I am."

"I know – the last time you were in drag it took at least an hour for you to peel off those fishnets. Or was that just because you were enjoying it so much…"

"Ha, ha. I've never worn any fishnets."

"I know! And what a shame that is! Nothing better than a boy who knows how to work a pair of fishnets – god, the thought of it makes my knees go weak. Which is a lie, obviously, my singular knee is weak for a different reason," she said, "But for the record, if you _do_ get a cheeky little inkling to put on something _fierce_ , do let me know. So I can prepare myself."

"Well _you_ need to go to sleep now, I think."

"I was thinking about something else, though," she began, "Some other… few things…"

"Like what? Not me in a corset?"

"…I wasn't thinking of that, but now you _said_ it-"

"What, then?" he interrupted quickly, not wanting to know whatever ghastly thing she had been thinking of to say next.

"…What if it's not my fault?"

"It isn't, Oswin," he said. He told her this all the time, so did Clara, and Jenny, and the Doctors – even Fyn. She never listened. But apparently now, her father was the one who held the key to making Oswin see again, see the real world, maybe not so much through her constant haze of self-hatred and sickness. Perhaps Oswin would start to get better, to recover, to heal. She would dig herself out of the deepening well she had been drowning in for years. It was possible, wasn't it? "You could get better."

"What do you mean?" she asked seriously.

"Your neuroses, however many of them there are. Since they're, you know, a recent thing, since you died-

"What did you say?" And then he realised he had said something wrong, something genuinely wrong, because he wouldn't be mistaken for thinking he heard a note of genuine anger in Oswin's tone of voice. And he was scared of Oswin when she was angry, she was capable of all sorts of things. "It's not recent."

"Isn't it?"

"No. Sorry. It's not your fault for thinking… I don't talk about it…" The sparks of happiness that had crept up in Oswin's manners earlier had faded away now. And Adam Mitchell was the one to blame, he knew it. "I'm twenty-six. I'll be twenty-seven in five months, that's when December is to me, not next week like it is to the TARDIS. Then it'll be ten years." He felt like he'd been stabbed he felt that much guilt for his brief mistake. "It wasn't the Dalek Asylum that broke me, it was just life. It's just me. Aristotle said 'there is no great genius without some touch of madness.'"

"You're not broken…"

"Everyone's broken."

"Did I upset you?"

"No, it's nothing," she sighed, "You're right, I should go to sleep, I should take my leg off." She sat up and shuffled over to the edge of the bed carefully so that she could remove her prosthetic, which she pulled out of the end of her jeans. It always looked odd to do that, he thought, watching her.

"I'll get your pyjamas," he offered.

"What? No, what about your foot?"

"It's fine," he said, but he flinched when he stood up and put weight on it. Lucky for him she didn't see that, but what else was there to be done? Oswin could no longer stand at all without her fake leg, because the right one was so mangled. And he saw it, too, in the gloom when he opened the draws. She didn't pay him much mind as his eyes trailed over the bumpy, messy scars. Oswin's right leg looked like it had been twisted around and had never been allowed to return to its rightful position, it was a Frankenstein's-monster of a limb. Her foot had a large indented scar running down the middle of it, and she only had three toes, the second, fourth and fifth ones.

"You don't have to look at it if it bothers you."

"Doesn't it hurt?" he asked tentatively, passing her some clothes from the wardrobe against the wall by the door.

"Yeah, it always hurts, it always used to," she said, then she paused and said surprisingly wryly, "God, would you look at the pair of us? We're like a novelty act. Me with my legs and you with your ankle. We're literally useless, we can't do anything. What if there was a burglar in the night and I didn't have my leg and you didn't have your foot brace?"

"A burglar on the TARDIS?"

"Yes!"

"Why would there be a burglar on the TARDIS?"

"I don't know. They're after my ideas."

"Your ideas?"

"Yes, blueprints and stuff. You know."

"You haven't got any blueprints, Oswin. But I suppose if, hypothetically, you _did_ , and if, hypothetically, there _was_ a burglar somehow, we'd probably just have to give in to them," he shrugged, shuffling back over to the other side of the bed.

"We couldn't give in to a dangerous burglar, they would violate your body."

"They would _what_?"

"You're just so cute and defenceless."

"Oh wow, my girlfriend is making me out to be a rape victim."

"You just have that sort of vibe."

"The vibe of being a rape victim…?"

"How do I put this politely?"

"You've never put anything politely in your life."

"Then yes, you have that vibe," she shrugged.

"…I bought a derelict factory today while I was waiting up for you," he said, shamelessly changing the subject. She froze halfway through putting one of his t-shirts on, one with the Bat Logo on it.

"Sorry, you did what? Bought a derelict factory? Why would you do that?"

"I thought I'll renovate it, make it into an orphanage or something. The Oswin Oswald Home for Neglected Children," he said, smirking. She turned around and glared at him over her shoulder.

"Don't name it after me. And as if you'll just build a children's home on a whim…"

"I have to do _something_ with all my bloody money."

"You do, you give _millions_ of pounds to charity each year," she crawled back under the covers next to him as he removed his glasses now, shoving them under the pillow. She always told him not to do that in case he broke them by accident, but he would drop them onto the floor and completely lose them otherwise – then he'd be seeing the world in a dull hue of non-colour.

"Ellie thinks it's a good idea."

"I never said it's not a good idea, but one day you're going to overload me with how impossibly perfect you are and my head will explode," she muttered, putting an arm around him.

"Do you want to know a fun fact? About me?"

"…Sure…" she said, though she sounded suspicious.

"Did you know that I am the world's youngest billionaire? Or, I would be, if I didn't give so much away."

"You're _what_? The world's youngest billionaire? _I'm_ going out with the youngest billionaire of your century?"

"Uh, so far. I can't predict the future, there could be an even younger billionaire come along soon."

"What about Bruce Wayne?"

"…I don't know how to tell you this, Oswin, but Bruce Wayne isn't real. And I mean a self-made billionaire, not someone who just inherited it because of great personal tragedy," he said.

"Do you ever think," she began, nuzzling closer to him, "that we're kind of a power couple?" He laughed.

"We are so _not_ a power couple."

"Oh my god, we definitely are. Smartest girl in the universe and the youngest billionaire of the Twenty-First Century. How come nobody else appreciates how extraordinary we are?"

"We should tell them. We'll throw a dinner party. Join high society, or something."

"You wouldn't make it in high society."

"Thanks," Adam muttered, "I'm going to go to sleep now before you insult me again. You'll make me cry."

"Good, that's what I'm aiming for."

"You're so kind."

"I know."

 **AN: Sorry about this guys, but I have to go on break. Only for a week, two weeks tops, then the Monday/Wednesday/Saturday update cycle will resume, because I have an essay due on the 13** **th** **and I literally cannot do an essay this week AND write fic. Plus I do, in fact, have a job now (I know, it's miracle) – I basically write scripts for a YouTube channel called Nexus so go subscribe because that would be cool of you. But anyway, I can't do that and write fic and write an essay so I have to put the lesser priority on hold. Anyway, the next storyline is meant to be the ultimate Lovecraftian amalgam, so I have to read a lot of Lovecraft this week to be able to do it properly.**


	65. Night-Gaunts

**AN: Am back off my break now I did my essay and that. Should resume the Monday/Wednesday/Saturday upload schedule I try to maintain now.**

 **DAY 146**

 _Night-Gaunts_

 _Ten_

The fur-balls pawed over their mother blindly, Princess Sparkle Tutu laying there languid and exhausted letting them suckle, sometimes dragging one of them towards her to lick it clean. They were senseless and cute, and the Tenth Doctor had been watching them in Nerve Centre on his own for a while now. It would be a week or two yet until those kittens could even be touched by anyone except the big ginger cat. None of them had even seen the outside of their cardboard box yet. In any species, the early stages of life were a wonder to see. New children born on his TARDIS. It reminded him of New Earth, Brannigan's 'children of the motorway.' In a way, _these_ cats were children of the motorway, too. _A_ motorway, at least.

 _Princess Sparkle Tutu_ , he thought to himself, trying to recall when the name-change had happened. It startled him when he realised it had been Jenny's idea, once the cat's true biological sex was discovered. Though, he wasn't sure it _needed_ its name changing, he wasn't even sure these simple Earth-cats had a sense of gender. Then he was thinking about Jenny herself, because he had heard vague news that she was back on the TARDIS, yet she had failed to find him and tell him. In fact, she hadn't told him she was leaving, either, nor had she ever mentioned when she had been back on the TARDIS briefly the previous week. Apparently, she had been spending time with Eleven, which was something Ten did not comprehend. Eleven was barely even Jenny's real father. He wondered what this meant for him, this ignorance of his daughter's affairs. Just that she was forgetful, surely?

In any case, he had been distracted. Jenny was not his top-priority. Rose Tyler was his top-priority, but she was asleep, and he was trying not to think about her because he got an odd sort of contracting-feeling in his chest whenever he did. As though the thought of marrying her, and of planning a wedding, and of… all of _that_ , was causing him physical discomfort. But that couldn't be so. He loved her. What reason could he possibly have to be worried about seat covers and decorative bouquets and wedding favours and vows and whether to have it in a church or a hotel and what colour the confetti ought to be and what the menu should… Okay. Admittedly, maybe he was feeling… _slightly_ overwhelmed. But only slightly.

His lonesome musings were interrupted by the entrance of somebody else into the room; Donna Noble came through the doors from the Bedroom Circle at that unholy, late hour, and was almost as surprised to see him there as he was to see _her_. Their eyes met in silence for a second.

"Shouldn't you be asleep?" he asked.

"Shouldn't _you_ be with Rose?" Donna countered, "What's she going to do if she wakes up alone?"

"Well, I…" he faltered. He didn't really have an answer for that. No doubt Rose wouldn't be particularly happy to wake up alone, she never normally was, not when he was often going for late-night strolls around the TARDIS recently. She kept asking him if something was wrong, to which he merely replied of course not, he just wanted to stretch his legs.

"Sorry," Donna said, sighing, closing her eyes for a brief moment, "I just got woken up by a bad dream, that's all. If you and Rose are having problems, then that's none of my business."

"We're not having problems!" he protested, then paused, "Do people think we're having problems?"

"Nobody thinks anything about you and Rose as far as I know," Donna said, "Everyone's been paying those cats a lot of attention, and Jenny since she got back yesterday."

"Did she get back yesterday?" he asked, though he knew full-well she did, "I haven't seen her. She didn't come to say hello."

"Why would she?" Donna asked.

"I'm her dad." Donna narrowed her eyes at him.

"Do you want a hot chocolate? That's all I came to get, calm myself down," she said eventually.

"Was your dream that bad?" he asked, and she nodded. He told her he would like a hot chocolate if there was one going, smiling, and then went back to looking at the kittens. The black one of them was a little larger and lurked on its own at the back of the box. Indeed, it was practically a shadow. If it wasn't for its yellow eyes with an odd, shining quality, he might only think there were four kittens, not five. They were a variety of breeds, he saw. One of them was completely bald, and another was a calico which squeaked upon occasion, unable to meow. They didn't have much by way of personalities yet, though.

Donna put a hot mug of drinking chocolate in his hand and sat by his side on the sofa.

"You messed up with her, you know."

"Rose?"

"No, Jenny," Donna said, " _Because_ of Rose, probably. There are other important people in your life, Doctor."

"I know, but she's… Rose is…" he didn't have the words to describe what Rose Tyler meant to him. She was his universe, the sun in the centre of it, and he was a planet, and everybody else just felt like moons and asteroids to him. The sun was the thing that kept him from being a barren old rock floating around in the time vortex. Rose was. "What did I do to Jenny?"

"You kept trying to make plans with her and then forgetting," Donna said, "You've probably forgotten you ever did that in the first place. She's not happy with you at all."

"What have I ever done?"

"Left her behind on Messaline."

"She was dead."

"This has been resolved, you know. With the Eleventh Doctor. Not with you. Enough about that, though – why _are_ you hiding from Rose? You can tell me, you know," she said. And he looked at Donna and realised she was right. His mind flashed with the usually irrelevant knowledge that the Ponds thought Eleven had abandoned them in favour of his marriage, and was Donna not his equivalent of the Ponds? His best friend? He didn't want to be focused so much on Rose that he lost her. But he supposed that point hadn't been reached just yet. And she _was_ his best woman.

"I'm not sure I'm ready to be with her properly," he said, "Maybe I was just being presumptuous, and hopeful… obviously Rose has been married before, she wouldn't… but _me_ … well, I suppose I _have_ been married before, but that isn't really…" He babbled a lot.

"Typical man. Just scared. They always forget that you don't instantly marry someone after the proposal, there's still a while in between," she said.

"Well I wish there wasn't a while, I wish we were just married," he muttered, "I did my bit. Proposing."

"The wedding is your bit too, silly," she elbowed him jokingly. He scowled and sipped the hot chocolate, which was not very good, truthfully, because Donna was none too adept when it came to making palatable beverages with kettles. "You should just tell Rose if you're stressed. She _does_ keep going on about all the planning you've got to do. I can see why you want to rush it, but I don't really think you need to."

"I just want Rose to be happy."

"I'm sure she wants the same for you. Maybe you just need a break – when was the last time you went out anywhere _without_ Rose?" she asked. He frowned. Off the top of his head, he couldn't rightly remember.

"I suppose… a little over two weeks ago."

"God, really? That'll be all, then, you need a break," she said.

"But Rose-"

"Will not mind," Donna said firmly. He thought about this for a while, his eyes straying back towards the kittens who just walked all over each other in their sightless way. "Have you talked to Jack lately?"

"Jack? No, why? Haven't seen him. Has he been bringing people back onto the TARDIS again? I wish he wouldn't, it's meant to be an honour to travel on this ship, only my closest friends, not his drunken hook-ups," Ten complained, knowing that ever since things had collapsed between Jack and Jenny, Jack had become rather more of a womaniser than usual. Well, he wasn't entirely sure of the correct term, being as it wasn't exclusively women he had been bringing back. More women than men, though, it seemed, which the Doctor found surprising. He'd always been under the impression that Jack had a rather boyish preference.

"I haven't seen him, either, not after he asked to swap rooms and ran off a few hours later."

"He asked you to swap rooms?"

"I don't think he fancied much the idea of having to, you know, _hear things_ , if Jenny ever brought her girlfriend home. Which she did do, to be fair, and if I were Jack I wouldn't want to hear anything my ex is doing, either," Donna said, "Not that I _did_ hear anything from them, apart from them just talking to each other."

"Sorry – did you say Jack _ran off_?"

"Yeah, Oswin said something about Liam Kent mentioning the name 'Jones' and he took his coat and left."

"Really?" Ten asked. She nodded. He supposed it _had_ to be something important if Jack had taken his coat, Jack always took his coat when he was carrying out some morally grey business of his. "Can't someone just call him?"

"He left his phone behind, it's on the table over there," Donna said, pointing at one of the two white tables behind them. So it was, the Doctor noted. Jack's coat took priority over his phone, though. The TARDIS would be able to find Captain Jack easily enough if it ever came down to it, but they didn't really need to worry. After all, it was Jack. He couldn't exactly get himself killed.

"Maybe he's just gone to see Esther?" Ten suggested. Donna shrugged.

"Maybe."

"Shouldn't you go to bed, though? It's the middle of the night."

"I'd rather not," she said stiffly.

"…How bad _was_ your dream, exactly? So bad you don't want to go to sleep? A nightmare?"

"Yeah. Sort of. I don't know, it was strange… there were these things… aliens, I guess, or something else, like nothing I've ever seen, in a colour I don't even recognise. How can that be possible? A new colour? I couldn't even begin to describe it," Donna said.

"That's unusual…"

"There's only a certain amount of colours though, aren't there? In the rainbow?"

"Well, no, not necessarily," Ten said, "Colour is relative to what species you are. Different species have different eyes and can see hundreds of colours, maybe. _I_ can see more colours than you can. But then, I've always been partial to a black and white film. Then Adam Mitchell is colour blind because his eyes are different – and I've heard he has it quite bad, too, imagine what it must have been like for him the first time he saw purple… but, anyway, your dream."

"Well there was this strange colour, and all these buildings, but they were sort of round. You know those optical illusions? Like the never-ending stairs, and stuff? It was like that, but with spheres."

"Very odd indeed…"

"I think some things were floating. And those creatures, or monsters, I don't know, they were there, and all these odd symbols I've never even seen before. I couldn't even draw them for you, but I just know I'd never seen anything like them, and these sounds, like whispers in another language. I could hear the voices on the air. I don't know why it scared me so much, but I don't want to go back to sleep again…" Donna said.

Ten was about to say something after thinking what she had said over, when there was a pinging noise overhead like that of an announcement, and the smooth voice of Helix addressed them from seemingly within the walls: " _Apologies for interrupting, Doctor and Mrs Temple-Noble. A phone in the console room is ringing_."

"Oh, really? I don't suppose you can patch it through your speakers into Nerve Centre?" Ten suggested.

" _Unfortunately the communications systems are beyond my range of influence;; I do not have permission to breach my shackle parameters to fulfil your request, Doctor_ ," Helix said.

"Yeah, maybe _don't_ breach your shackle whatsits. We don't need another Elle," Donna said, then to Ten, "Are you going to go answer the phone?"

"Oh, right," he stood up quickly when he realised he probably should. It normally seemed to be Jack who answered the phones, but of course now he wasn't there to do so. Still carrying his hot chocolate, with Donna following, he went into the console room and picked up the old fashioned telephone. "Hello? The Doctor speaking."

" _Oh, thank god_ ," said the familiar voice of Kate Stewart, taking him by surprise, " _Thank god it was you who answered and not Jack, or Oswin. I need your help, I need you to settle a dispute_."

"A dispute? With UNIT?"

"Who is it?" Donna asked.

"Kate Stewart," he answered.

" _Who are you talking to_?" Kate asked.

"Donna Noble," he answered.

" _Not with UNIT, between UNIT and Undercoll_."

"Undercoll being… um…"

"New Torchwood," Donna said, "What do Undercoll want?"

" _Undercoll are trying to claim something as theirs, something alien, I need your help_ ," Kate said.

"You want me to mediate?"

" _In a way, yes. Isn't that what you pride yourself on? Negotiating? Peace-keeping?_ " she questioned.

"I… alright. Alright, fine, I'm not very busy, and I'm sure the Brigadier would like me keeping in touch on his daughter," Ten said, wondering what part of time Kate was calling from. He was a little hazy on the Undercoll/UNIT balance, though, where one ended and the other started. He could have sworn he remembered hearing something about UNIT having their power negated by order of the crown.

" _Good, good. Get to Hollowmire._ " Kate hung up. No date, no more specific location, nothing. Ten sighed and pressed some buttons on the nearest keyboard so that the TARDIS would trace where and when the call came from.

"Hollowmire?" he frowned, "Why does that sound familiar…"


	66. Colours Out of Space

_Colours Out of Space_

 _Ten_

Neither Ten nor Donna could initially place where it was they knew the name of 'Hollowmire' from, but it was a weird sort of village they soon realised. Everything about it, when they stepped out of the TARDIS, was shining with a peculiar sheen. Not a natural sheen, not even a real shine at all, but as though there was an oddly-textured film sitting between their eyes and the world around them now. This, and the fog that floated around quite complacently, gave everything an unnatural quality, and all the sights, from the strange calligraphy of the shop signs to the very colour of the bulbs in the streetlamps, had something off-kilter about them. Already, the Doctor was unnerved, like the world was on a wonky axis in comparison to his manner of balancing, this accentuated by a man walking past with a flat-cap nodding his head in greeting. He must have seen the TARDIS appear out of nowhere, the Doctor knew, yet he acted as though nothing at all had happened…

The streets were cobbled, the buildings were somehow crooked and leaning against each other even though when he squinted at them carefully he could have sworn they were just as straight as any other shopfront. The roads bumped and rose, his feet falling at strange angles he could not anticipate, and he felt conscious suddenly of the very way he was walking. Even Donna sensed something eerie about this town as they passed under the luminescent streetlights towards the location Kate Stewart's phone call had come from, following a conspicuous and blinking electronic device in the palm of the Doctor's hand. The people who passed, more people than he expected to see out and about in the middle of the night, didn't give them a second look.

"Are you okay?" Donna asked in a whisper. Why they felt the need to whisper, he did not know, but there was something wholly disturbing already about this place Kate Stewart had stranded herself in. He tried to focus on the blinking of his triangulator, not on this spooky old settlement they were trudging through. Even the fog was heavier, tasted metallic on his tongue. Soon, he thought, he was going to start jumping at shadows…

"Fine," he said stiffly. What else could he say? They couldn't turn around and leave, he never did that, and especially not when he had been summoned and asked for help by a friend. Kate Stewart was almost family, he had been such friends with her father back in his long-gone UNIT days. So, he resolved, he would just have to put up with whatever discomfort he was experiencing.

They rounded a corner, the triangulator flared up and strobed, and out of the rimy gloom Kate Lethbridge-Stewart took shape with a red-bereted crony behind her, in a heated argument with a pair of leather-clad _ad hoc_ types. Undercoll, he assumed. A twig-like old man was there by their side with a large old lamp on the floor at his feet, clutching his back in a decrepit, broken way.

"Kate!" the Doctor shouted in greeting, hearing his voice reverberate tenfold on the damp cobbles at their feet. The echo made him jump. They were standing just within the low-walled boundaries of a graveyard, which climbed up within to form a hill. That hill, he found himself thinking, was exactly where the church should go. Only, this graveyard had no church that he could see, none at all, it was just rows of stones marking the dead.

"Doctor?" He expected that word to come from Kate, but it didn't, because Ten realised shortly that he had _two_ old friends in that graveyard. He stopped dead in his tracks upon recognising the voice as that of Lady Christina de Souza. She was one of the two in leather. Christina turned, annoyed, to Kate, " _He's_ who you rang when you wandered off to 'make an important phone call'? Oh, I shouldn't be surprised, of course he was, it's not like you have any _real_ authority to be here." Then she looked back at Donna and the Doctor and smiled, "Hello. Long-time no-see. Not liking the frowns, though."

"You've got some nerve," Donna said to Christina. It took Ten racking his brain to chronicle their meetings with Christina de Souza, which, more often than not, involved her getting up to some rather untoward things with Captain Jack, or the Shadow, weirdly enough. _Very_ different types of 'untoward' with them each respectively, though. Because it was, he now remembered, Christina, who had given them the clues to discover the truth behind the Shadow, through that godawful work of fiction she had created called _The Doctor Within Me_ , which had no bearing on the reality of his friendship with Christina, he frequently had to reiterate to Rose.

"I've got a lot of nerve, people tell me – what am I supposed to have done _this_ time?" she asked.

"You're trying to steal UNIT property," Kate accused. Christina had her arms crossed, and looked at Kate with exasperation and overt boredom, sick of her by now.

"It's a dead body, it's not your 'property,'" she said coldly, shaking her head.

"Dead body? Where?" the Doctor asked, walking right up to the wall of the graveyard. When he made to step over it and was shouted at by all of the voices on the opposite side of the structure, he froze, and looked down. Oh. _There_ was the dead body; shoved into the corner and out of his immediate line of sight. The Doctor withdrew his leg and instead asked where the gate was. The old man with the lantern made a wheezing noise and pointed with a crooked arm in another, vague direction.

"You slept with Jack is what you've done," Donna said quite loudly to Christina.

"Jack Harkness?" Kate asked Christina when she heard this. Christina raised an eyebrow at Donna and then sighed.

"Yes," she answered Kate, then to Donna, "And I'm quite sure rather a lot of people have slept with Jack, so I don't see why _I_ get all the blame for the collapse of his marriage. Anyway, they were cheating on each other. And _she_ started it."

"Oi!" Ten protested, "Don't talk about her like that."

"Who her?" Kate inquired.

"His daughter," Donna answered, "Haven't you ever met Jenny?" Kate Stewart racked her brains, but it eventuated that she never _had_ met Jenny, actually, which the Doctor found quite interesting. He might like for Jenny to meet Kate – the next generation after himself and the Brigadier.

"Jenny has seen me naked," Christina said, sounding surprised and disturbed by this information, pondering it briefly, "I wonder if she's into me… not that I'm interested. I'm a boys-only kind of girl."

"And aren't those rare to come by these days…" Donna mumbled.

"Enough of this – dead body. What's going on with _that_ , then? And who are _you_?" he asked the young man at Christina de Souza's side, the other Undercoll-type, when he and Donna had finally wended their way through enough of the headstones to reach them. Donna looked at the man like she knew him.

"Elliott," he said, "James Elliott, used to be a detective, just call me Elliott. I've met another one of you." He was Welsh, taking the Doctor by surprise, and he held out a hand for Ten to shake. Never one to be rude to someone purely on the basis they worked for a clandestine and royally-sanctioned government agency, the Doctor shook it.

"Oh yeah, you were there when I got my brain removed by those robots," Donna said, smiling a little in realisation.

"You do get around a fair bit, don't you?" Christina said to Elliott.

"You work for Undercoll now?" Ten interrupted, "New Torchwood?"

"Yes, but Darling hates people calling it that. And you're going to step on the body, be careful, would you?" she said, dragging him away against his will by his arm, never one to care much about the tacit boundaries of personal space.

"What's so remarkable about this body? Why are you fighting over it? Who's this?" Ten asked about the old man with his lantern, who stood there, wrinkled and silent, pondering all of them with his milky eyes.

"This is the groundskeeper for this graveyard, or something, he hasn't said a word," Christina explained, "He was hanging around here when we arrived and he let us in. Then the amateurs showed up."

"Amateurs!?" Kate exclaimed.

"If you weren't amateurs you wouldn't have found out about this by tapping _our_ network."

"Undercoll were tapping Hollowmire's infrastructure already."

"Undercoll are fully aware that _James_ was tapping Hollowmire's infrastructure, and it's no mystery _why_ he was doing that," Christina said very pointedly to Elliott, making him go a guilty shade of red, and the Doctor got the feeling there was a joke at play he and Donna were not in on. "Anyway, we flew up from London-"

" _Flew_?" Ten asked, crouching down to get a look at this body, fallen hunched over so it was hard to get a look at the middle, where the fatal injury was.

"Of course, I have a plane," Christina said. Why did that not surprise him? "And we showed up to find no police here, just this dead body and that man in the corner." For a second, Ten thought Christina meant the creepy, silent groundskeeper, but she in fact meant somebody the Doctor hadn't even noticed yet, curled up in the foetal position and rocking on his own. The Doctor had to look away instantly. There was something about that man there that he did not like, he did not want to see, did not want to acknowledge the existence of the person propped up against the wall.

"He's wrong," Donna said, staring, but with glassy eyes, defocused, "There's something wrong. I can't look at him." She turned towards the Doctor, who remained looking himself, though he knew the kind of intense feeling Donna was experiencing. There was something about the body, too, that made him not want to look at it. Just something off. Like there was something off about the entire village they had seen so far, only greatly exacerbated when faced with these two humans.

For a split second the rocking man looked up and met the Doctor's eyes with his own haggard expression. It shocked Ten to see how gaunt he was, how his skin was the same shade of grey as an old bruise, how it hung, sallow, off his skeletal features, how the whites of his eyes were somehow luminescent green and impossibly deranged. He looked away again, continued to rock, whispering to himself, words which drifted along the edge of the Doctor's interior perception without entering the realm of comprehension and understanding. The Doctor didn't know what he was saying. That shouldn't happen, either.

"He's definitely the murderer," Elliott, said, nodding at the man. Ten said nothing, and then remembered something unrelated, again striving to keep away from facing the inevitable examination of the body to settle this issue of jurisdictions that had arisen between Undercoll and UNIT.

"Hang on – aren't you wanted by the police for thievery and fraud?" the Doctor asked Christina.

"Yes," said Kate.

"My name has been cleared, by order of the crown, because I'm a useful asset to this country's defence against unnatural phenomenon. No matter _what_ Kate Stewart _thinks_ should be done about me," Christina boasted about her clean criminal record, "I have this job now, anyway, I don't need the kicks of robbing national treasures from museums anymore. It was getting a bit boring."

"What are you fighting about, then?" Ten continued to change the subject away from the body, finding it quite easy to fix his eyes on the faces of those around him and _not_ on the murderer or his victim.

"The knife in the body," Kate explained, "De Souza things it's _her_ job to take the knife for evidence, she thinks this whole crime scene belongs to Undercoll."

"It does."

"This is an alien event," Kate said firmly.

"You have no proof of it being alien. Undercoll deal with the _unexplained_ , all you deal with is Zygons and Daleks. UNIT is a shell of what it was, your duties have all been taken over by the HCC and Undercoll," Christina said, "You're here on a whim. UNIT would be gotten rid of if it wasn't part of some agreement with the United Nations that all member-countries keep a sect of the taskforce in operation." All these things made sense to the Doctor, who had been told in the last few days, by Rose, of the HCC taking everything over in the near future and of UNIT's power being taken away. But he didn't fancy taking Undercoll's side, either.

" _I'll_ look at the knife, then," the Doctor declared finally, which seemed agreeable to all of them, as long as _somebody_ took the knife out of the body. And so, it fell to him, and he stooped again and reached out a hand to try and move the stiff cadaver, Elliott coming to assist him, and finally clasped a hand around the large, engraved hilt of whatever fancy knife this was. And he pulled, and it came out, sliding free of the viscera within the corpse and resting in the palm of his hand, a huge, machete-sized thing.

"That colour…" Donna said, in awe. It didn't make any sense. He nearly dropped it. This knife, it was like nothing he had ever seen before, because Donna was correct about the colour. What colour _was_ that? It was like the colour of the creatures who lived at the bottom of the sea mixed with the tail of a burning comet mixed with the centre of a star. It was impossible to accurately describe this unknown phosphorescence he saw sneaking out of the invisible end of the colour spectrum. It was heavy, too, and made of something both smooth and abrasive, and it both scratched his hands and cooled them. The colour, the alloy, the fact it came out of the body completely free of blood – none of it made sense.

"Take a look at the wound," the Doctor ordered Elliott, not wanting to let this knife into the hands of either agency present. Elliott did, pushing the body over so that it lay belly-up towards the moon and the injury was visible to all. Despite the bloodless, sparkling knife, the wound was ghastly and definitely real. But blood did not leak out of the gash, instead the skin around it turned black, the flesh already dying and in a stage of impossibly late decay. He was rotting away and turning to fallow mush from the point of entry of this complex knife.

"Whatcha all looking at?"

They jumped, Ten nearly dropped the knife, and James Elliott went a ghastly colour of pale shock and heinous embarrassment when they were greeted by Sally Sparrow, of all the people.

"Sally Sparrow!?" the Doctor exclaimed.

"Doctor Who!?" Sally Sparrow retorted in the exact same tone of voice. And then she smiled, and came to lean on the wall into the graveyard. "How're the girls, Lyle?" she asked. Who was Lyle, the Doctor wondered? His question was answered by the groundskeeper with his lantern making a grunting noise, and meekly shrugging. "That's good, then," Sally said, as though she knew what his anomalous gestures meant. When Sally glanced down and saw the dead body right beneath the wall she was leaning against, she moved back. "What's going on?"

"What are you doing here!?" Ten asked her, "I haven't seen you for months! Or is it years to you?" Sally narrowed her eyes. He could have sworn he'd heard mention some weeks ago of Sally Sparrow's presence on the TARDIS, but the Doctor hadn't been there to witness it. He himself, despite of the talk of where Esther Drummond had ended up, had not seen Sally since that first venture in Staffordshire practically eons ago now with Martha and the Twins.

"It's three in the morning," Elliott said to her with a tone of concern. Sally pretended like she didn't even see him.

"Is _this_ your girlfriend, Jimmy?" Christina asked. Kate Stewart said something about wanting to get back to the matter at hand, but the crime's details were so disturbing to Ten he would much rather interrogate Sally Sparrow on what on Gallifrey she was doing wandering around out in this creepy settlement in the middle of the night, as Elliott had pointed out. When Christina called him 'Jimmy' and made her quip, he turned even redder.

"I'm not his girlfriend," Sally said to Christina, then narrowed her eyes, "Who are you?"

"Lady Christina de Souza," Christina said, and Sally's eyes widened.

"Didn't you shag Jack? And you've come _here_? You know Jenny's girlfriend lives on the hill," Sally said. Which hill, Ten was not sure, because there seemed to be an awful lot of hills. It was the Yorkshire moors they were nestled in, so the land wasn't remotely flat.

" _That's_ why we recognised the name…" Donna said to the Doctor, speaking for the first time in a while after she had been rendered so harrowed by the sight of that rocking, distorted man who was still muttering to himself a few metres away from them. "Hollowmire."

" _Oh_ ," Ten realised the same thing. "Right. Sorry. I thought you lived in London?"

"Keep up with the gossip, Doctor," Sally remarked, "What's that you're holding?"

"Can I talk to you?" Elliott asked her. She still ignored him. What was this 'girlfriend' thing?

"A knife," Kate Stewart answered for him, "Property of UNIT – and _you're_ on our watch list, Miss Sparrow."

"UNIT?" Sally asked, growing unusually serious. She said to the Doctor, "You brought UNIT _here_? Where…" He didn't know what she stopped herself from saying, but she looked at him imploringly, willing him to understand something.

"They called us," Donna explained, "We've come to investigate this murder."

"We need to get this body to Cohen," Elliott began saying to Christina, but Christina was watching Sally with quite an amused air. Kate Stewart wasn't amused by any of this. He wondered if she had ever really been amused in her life.

"The body isn't yours," Kate said, "It's coming with us, to UNIT." Sally was glaring at the Doctor for some unknown reason. "And so is the knife."

"This knife is clearly not from this planet, which I think falls into _my_ jurisdiction rather than any of you lot, alright?" the Doctor said, "You called me down, so I'm in charge. _I'm_ the expert, none of you even know what it's made of."

"What _is_ it made of, then?" Christina challenged him.

"Well, I… that's not important right now, what's important is that you all make yourselves scarce."

"I agree, scarcity is a wonderful thing when it comes to the government," Sally said.

"Why _are_ you awake at three in the morning?" Donna asked her.

"I'm always awake at three in the morning, I go for walks when I can't sleep," she said, "Thought I might go and see if Clara's around but she doesn't want to play right now."

"You can't sleep? Why? Have you been having strange dreams, as well?" Donna asked quite urgently, causing a quiet to fall on everybody else conglomerated in the church-less graveyard.

"Uh, no… not per se," Sally said, narrowing her eyes, "Why?" Donna did not answer.

"Sally-" Elliott persisted.

"She's ignoring you on purpose, anyone can see that," Kate snapped at him coldly, and Sally looked at the wall in front of her and pretended she hadn't heard any of that.

"Alright, you're all acting like children," the Doctor said loudly, "Kate. I'm sorry, but they're right, this isn't UNIT's job."

"And UNIT being in Hollowmire doesn't bode well for _anyone_ ," Sally said in a very pointed way, still trying to convey a message to the Doctor he didn't understand.

"Well, yes," he agreed with her anyway, then turned to Undercoll, "And you two – see if you can get anything out of _him_ ," he waved a hand at the muttering, greying, glowing man lurking against the wall, "Take him out of here, make sure he's… safe. Ask where he got the knife, I don't know, but the knife is _mine_. I don't trust any of you with weapons, and I'm sure you're all carrying guns anyway. So go on, scatter."

"Yes, sir," Kate said, saluting to him. He didn't tell her not to, because he knew that in that instant she had saluted because she _knew_ how much he hated it. But to his surprise, they actually all listened to him, _even_ the constantly rebellious Christina de Souza. Perhaps the mutating murderer had piqued her interest more than the mystery of the bloodless blade in his hands. Sally was still trying to communicate something to him wordlessly, but he ignored her and looked at the knife again.

There was something else on it he hadn't yet noticed, some other strange trait it frightened him to realise. There were symbols carved into it, into the blade itself and its unknown alloy, and he didn't understand them at all. They were like nothing he had ever seen, sharp and curved, smooth and deep and beautiful and terrible, and it was as though the words – though he could not understand them – bored into his mind.

"That's not right. It should translate. I speak every language, why isn't it translating…" he muttered, Kate and her stray soldier actually leaving, Elliott and Christina turning their attention to the murderer. No doubt Undercoll were going to claim the body as soon as he left, but it was probably best to get the ghastly, rotting thing out of sight and the horror of the black gore in its middle. The Doctor showed the knife to Donna, but she didn't want to look.

"What is it?" Sally asked, intrigued more than she was annoyed. The Doctor walked away from the body and vaulted with one hand over the wall to meet her, leaving Donna to traipse around through the graves again and leave through the gate. Lyle the groundskeeper remained there, looking at the body in an odd, intense way. She reached out her hands to take the weapon, but he pulled it away. "I'm not going to stab anyone, Doctor," she said coolly, and he relinquished it to her after a few more seconds. He didn't think she _would_ stab anyone, really.

"There's only one other time a language hasn't translated," the Doctor said to Donna, "When Rose and I were on an asteroid orbiting a black hole."

" _Can_ things orbit black holes?" Donna asked.

"No," was all he said, quite darkly. But the knowledge of meeting the Beast on that planet being the only other time writing had remained indecipherable frightened him. Where had this knife come from, and its troglodyte-owner who had now gone stark-raving mad in the middle of a graveyard? Why had he killed anyone to begin with? It was the most intriguing murder-mystery Ten had come across in recent times.

"I've seen these before," Sally surprised them all, examining the symbols.

"You've _what_?"

"Something like these," she said, then lowering her voice she grew quite angry, "You _know_ Esther is supposed to be in UNIT custody right now, and there's the leader wandering around the village. What if she gets seen? She lives here, too."

"Kate's leaving," the Doctor said firmly.

"And isn't Esther asleep?" Donna added.

"She is, but she won't be for long," Sally said cryptically, then she gave the Doctor the large knife with its obscene colour back, "Do you two want to come round for a cup of tea?"


	67. 16, Lunar Terrace

_16, Lunar Terrace_

 _Ten_

They followed Sally Sparrow back through the same streets they had come from, her ignoring the TARDIS completely when they passed it, perhaps because she was distracted by Donna's interrogation of her. Sally Sparrow seemed to put a lot of thought into trying to be witty with everything she said, in a way which he could see to be annoying. And Donna, especially, was none too thrilled with this facet of Sally's personality as she led them to the home she shared with Esther Drummond.

"You live here?" Donna asked.

"In the middle of this road? Yeah, that's my bed right there," Sally replied dryly, pointing with her thumb at a pothole. They had left the realm of the cobbled streets which graced the centre of the village, escaping to properly tarmacked roads. Though the abundance of potholes made it seem like they really needed to be tarmacked again. The size of some of them – it was a wonder any car could drive out there. If they were to fill with rain during a storm, someone could fall right into them, big, dirty wells in the asphalt.

"Why were you ignoring Elliott?" Donna now persisted. The third time she had asked this question. The Doctor had his hand around the hilt of the knife in his pocket, keeping it out of sight but right at his side. Keep your enemies close, and all that.

"I just don't want to talk to him," Sally said.

"Why does Christina think you're his girlfriend?"

"I don't know – maybe he told her I am."

"She said he was keeping tabs on the police reports of Hollowmire," Donna continued. She was rather observant when she wanted to be, Ten noticed, bringing up all of this inconsequential information. Probably that because she had wanted to avoid looking at the body and the assailant so much, she had taken great notice of the other, more idle details, of their encounter with Undercoll and UNIT. Sally made a start when Donna told her that, though.

"Did she? Is he? I'll have to get Esther to do something about that…" Sally said, "The last thing I want is James Elliott stalking me. It's nothing, anyway, he just fancies me." Sally did not seem remotely enthusiastic about where Elliott's feelings lay. Nor was she very welcoming when Donna decided to say she thought Elliott was cute, and why wouldn't Sally give him a chance? The Doctor thought Sally's business was Sally's business. If _he_ gave every woman who batted her eyes at him a chance, he'd… well, he'd be a very busy man. Rose was more than enough for him. "You're as bad as Clara."

" _Clara_?" Donna was not impressed by this comparison.

"Yes, Clara, and _not_ Jenny's Clara, the other one," Sally said. _Jenny's Clara_ ; what an interesting phrase. He had never heard anybody refer to Beta Clara as Jenny's Clara before, "'Why don't you sleep with every boy who smiles at you, Sally? That's what _I'd_ do,'" she did an exaggerated imitation of Clara's northern accent Ten thought was quite good, if mocking. "It's this one." She changed the subject and turned left into the gate of a messy front garden.

In the moonlight it took the Doctor a moment to see what stood there, leaning in the corner between the garden house and the wall.

"Bloody hell!" Donna shouted before he could form the words himself.

"What?" Sally asked, fumbling in the pockets of her long winter coat for her house keys. What Sally Sparrow was doing was of no interest to the Doctor though, because he was looking at a skeleton, a real milky-white, muddy old skeleton, standing there propped up in the corner of the garden. "Oh, that? Esther calls him Skeletor. He's been there since Halloween; we have nowhere to put him in the house."

"Why is it wearing a top-hat?" Donna questioned, reaching up as if to grab the dishevelled old top-hat from off the top of 'Skeletor's' bald head.

"Don't touch that!" Sally yelled. Ten worried about them waking the neighbours.

"Why not?" he asked.

"It'll brainwash you," she answered, "Seriously, that thing is deadly, I nearly burnt the house down."

"You _what_?" Donna asked incredulously, not daring to touch the hat now but still not understanding what Sally was talking about. It was like she was speaking in tongues. Did Esther not mind them having a skeleton in their front garden among all the dead weeds?

"Can't find my key," she muttered.

"Isn't there a spare?"

"It's the spare I thought I _had_ … oh, wait," and Sally tried the door, which opened immediately. She was quite pleased with her forgetfulness, but Ten was nearly horrified- anybody could have walked in there and robbed them with Esther in bed and Sally away. And he didn't think Esther would stand for that sort of laziness and danger if she heard about it.

Sally turned the lights on as they followed her into the small house, her retrieving a set of keys with a Pacman ghost on them from somewhere in the kitchen. They entered right onto a set of stairs practically, stairs lined with stray boots and shoes, and on the right was the kitchen and on the left was the dimly-lit living room.

"You like Pacman so much you got a keyring?" Donna asked Sally, again, incredulous.

"No, these are Esther's keys, I don't know where mine are," Sally answered with a shrug, locking the door behind them and returning Esther's borrowed keys to wherever it was she got them from originally, and then she implored, "Please don't tell Esther I forgot to lock the door and I've lost my keys. They're probably not lost, anyway, she probably knows exactly where they are. In a 'safe place', or something, where I'll 'remember them.'" She did inverted commas with her fingers as she spoke, but Ten didn't see what Sally found so funny. She directed them into the living room and then said she would go wake up Esther.

It was an interesting room, to say the least. All of it was very neat and orderly, perhaps _too_ neat and orderly into the realms of it getting a tad obsessive, aside from the sofa. The sofa was a _mess_ , a nest, swaddled in half a dozen dirty-looking blankets in various shades of grey and brown. There were all sorts of things making a home on that sofa; odd socks, a plate with a slightly furry crust of toast on it, a handful of scarves, and the contrast between this miniature domain and the rest of the spick-and-span room was startling to the Doctor.

Along with that, the television was switched on, broadcasting warm static into the room and nothing else. The pale glow of the screen and its buzzing noise coupled with the pictures hanging from the walls and leaning on the furnishings in the cramped space made it thoroughly eerie. The pictures were clearly photographs, and he wasn't sure how many of them were real and how many of them had had a helping hand from Photoshop, but they showed things like ghastly spectres and blurry flying saucers and other kinds of distorted monsters.

There was noise and voices upstairs. Esther must be awake. Esther was probably not very happy about being awake at half past three in the morning, but it was beyond Ten to figure out if Sally Sparrow actually cared or not. He wondered what kind of insight Esther Drummond the Lightning Girl could possibly have to their new predicament, the knife still clutched in his hand. It was like holding onto something very hot on the very edge of giving you a nasty burn, but _just about_ not hot enough that you had to drop it. He didn't like holding that thing, but he didn't have anywhere to put it down.

"… _you_ go down," Sally's voice came from above, "I have to get my book."

"Not the spooky one?" Esther's American drawl, steeped in tiredness and annoyance, questioned her. Possibly Sally told her to shut up after that, and then two sets of footsteps split away from each other, one growing louder and one growing more distant. Exhausted, messy-haired and wearing incredibly modest pyjamas, Esther came into the room, and the Doctor and Donna both beamed. "Hey," she said in greeting, "No hugs." She said this because Ten had made to hug her.

"She'll electrocute you, idiot," Donna muttered. Esther yawned. "Where's Sally gone?"

"To find this weird book she has in her room in the attic," Esther explained, "I hate that thing. She thinks it's all true, but I don't believe it."

"Your sofa is rank," Donna commented now.

"Yeah, I know," Esther looked at it with an expression akin to sorrow. That sofa was a lachrymose thing to her, sitting there, festering, "Sally won't let me clean it." She kept her arms tightly crossed and her hands hidden in the sleeves of her dressing gown. "Sorry – do you want tea? Or coffee? If she offered to make you any, she won't, she never does." Smiles broke again on both the Doctor and Donna's faces at the offer of tea, and they trailed after Esther into the freezing kitchen on the other side of the house.

"So _this_ is where you live?" Donna asked.

"Yeah, sometimes unfortunately…" The kitchen, too, was ordered in a very meticulous way, and again the room was marred only by the amount of crusty washing up piled high in their small sink. Esther would be more talkative, Ten assumed, if it wasn't for the fact she had just been woken up. "What's _that_?" she spotted the knife when she left the kettle to boil, having arranged the mugs in a very precise kind of way, four of them in a line all equidistant from each other. Ten took this opportunity to put the knife down on their wooden kitchen table. "How the heck is it that colour? What _is_ that colour?"

"I don't know, I've never seen it before," the Doctor said seriously.

"Where'd you get it?"

"Your graveyard, some bloke got done in with it," Donna explained, "Should've seen the wound, it was all rotting from where the knife went in, and the crazy one nearby-"

"Oh, you can't say 'crazy', it's insensitive," Esther interrupted, and Donna gave her a look so she apologised, "Sorry, I just mean… mental illness isn't something we should talk about so colloquially."

"Are you being a buzzkill again?" Sally questioned from the other side of the door, entering the room just as she finished talking, looking judgingly at Esther.

"I'm not being a buzzkill," Esther argued.

To Donna, Sally said, "Esther is a _major_ buzzkill. A real fun-sponge."

"Ha, ha," Esther said dryly.

"It's true, apart from the lightning-thing, you're just a very boring person," Sally said, and again to Donna, "She's going to spend the whole day tomorrow alphabetising the contents of the kitchen cupboard." And that really riled Esther up, for some reason.

"Okay, that's ridiculous. First of all, alphabetising the cupboards is the stupidest system I've ever heard – you'd have the sardines and the sweetcorn right next to each other, it would be chaos. Second of all, I already organised the cupboards two days ago into food groups left-to-right, and by sell-by-dates front-to-back, so the joke's on you," Esther said.

"And what a hilarious joke it is," Sally responded sarcastically, making Esther pout as the kettle finished boiling. Donna looked at Esther now like _she_ was the 'crazy' one, as she poured their drinks. The Doctor now saw that Sally was holding in her arms an enormous, leather-bound tome with dark yellow pages. He could smell the dust on it without even being near.

"What's _that_?" he asked.

"This-"

"Oh, here we go…" Esther muttered, mostly to herself.

Firmly, Sally began again, glaring at Esther while she spoke, _"This_ , is an incredibly _historically accurate_ volume called _Hollowmire: A Supernatural History_." She put the thing down on the table next to the knife, silver writing on the black front claiming it to be exactly that, a supernatural history. It didn't have the name of any author on it, though.

"It is not historically accurate," Esther said, pouring out hot water and milk into mugs.

"Yes it is," Sally persisted when Esther argued with her.

"In what world?"

"It told us about the Night Flyer."

"Yeah, well, that's…"

"I'm looking through it to find the symbols on that knife," Sally explained, Esther not being able to think of another way to insult this old text. Ten thought it was very interesting, mainly because Hollowmire was a very small village, and the book was huge. Was this place some kind of magnet for unexplained phenomenon? "I could have sworn I've seen symbols like that before."

"What's it made of?" Esther asked, looking at it carefully as she handed the mugs around, Ten and Donna smiling in thanks.

"I don't know," the Doctor answered, "I've never seen anything like it before, _or_ the wound, or the man who used it. He looked… elongated. Bony."

"Huh," was all Esther said, looking at the knife again, but not daring to touch it for herself. Good, Ten thought. Who knew what giving it an electric shock might do? Or maybe an electric shock was exactly what it needed…

"You know your TV is on?" Donna said.

"Esther does it," Sally answered vacantly, poring over the pages of the book. Ten moved so that he could stand behind her, crossing his arms and reading over her shoulder.

"I do not," Esther said, then to Donna, "It happens all the time, sorry, I'll go turn it off." She disappeared for a moment, the glow under the door vanished while she was away. When she returned, she reiterated, "It's always turning itself on."

"Maybe you should get a new one?" Donna suggested.

"The last one did it too," Sally said, "Hence why it's obviously Esther doing it."

"It's not!" Esther persisted, "I just think it's something to do with the electric grid."

"Yes, _you_ , _you're_ to do with the electric grid," Sally argued.

"Something other than me."

"Are we even connected to the electric grid?"

"It is not me," Esther said firmly, "And anyway, it never _just_ turns itself on, it's always on static."

"Interesting thing, static," the Doctor began on a different note, "It's the residue of the cosmic background radiation of the universe, coming through our broadcasting signals. Leftovers from the Big Bang. Oswin measures the incremental differences in it to test what universe we land in sometimes." Not that he had intended to, but that brief explanation ended the bickering between Sally and Esther.

"The Doctor brought UNIT to the village," Sally said, causing Esther to panic immediately.

"You did _what_!?" she exclaimed, "They have a past version of me still in their custody, you know!"

"I didn't bring them here, _they_ brought _me_ , they were here already," he said, "It's nothing to do with me. And anyway, it was only Kate and one other soldier."

"Sally's boyfriend said UNIT have lost most of their power, anyway," Donna added, making Sally go red.

"Oh, is Elliott here?" Esther asked. Donna laughed, finding it funny that by the small quip 'Sally's boyfriend,' Esther knew exactly whom she was talking about. Esther took Sally's silence for a yes. "Did you talk to him?"

"No."

"Did _he_ talk to _you_?"

"She ignored him," Donna said.

"Sally…" Esther said disapprovingly.

"What? He just wants to ask me out, what's the point in replying? I'm still going to say no, and don't go on about it because you know exactly why; _I'm not interested_ ," she said. It sounded like this conversation had been rehashed a lot of times, and so Esther didn't press it.

"Something funny I saw about that graveyard, you know," Ten changed the subject.

"Oh yeah?" Esther asked.

"Yeah – it didn't have a church."

"Oh, the Followers don't go to church," she said. He looked at her blankly. She sipped her tea.

"The what?" Donna asked.

"The Followers," she said, "Of, uh… of… Sally?"

"Oc'thubha," Sally answered.

"The Followers of _what_?"

"The Followers of Oc'thubha*, they're just a religious society. They run the pub, don't they?" Esther asked.

"Oh, they're everywhere," Sally shrugged.

"Hang on, hang on, a _religious society_? No churches?"

"Mmm, we went to one of their meetings once, there were free scones. They just sit around and watch blank TV screens, and then afterwards they apologised to us because we don't have the 'gift of communication.' Doris next door is one of them, she brings us shortbread all the time and tells us she wishes we could become enlightened," Sally said. Donna and the Doctor both gawked at the pair of them.

"Religious society!?" the Doctor exclaimed again, "Your village is run by a 'religious society'!?"

"That's a fancy way to describe a cult if I've ever heard one," Donna added.

"Exactly," Ten said, "Cult."

"Okay, they're not a cult," Sally said, "They're nice people."

"Nice people who are in a cult."

"You can't call every religion that doesn't have a church a cult," Esther said, "And anyway, the UK has freedom of religion! They're not hurting anybody."

"What about the bloke who got stabbed to death with _this_ weird knife?" Donna said, grabbing the knife of the table. And then something wholly unprecedented happened. Donna gasped, her eyes rolled back into her head immediately and the impossibly-coloured knife clattered to the floor – still intact – while Donna collapsed the other way and had to be caught by the Doctor. Sally looked up from the volume she had been perusing, and Esther stared in shock as Donna slowly regained herself. She had touched the knife and was nearly thrown into some sort of fit, and then she began muttering.

"I saw it," she said, keeping her eyes shut, "I saw it again."

"Saw what?" he asked, "What happened?"

"I found it," Sally declared. The Doctor tried to get information out of Donna, while Esther went around the other side of the table to see what Sally was looking at.

"Oh, yeah, that looks like the same language…" Esther said, glancing at the knife lying on the floor, "Isn't that the sign above the mine shafts in that photo? Those ones nobody is allowed in?"

"It was that city," Donna said, harrowed, "That one I saw in my dreams, my nightmares, that woke me up, the one that doesn't make sense – and that colour! It was the same colour in my dream, the same colour as the creatures I saw. And the writing…"

"What?" Ten asked, holding Donna steady by her shoulders, "What about the writing? I can't read it, Sally found some more in her book."

"It says… it says _I-C-T-H-A-R-R-U_ ," she spelt an unknown word he hardly knew how to pronounce himself while squinting at the impossible blade at her feet.

"Quick, what does the one in the book say?" Esther asked, sliding the tome out from underneath Sally's hands and showing it to Donna and the Doctor. It was a black and white picture of a rotting, wooden sign hanging above a gaping entrance to some caves. Mine shafts, she had mentioned.

And Donna spelt again, " _O-C-T-H-U-B-H-A_." Ten raised his eyebrows at Sally with an air of smugness.

"Alright. Fine. Maybe there _is_ something about the Followers of Oc'thubha."

"I think they're harmless," Esther said.

"Can't hurt to go to the Mermaid and ask around," Sally declared.

"Well, wait, what does it say in your book about that mine shaft, then?"

"That it's a mine shaft – the sign isn't the centre-point of the picture. Hollowmire is an old mining village," she shrugged.

"What's this about a Mermaid?" Ten asked next.

"It's the pub."

"Will it be open at this time of night?"

"Of course it will, it's always open, except at four PM, when the Followers have their… ceremony. Service. Thingy. Whatever you call it. Come on, Esther, you'd better get dressed, we're going out on the town."

"Oh, god help me…" Esther muttered.

* _The Followers of Oc'thubha were already mentioned by Ravenwood in Chapter 1007_

 **AN: You guys let me know how well I'm capturing the essence of HP Lovecraft in these chapters. Reviews are always cool.**


	68. One for the Radio

_One for the Radio_

 _Esther_

If you were to ask Esther Drummond in that instant why she had found herself, again, following Sally Sparrow into almost-certain danger, she wouldn't be able to tell you. She was never able to explain why she kept wandering into these risky situations, and Brigadier Kate Lethbridge-Stewart's presence skulking around Hollowmire just made her even more conscious of what kind of idiocy they were tagging along with _this_ time. Nothing good was going to come of wandering to the Mermaid in the middle of the night, she was sure.

"Nothing good is going to come of wandering to the Mermaid in the middle of the night, Sally," she said pointedly, "I'm sure." Sally was already annoyed at her because she'd put on heels that made them the same height, and this rendered Sally unable to make fun of Esther for being short, and mocking Esther for being short was probably Sally's favourite past-time. Sometimes Esther would check her phone idly to see she had been sent a text telling her she was short, by a thirty-year-old woman who was in the very same room.

"Not when you're going to trip in those heels of yours," Sally retaliated. She didn't like Esther telling her that things were bad ideas. Esther didn't know why she still did tell Sally things were bad ideas, because she was sure that just made Sally want to whatever they were even more. It was counter-productive. "Why are you wearing those things?"

"They're called 'shoes', and because _normally_ we hang around with Jenny and Clara and I don't need them," she said, "But how are those two even supposed to hear me from so far above?" she indicated Donna and the Doctor. The Doctor had been paying close attention to Donna ever since the incident with the knife in the kitchen, which had somehow rendered her able to read the unknown language written on the knife and on the sign above the mineshaft.

"It's not _our_ fault you're short," Donna said.

"I never said it was!"

"You did, you're always telling me," Sally said, "Just last night you said to me, 'God, Sal, y'know I really wish Donna and the Doctor didn't make me so short.' Those were your exact words." Sally mimicked Esther's accent. She really liked mimicking peoples' accents, she often did it to Clara and Dylan.

The Mermaid crept out of the fog towards them almost as if it was its own, living thing, swimming through the gloom and coming to settle there among the late-night dew and the mist. Maybe Esther seeing the world this way was a by-product of her exhaustion, but she didn't mind. She was getting used to being woken up by Sally in the middle of the night, anyway.

"I still don't understand what's going on with you and James Elliott," Donna persisted. She was after something juicy to talk about, clearly, bored of just listening to Sally make fun of whatever she felt like.

"Nothing," she said firmly.

"He kissed her," Esther said, revealing this 'secret' in retaliation for Sally mocking her. Sally glared at her, and she feigned innocence. Donna's face broke into a grin.

"Oh _did_ he?"

"Yeah, alright, it was weeks ago, I pushed him away – it wasn't really anything to do with me," Sally muttered, then she shot a look at Esther and said, "I'd rather not talk about it." As it happened, she didn't have to talk about it, because the Doctor shushed them all as they approached the pub. Then he stopped, put his hands in his trouser pockets, and stared at it. Donna did a similar thing, an act of examination. Sally and Esther exchanged a confused look.

"Aren't you gonna go in?" Esther asked.

"They don't bite," Sally said.

"I wouldn't put anything past these cultists," he said, which annoyed Esther. So the Followers of Oc'thubha were a bit unconventional, that didn't mean they were murderers. Well, she supposed, somebody _had_ been murdered, that was a fact, and no doubt if Sally had gotten a better look at the assailant she'd probably be able to recognise them. But as it stood, they didn't know who it had been.

Sally whispered to Esther so that the other two couldn't hear, "And people say _I'm_ crazy," then rolled her eyes at the two members of the TARDIS crew. She prodded Esther in the back, "Let's just go," and Esther followed her towards the Mermaid.

"Don't go in without us," Donna called.

"Stop surveying the area then, it's fine, me and Clara are here all the time," Sally said indifferently.

"You and _Clara_? Go to the pub together?" Donna asked in disbelief.

"We're friends, and Jenny and Esther don't drink," Sally shrugged. Then Donna gawked in horror, but at Esther now. Esther frowned.

"You don't drink!?" she exclaimed.

"Uh, no," Esther said.

"Like, _never_? Not anything?"

"No."

" _Nothing_?"

"Why is that so hard for people to understand? You know alcohol is poison, right?" Esther said, rehashing an old 'lecture' of hers as they approached the pub and Sally, who had heard this a hundred times before, held the door open. The pub was moderately full. Hollowmire was a pretty nocturnal place. "Drinking it literally has no benefits at all."

"It's fun," Donna said.

"What's fun about drinking literal toxins and making it so you don't even know how to take care of yourself properly? Do you know how many times Sally has nearly set the house on fire trying to make eggs at four in the morning?" Esther questioned, "It's a lot of times." Sally bit her lip guiltily.

"I don't get it," Donna continued.

"It's kind of depressing to need to be inebriated to enjoy anything," Esther shrugged, "I enjoy stuff perfectly fine _without_ killing all my brain cells. And all my brain cells already died before, I don't want them to die twice. You know that seven-and-a-half million people in this country don't even _know_ how much damage alcohol could be doing to them? And that in 2013 a million people were hospitalised just because of alcohol-related illness or injury?" Donna stared at her.

" _Why_ do you just know that?"

"She's a sponge for depressing statistics," Sally answered, "She has statistics for everything. Do one about teeth."

"The average adult in the UK has seven fillings."

"I have eleven," Sally beamed, "So I think I'm winning."

"Okay, tooth decay is not a competition," Esther said as they entered the Mermaid. She had been in there a few times before, though, because they did good food if you went late in the evening, and every so often Jenny managed to convince the kitchen staff not to serve any garlic while Clara was there. And she was always so bubbly and polite, they _had_ to accept. Plus, she ate so much with her alien metabolism that it was like hosting a private function whenever she showed up for dinner.

"It's basically a really shit party trick," Sally said.

"I'm serious about the alcohol. Nine million people _just_ in England drink more than they should daily."

"I don't get it, why do you know statistics about England and the UK? You're from Washington."

"I just look those sorts of things up; I have a lot of free time when Sally doesn't need a babysitter." Then the conversation was dropped as the Doctor stared around the room, clearly looking for anything even remotely out of the ordinary. A few people looked over at them and smiled, mainly at Sally, who was a regular. Esther was a regular in the respect that a few times she had to come and drag Sally home and make sure Clara didn't try to drink anyone's blood.

"Sally! The usual?" the man behind the bar called over immediately.

"Oh, no," Sally said, walking right over, because it was her local pub and she frequented it. She wasn't paranoid about the presence of any imaginary cultists, like Ten and Donna were. "Wait, I don't know, maybe a mojito…"

"No mojitos, we're on business," Esther said.

"Are the mojitos nice here?" Donna asked.

"Donna!" the Doctor exclaimed.

"What?" she asked innocently. Esther thought she saw him mouth the word ' _cult_ ' at her, and she dropped her quest for booze.

"At least let me drink to the happy couple, at least," the bartender, whose name was Alec, which Esther knew because he was always the one to call her when Clara got a bit funny when she was too drunk, said, "Just a cranberry juice, though."

"Happy couple?" Donna asked.

"I keep telling you, we're not a couple," Sally reiterated.

"You and James?" Donna interrupted again.

"No, me and Esther," she said, nodding at Esther, like Donna didn't know who Esther was. These assumptions by Alec didn't bother her; she was quite used to it, and it was all quite friendly. "I keep saying, you're getting us mixed up with Jenny and Clara."

"That sounds odd," Ten said, " _Jenny and Clara_. Like they're a… unit. A hive-mind."

"Calling two people in a relationship a 'hive-mind' is a bit cynical," Esther remarked, "Especially when one of them is your daughter."

"Daughter?" Alec, who really was pouring himself a cranberry juice, inquired.

"This is the Doctor, he's Jenny's dad," Sally said.

"Oh, really?" Alec grinned, and then said, "I thought Jenny hates her dad? That's what Clara always says, she's always saying how she wishes the Doctor would pay more mind of Jenny."

"What!?" Ten exclaimed, "I pay her lots of mind!"

"Alright, no you don't," Donna said, "And that's not important, talk to Jenny yourself, she _is_ back on the TARDIS."

"And she didn't tell me…"

"We're here to look into something, Alec," Sally changed the subject, sitting on one of the barstools, Esther standing behind her. "Although, do you have any crisps?" He nodded. "Esther, can I have some crisps?"

"What? No!" Esther protested, "I'm not buying you anything after you woke me up."

"Ah, trouble in paradise," Alec said, tapping the side of his nose knowingly, "We don't judge in Hollowmire, Oc'thubha wouldn't allow discrimination based on anybody's orientation."

"We're not a couple…" they both mumbled half-heartedly. Esther continued, "Whatever – we heard somebody got stabbed in the cemetery." Silence fell in the Mermaid, which was normally a very quaint little pub. Apart from people were always eating an awful lot of baked goods – cupcakes and flowers made of fondant.

"Now, now, that's all internal affairs, Esther," Alec said seriously, "It's being taken care of." Creepy.

"Sorry, how do you know him?" the Doctor asked.

"Oh my god – we live here," Sally repeated to him, "I go to the pub at least once a week with Clara. She doesn't have anything else to do when Jenny's away, she normally just watches _Kitchen Nightmares_ and the late repeats of _A Place in the Sun_."

"Well we're investigating," Ten said to Alec, "We're the official, uh, investigatory people. Who investigate."

"Investigators," Donna added knowingly.

"Exactly. Investigators. Like alligators, but with less scales." In the background there was a radio playing an unusual selection of music, because it kept jumping between the latest chart-toppers to Bach and then to 1980s power ballads. The music was always odd in the Mermaid, though, and it the radiator was always switched on. Esther once asked Alec why, and he said, 'just in case.' Whatever that meant.

"There's something about you," Alec said to Donna.

" _Me_?" she asked, "I'm married, mate."

"I don't think he's coming onto you," Sally said to her. Donna was affronted.

"Why _wouldn't_ he be coming onto me? Just because I don't have blonde hair and dimples like the pair of _you_ doesn't mean I'm completely undesirable for men."

"That isn't what I said at _all_ ," Sally said.

"The two of you might be twins," she added, looking between the Spooks.

"What about Donna?" Ten asked Alec.

"Just something. A feeling. We don't normally permit outsiders to see the scripture of Oc'thubha, not those unchosen like Sally and Esther here, but… I'm not so sure you _are_ an outsider. Would you like a leaflet for our masses? They're held twice-weekly in the fallout shelter."

"In the what?" Donna asked, as though she had misheard.

"The fallout shelter. Every self-respecting village should have a fallout shelter, in case of the apocalypse or nuclear extermination," Alec said, "Or a census." He smiled while he talked, and sounded completely amiable. Donna and the Doctor didn't question the fallout shelter in Hollowmire any further. Come to think of it, Esther had never questioned it, either. She thought it spoke to an odd level of paranoia, but the hearts of the people who built it were in the right place. Besides, she lived with Sally Sparrow, and Sally Sparrow hoarded doomsday supplies in their cellar and didn't believe in the moon landing.

"I'll fetch the scroll," Alec said, and then he slid away into a door behind the bar. Esther wondered where that door went, because the door to the kitchen was on the other side of the room. Storage or something, maybe. She didn't think about it too much.

"Scroll?" Donna asked. People around the room were giving them studious looks, but nobody seemed hostile, which was obviously the way Ten was expecting people to act. Nobody answered Donna, and momentarily Alec had returned holding a book even larger and spookier than _Hollowmire: A Supernatural History_. And that was some feat.

"That doesn't look anything like a scroll," Ten said.

"It's a conceptual thing, a postmodern reinterpretation of a scroll. Oc'thubha is very interested in the impacts of surrealism on contemporary society, it used to be called a 'book,'" Alec explained, holding it out to Donna, "It's sacred."

"And why are you giving it to _me_?" Donna asked. Alec said nothing, just smiled warmly, and finally Donna took it out of his hands. The cover was embossed with symbols Esther couldn't read. The same symbols from the knife, and the sign, and they were written in the same unearthly colour everybody found impossible to descript.

"Can you read it?" Ten asked, and Donna nodded. Alec was right, there really was _something_ about Donna, but why she could read it and nobody else could remained a mystery at that moment. Donna opened it carefully, a cloud of dust floated up to make them all cough as they leant over to try and get a look at the characters as she translated them.

Quietly, engrossed in this unheard of object, Sally asked, "What does it say?"

"It says," Donna began, slowly, squinting a little, concentrating, "One-one-zero-G, slash four-O-Z, of… butter or… margarine… one-one-zero-G of sugar… 2 eggs – this is a recipe for fairy cakes!" she exclaimed. Sally slid the book towards her like she could read it, and then seemed to realise she couldn't, and let it go.

"Oc'thubha is fond of sweet foods, He teaches us that they have positive effects on the human soul," Alec said knowingly.

"Alright mate, this isn't exactly what I'd call a 'holy book,'" she said.

"Oc'thubha teaches kindness. Baked goods are a perfect way to achieve kindness."

"That must be why Doris brings us all that shortbread…" Sally said like she had had a meaningful epiphany, then she turned to Esther said, "It's kind of disappointing we're not 'chosen' now. I wonder why that is…"

Esther had previously taken note of the radio always playing in the Mermaid, and of Alec's cryptic explanation that it was turned on 'just in case.' Her question of, just in case of _what_ , was all of a sudden answered. In a very ambiguous way. The music cut and was replaced by buzzing static, a lot like the static that came out of their television at home whenever it randomly switched itself on. And again, she knew this wasn't anything to do with her status as the Lightning Girl. She could always tell when she was accidentally manipulating the electricity in something.

Alec and every other patron and worker in the Mermaid froze and stared, stared dead ahead into space silently, at nothing at all. It was like time had stopped, and whatever they heard didn't reach the ears of Sally or Esther or the Doctor, or even Donna, who was the enigma in the room. This static episode didn't last for very long, it couldn't be thirty seconds at all, and it unnerved Esther a whole lot less than one might think everybody in a room stopping and becoming hypnotised by white noise would. _I Need a Hero_ resumed playing, and they all returned to themselves.

"Your presence has been requested by Oc'thubha himself. All four of you," Alec said, "He gave us the message."

"Sorry, he gave you a message? Through the radios?"

"He is a fan of mass communication, and the coming-together of society a wide broadcasting range symbolises," Alec informed. What the heck _was_ this 'Oc'thubha' of their 'religious society'? It was all getting a bit weird. Or, weird _er_. Esther supposed it was already pretty weird to begin with…


	69. The Cult of Ic'tharru

_The Cult of Ic'tharru_

 _Esther_

"Oh my _god_ ," Donna gasped when they were taken by Alec into the mysterious door Esther had previously noted, which sat behind the bar, where he had gone to fetch this 'Scroll' of Oc'thubha he had shown them. With the fairy cake recipe in it (secretly, she wondered if it was a good recipe, and wondered what other secrets of confectionary it held.) But Oc'thubha was not what Donna was shocked at seeing; what she was looking at was a large stone altar. A sacrificial altar, if Esther had to give it a definer, sitting there with all sorts of dreadful carvings like tentacles and wings and other ghastly appendages wrapping around its legs and its body.

"You've been sacrificing people!" the Doctor exclaimed in horror, fury growing in his voice.

"Sacrifice? No, no, this is where Cassie makes the bread," Alec said, "My wife makes the best hot crossed buns on this side of the Pennines. I'll admit, it is a _little_ ostentatious, but it's very good for kneading." Esther's assumption that it was a sacrificial altar as well she blamed on the Doctor and Donna's paranoia about the Followers. But what had the Followers done? They hadn't done anything, just proven themselves to have unusual sleeping habits and a penchant for baking. It wasn't a crime to like baking. "It's this way."

Alec indicated an enormous, oak door that looked to Esther to be at least a century old, perhaps more, beautifully carved but cracked in all the usual places, decaying over time like everything was. It had a very elaborate locking mechanism, too; Alec slid a key into the lock and they heard an entire series of mechanical noises coming from the other side of it, incredible intricacies rattling around until the huge door swung open on its hinges and a breeze carrying on it an unusual and unpleasant smell struck them from deep within a dark passage.

"I have not been requested by the Great Oc'thubha," Alec told them, "The four of you must go on alone." Sally peered into the doorway.

"Don't you have, like, a torch, or something?" she asked.

"Oh, sorry," Alec apologised, and then reached into the doorway. Electric lights lit up down the corridor, simple bulbs fastened to the walls of what Esther now saw was a black cave, "I forgot Oc'thubha requested the lights be fitted, because people kept frightening Him when they crept down the stairs unannounced."

"Right…" Ten said, unsure. The more they heard about this Oc'thubha, the more Esther was sure the 'religious society' was based around a living, breathing Something, rather than just an abstract 'god' figure. And so they stepped into the passage, and Alec closed the door behind them. Esther was more at ease than she thought she might be, but really, she had been living there for months. She knew Alec, and everybody else – if they were lunatic cultists, they'd know by now. She trusted them as much as she trusted any friendly acquaintances who gave them nice shortbread.

"I don't like this," Donna said.

"You're pretty cynical," Esther told her, "Normally _I'm_ the one getting called a 'negative-nancy' when we go on these sorts of things."

"What do you mean, 'these sorts of things'?" Donna asked.

"There's a lot of spooky stuff goes on in Hollowmire," Sally said seriously and then, for dramatic effect, the lights up and down the wall flickered a few times. Esther said 'for dramatic effect' because it was her who had created the dramatic effect, on purpose, because it freaked Donna out a _lot_ when the lights flashed. It didn't bother Sally, she knew it was just Esther, but it was a little amusing, at least.

"This is totally like the new _Resident Evil_ ," Esther said quietly as they crept through the tunnels, which she quickly recognised as belonging to the old coalmines that ran underneath most of the village. It was a coal-rich area.

"It better not be, I've seen you playing that with whatshisname, it looks dreadful," Sally said.

"Whatshisname?" Donna inquired.

"Adam Mitchell," Esther replied, "And I don't play it _with_ him, it's not co-op, he was playing something else at the time."

"Adam comes to Hollowmire?"

"No, it's on console," Esther explained, "This _is_ like the bit where the basement of the house leads into the salt mines. And then there's the photograph that gives away the plot-twist of the entire game, the one you already find at the beginning but you don't realise the significance of until after the boat stage. Y'know, I like that game, but I kinda feel like it went downhill after that whole bit where the mom had an insect nest in her lady pocket."

"Kids these days…" Donna muttered.

"What? I'm thirty-five," Esther said.

"Let's stop talking about Esther's weird insect-vagina fetish now," Sally interrupted, "I already had to see it with my own two eyes after you paused the stupid thing and came and got me from the kitchen while I was trying to cook. Ruined my breakfast."

"It was seven in the evening."

"That's breakfast time," Sally shrugged. They continued to all make their way steadily, single-file, down the narrowing tunnels. It was Sally who took the lead, then Esther, then Donna, and the Doctor at the back. Esther kept her gloved hands tight in her pockets and walked very carefully to keep from tripping and falling into someone, lest she electrocute them by accident. The footing was so uneven, she now regretted wearing high heels.

"I don't like it down here," Donna said.

"No, me either," Ten agreed with her. Esther could sense something unusual, too. As in, _really_ 'sense' something.

"You remember the Night Flyer?" she whispered to Sally, taking her by surprise.

"Mmhmm?"

"This feels like when I saw it," Esther said, "This whole atmosphere."

"Huh…" Sally didn't say anything else, but she definitely took it into account. Meanwhile, Donna was growing paler and more skittish, and her eyes darted around like she was looking for shapes in the shadows on the walls.

"Donna? What's the matter?" Ten asked. Donna was unable to speak, though, she was simply terrified, but she kept moving, as though something was lulling her closer and closer. Donna was the real mystery here far more than any knife or murder – why was she so afraid? Why could she read the unknown language? Why did Alec say she was special? What did Oc'thubha want them for?

The twisting caves opened out quite abruptly into an enormous cavern, a cavern very unlike that which you would usually find in a coalmine, carved into the rocks with smooth surfaces and cold air. That same strange, sickening smell was still hanging on the air, though, and they appeared to be on a ledge, on the very edge of something. In the room, the size of a stadium, they could hear noise from below.

"This is just like Krop-Tor," the Doctor said, growing unseemly and furious. Donna was petrified and stayed by Esther and Sally when Ten marched over to the edge of their little cliff to yell down into the abyss below, "Show yourself! This 'Oc'thubha' if that's what your name is! I demand to speak with this 'fake god'!" The noises from beneath were like nothing Esther had ever heard, slithering and sliding and squelching and dragging all together, something writhing, the sound of a thousand giant pythons writhing over each other in a bed of dead, damp feathers.

And then, up from the darkness, a voice answered: " _Whoa, dude. Inside voices would like, totally be appreciated, you know?_ " Uh, what, Esther thought?

"It's cowardly, hiding down there when you've been brainwashing these people!" the Doctor continued to shout.

" _C'mon, bro. I'm kind of self-conscious._ "

"…What do you mean?" Ten asked, peering over the edge, trying to get a look at whatever was talking to them.

" _It's like, body image, man_ ," Oc'thubha said, " _Plus, the last time I let a human look at me their eyes totally started bleeding. It was not good, dude._ "

"What language are you speaking?"

" _It's English, man, duh_ ," Oc'thubha said, " _It would be pretty rude to come here and refuse to learn the native language, y'know?_ "

"You have a mouth then?"

" _Oh, whoa, I'd say it's more of an… abstraction of the concept of vocalisation, you know? I'm not sure 'mouth' is the word I would use_ ," Oc'thubha said. Esther approached the Doctor to look over the edge, too, but she couldn't see much of anything. Just hulking, shadowy movement, " _Bro, I told you not to look. I'm not for human consumption, not in a way that's rooted in my physical manifestation, anyway_."

"I, um, I'm sorry?" Esther said unsurely.

" _No, man, don't worry about it. It'd just totally suck for you if your eyes were to start bleeding, y'know?_ "

"This is your village, then?" Ten persisted.

" _MY village? Ownership is an outdated concept, dude. In what way is it mine? I don't own any of the buildings. Extra-dimensional entities, like, can't legally own property in this country, man_ ," Oc'thubha said, " _I looked into it in the 1990s when roller disco was big_."

"You wanted to build a roller disco?" Sally Sparrow asked.

" _Oh, yeah, man, sure. I don't use it, obviously, I don't exactly have what you guys would call 'feet.' Which is kind of a bummer, but I'm all about endorsing the enjoyment of other people_ ," Oc'thubha said, " _Hollowmire isn't mine_."

"But it's run by your cult."

" _Cult? Bro, they're all just nice dudes. I'm just teaching them to be nice dudes. Isn't the Bible teaching people? What's the difference? That the figure they get their teachings from is made of real flesh and blood? Which is just an expression, I don't have either what you would call flesh OR blood_."

"…I'm confused. Someone's been murdered with a knife written on in _your_ language," Ten said.

" _Yeah, man, a buddy of mine. And a buddy of mine did it, too. It's a real tragedy, yo, I'm not gonna disagree_."

"So the knife is yours? This knife?" Ten brandished it like he was trying to stab thin air.

" _It's made of the material of my home world, but no, dude, that knife is like, totally Ic'tharru's_ ," Oc'thubha said, " _That's why it says Ic'tharru on it, bro. What a cocky guy, writing his name on a murder weapon. Dude has always been extra; I guess he hasn't changed_." Oc'thubha still just writhed around in the murky depths of the mine. " _I can sense your dislike from down here, man. What's eating you?_ "

"I don't like creatures coming and brainwashing innocent humans, I've seen it happen before, on a planet called Krop-Tor, orbiting a black hole."

" _Yeah, man, I heard about that_ ," Oc'thubha said.

"You – what? Heard about it? About the Beast?"

" _The Beast? Nah, bro, that's my cousin, that's Vh'ozuth. That guy, man, he was always a real preacher of universe domination. My whole species are kind of preachers of that, though, that's why they ostracised me_ ," Oc'thubha said, " _It's a long story, but you guys are the only ones who can help me_."

"Help you what?" Ten asked suspiciously.

" _Stop Ic'tharru, man, he's the one who made that guy kill that other guy, he's infecting them – listen, bro, I could totally tell you my whole story if you cut the hostilities, dude. What's your prejudice for, man? I've heard about some pretty warped Time Lords, but I'm not here judging YOU_."

"How did you know I'm a Time Lord?"

" _Because, dude, I can feel things – I'm in sync with this universe and its frequencies. The frequency of life, man. You're the Doctor, you're a hero. And Donna Noble is the only one who can help. And sure I know Sally and Esther, my buddy Doris is taking them killer shortbread all the time, she tells me – that's an original recipe too, dudes._ "

"Oh, well, thanks," Sally said.

"Go on, then," Ten said, "If you've got a story to tell, then tell it, because all I see is a lost alien mind-controlling people to make cupcakes."

" _You see, I'm an extra-dimensional being, dude. That's what I am. And not just another universe, dude, like, BEFORE the universe itself, the universe as you know it. There's a whole lot of politics, but my people, they hate any other kind of creature. I was always like, look at yourselves guys, none of us even look the same at all. I don't look anything like my cousin Vh'ozuth, or Ic'tharru. Anyway, the whole of us lived in our city before time really kicked-off, called Acnictexr._

" _Boy, they're normally not this obnoxious, but I got into one a couple of times with them about their treatment of your universe. I said my guys, how do you, like, see all that suffering in that dimension and not do anything about it? It's like, a game, they just come over here to mess with you guys sometimes. Man, I hated it, I always stick up for the little people. Not little in a lesser sense, but little as in a literal sense – you gotta realise, bros, I'm bigger than you can really fathom. That was why I got banished and sent here, I crashed right down nearby in a meteorite._

" _Only, they didn't ostracise me, they thought I was dead, that I couldn't survive outside the boundaries of our dimension. That meteor spread into the ground, though – the soil here has a lot in common with the soil of Acnictexr. But it wasn't plain sailing, there was this whole plague. This was so long ago everybody I knew then is dead, but I didn't know how to manipulate my shape to create a noise similar to your 'speech' back then. My species are kind of telepathic. So I talked to people through the telegram wires and the phone lines but boy, did that go horribly, before I learnt how to assert my influence._

" _It was kind of like tumours, brain tumours like blisters, that kind of thing. Oh, man, the haemorrhaging – that was when they built the hospital on the lake, to quarantine them. But they built it on Acnictexr soil, and it helped to absorb their symptoms. And then I managed to communicate, managed to spread my wisdom, learnt what a cupcake was, and tasted caramel on my tongue. Not an actual tongue, you have to realise, I haven't got what you might call a 'tongue', just a series of segmented feelers that come out of every one of my eyes._

" _I've been spreading my ideas of compassion and friendliness for years, but I guess word of it finally reached Acnictexr, if Ic'tharru is asserting his own influence. I'd never, like, CONTROL somebody, you gotta understand – but Ic'tharru? That guy would do ANYTHING. He's ruthless. Probably just wants to kill me because the job didn't get done the first time, and he'll wipe out this entire galaxy while he's at it just to be sure. But, my dudes, he's not here yet, or I'd totally, like, know. That's why I need YOUR help, Donna Noble, you're an extra-dimensional creature as well, and you can get rid of the connection between the universe and the pre-universe for good. That's why you can understand the language, and why you saw those visions and had those dreams. My weaker-minded Followers are at risk of being driven insane by those, Ic'tharru's telepathic messages. That's what happened, he's totally trying to cause in-fighting and dissent, he can't stand that I'm helping people._

" _For all I know, Ic'tharru is plotting with the rest of the Elder Ones to wipe out the entire universe for good, it could be totally doomed right now. But only those communing with Ic'tharru will be able to lead you to wear the inter-dimensional breach is, and they're all the way out on the lake. What do you say, bros? Are you like, up for helping me, or nah?_ " Oc'thubha finished speaking.

"When you say lake," Sally began eventually, "Do you mean Crater Lake? Crater Lake and Crater Lake Sanatorium?"

" _Oh, yeah, bro._ "

"So _that's_ why it's called Crater Lake… because it's literally a Crater."

"He's telling the truth," Donna declared eventually, "And those things I saw – they were horrifying, Doctor, I've never seen anything so…" she couldn't even find the words to describe the horrors she had seen in her visions and her nightmares recently, visions of Ic'tharru's plan to destroy Earth, and then the rest of the universe on top, all because Oc'thubha was there. These Elder Ones really didn't sound very nice.

"Why do these 'Elder Ones' want to kill everyone?" Esther asked.

" _Oh, man, they kinda don't. Well, it's like, cosmic indifference. Like there's a wasp nest in the attic of your house and it doesn't really affect you, but if one of the wasps like, stung you, you'd be all, 'Get out of my house now, guys_.'"

"Here's a question – why aren't me and Esther 'chosen'?" Sally asked, "Since you're the 'Great Oc'thubha' who does all the choosing."

" _Hey, I don't choose anybody, everyone is created equal, bro. It's about your brainwaves, man, if you're easily influenced by the signals I put through the TVs and the radios_ ," Oc'thubha said, " _Some people just aren't, usually because their brains are like, whacked out, or something. But if you ever wanna come and hang out I'll give Alec the word to let you guys down whenever, I don't discriminate_." It wasn't exactly a puzzle to figure out why Esther's brain was too 'whacked out' to be influenced by Oc'thubha's electronic communication, but Sally? Maybe it was just anyone non-neurotypical. Her severe insomnia was maybe a contributor. As for the Doctor, or Jenny, or Clara Ravenwood – they were also obvious answers.

"Fine," the Doctor finally said, "But after my run in with this 'cousin' of yours…"

" _Hey, man, I heard there have been some pretty nasty Time Lords before_ ," Oc'thubha interrupted. Ten clenched his jaw, because he knew Oc'thubha kind of had a point.

And then Sally Sparrow declared exuberantly, beaming, like a child on Christmas morning, "I guess we're going on a trip to Crater Lake Sanatorium, then."


	70. American Horror Story

_American Horror Story_

 _Esther_

They arrived on the island in the middle of Crater Lake not long after leaving Oc'thubha behind in the dark recesses of the Mermaid's cellar, taking the TARDIS there as a shortcut. Esther was a bit annoyed about that because the Doctor refused to let either of them go say hi to anybody and rushed them on and off (though, Donna had added, it was doubtful anybody was even awake at that time of night.)

Crater Lake was large and black and still, but the surface had an odd quality to it, like a film of unusually-coloured oil had gathered on top of the old rainwater. Then there was the island itself, huge and bumpy with a strange texture under their feet; it was tricky to walk on, especially in her very impractical shoes. But if she could wear heels and work for Torchwood, she could wear heels and traipse around after Sally Sparrow. After the lake and the island were taken into account, her eyes finally moved to the structure they were there to investigate: Crater Lake Sanatorium. Built in the same way people used to build large sanatoriums for tuberculosis, to quarantine the ill, only this one was created with the aim of suppressing the ailment Oc'thubha's psychic communication through the wires had caused. Blister-like brain tumours and haemorrhages – it didn't even bear thinking about, really. There were rotting old rowing boats pulled ashore, but no boats remained at the other side of the Lake. It was practically impossible to access Crater Lake Sanatorium otherwise. But, apart from boats and spaceships, there was _one_ other way she could think of…

"Unbelievable!" the Doctor complained, "Would you look at this gaudy thing? Honestly, I thought better of Christina." He had spotted something Esther, caught up in her observations of the decrepit, ghastly hospital building, had not.

"Is that an airplane!?" she exclaimed.

"No," Sally said, " _Aero_ plane."

"What?"

"You're talking with Americanisms."

"Oh, gee, d'you think that could be because _I'm American_?" Esther said, but Sally didn't care. It was a plane, at any rate, and it was red, and _very_ gaudy, as the Doctor had said. It had the number '200' painted on the side.

"And I thought the flying bus was bad," Donna commented, "What is this? Bus 2.0?"

"Did you say _flying bus_?" Sally and Esther both asked.

"Long story," Ten sighed, "Travelled through a rift in a bus, had to make it fly to go _back_ through the rift, she was wanted by the police so I let her have it."

"How'd she afford a plane?" Sally inquired.

"She's moneyed," Ten explained, "Haven't you met her?" Sally shrugged. "She's one of the aristocracy. Lady Christina de Souza. Now she works for this 'New Torchwood' thing."

"If Christina is here, then you know who else is probably here already…" Donna said, her eyes finding Sally, who knew exactly what Donna was implying and didn't want to think about it.

"Hopefully the concept of 'privacy' is lurking nearby so that you can rediscover it," she said dryly to Donna. Donna didn't like being back-chatted like that, especially not by someone like Sally Sparrow, somebody with infinite cockiness and levity.

" _Anyway_ ," the Doctor said before Donna could retaliate, "We'd better get in there and find this cult of Ic'tharru. Christina and Elliott might not know what they're up against, they're probably completely unprepared."

"And what? We _are_ prepared?" Sally questioned.

"Of course we're prepared! We've got me, and Donna, and the Lightning Girl," Ten said, "I've heard all sorts of stories about what Esther can do recently." Esther was befuddled by that – what she could do? What _could_ she do? Nothing useful. But she didn't pursue it right then. Mainly, she didn't pursue it because a muffled scream came drifting towards them from the direction of the Sanatorium. Not a terribly loud scream – not from the distance they were at, anyway – but they still all heard it, and were all unnerved.

"That must be the welcoming committee," Sally remarked. The Doctor didn't find that very funny, and he began to continue his approach up the bumpy surface of the island towards a set of stony steps carved into the surface of the island itself. But it wasn't quite stone, Esther thought, it looked like it was tinged the same colour as the water of the lake. The same colour as the knife in the Doctor's coat pocket. The same colour as the embossed writing on the front of the Scroll of Oc'thubha. Everywhere they looked was this impossible shade of… she couldn't even say, but she didn't like to look at it.

"Doctor," she said, forgetting briefly that he knew all sorts of things and she ought to point out anything strange they came across to him, "What's the ground made of?" he looked at her, frowned, then looked at the ground, and crouched on the stone steps, picking at the edge of them with his finger. Then he pulled out his sonic screwdriver.

"Do you have anything hot? A lighter, or something? A matchbook?" he asked them all. Sally and Donna both shrugged.

"…How hot?" Esther asked, "Is fifty-thousand degrees Fahrenheit hot enough?"

"Where are you getting fifty-thousand degrees of heat from?" Ten questioned. In answer, she pulled off one of her gloves, and did that old trick of hers where she conjured streams of lightning to dance around her skin, the veins in her hand glowing and crackling as electricity collected in her palm.

Esther shot a bolt of lightning (but a small one) between the Doctor's feet, and he jumped away like she had just attacked him. But any annoyance at her for doing that was quickly surpassed when, rather than being scorched like normal stone would, the carved stairs melted before their eyes. A big, gloopy dip was created in the middle of them now, and the material practically _glowed_ that impossible colour. The Doctor backed away.

"Don't touch it," he said, "This isn't an island at all – this is the meteorite itself."

"Can that happen? I thought they burn up, even if they _do_ crash in make craters?" Sally asked.

"I don't know what this element might do, I've never seen it before, it's from a different universe," he said, staring, "Be careful of it. We have to go and see what that scream was." And so, finally, they moved on, reaching the torn-apart, gaping entrance to Crater Lake Sanatorium.

It was a decrepit place. She didn't know what she had expected from an ancient, abandoned hospital, but it was frightful to see. There they were, in a huge entrance hall, pillars and bits of the roofing collapsed, grotty tiles making messes on the floor along with anomalous stains Esther wasn't sure she wanted to know the origins of. The roof, high above, had a hole in it, and they could see the stars, but all around were signs of rot and flooding from bad storms, black weeds crawling out of cracks in the flooring. They were lucky the weather was good that night, if foggy. But if was always foggy in Hollowmire.

While the Doctor meandered away to look at the desk nearby, a wrecked thing with yellow, crusty papers all over it, Esther stayed frozen in place by the door. Donna was acting peculiar again, but that was understandable if she really _was_ sensitive to anything to do with the extra-dimensional beings like Oc'thubha. She had reacted so strongly by touching the knife, it made sense for her to be on edge when they were perched on meteorite made from what Esther presumed was the same alloy. Sally was being her usual self, taking out her camera she took everywhere from her large coat's pockets.

"Psst, Sal," Esther hissed. Her voice hardly echoed; Donna and the Doctor remained preoccupied. It was scarily quiet in there, as she strained her ears to pick up anymore screams, or the voices of Christina and Elliott, wherever they were. Sally looked over; Esther jerked her head to indicate Sally should come back from where she had been wandering, and Sally did.

"What's the matter?" she asked quietly.

"I'm not sure if me coming here was a very good idea," Esther said.

"How do you mean?"

"We're in an old hospital in the middle of a lake," Esther said, "It might be, you know… haunted. Especially with all the water. And there's no electricity here, any ghost is going to latch onto me and drain me."

"They'll make for good photos, though, if you summon one," Sally pointed out. Esther scowled. "What? We'll split the profits equally – seventy-thirty." She scowled even more.

"I'm not kidding."

"…If _anything_ happens you can go back to the TARDIS," Sally said, "But we hardly ever see ghosts, I wouldn't worry about it, even if this place _is_ extra-spooky."

"What are you two whispering about?" the Doctor called over.

"Esther's just scared of ghosts," Sally half-lied, "But it's alright because I'm here. I'll protect her."

Very flatly, Esther said, "My hero."

Sally told him with a pitiful tone of voice, "She's clingy." Esther rolled her eyes, but Sally was right. They didn't see ghosts all that often, and people died all over the place, every day.

"Are you taking pictures?"

"Of course I am, it's my job," Sally said. The Doctor didn't approve of this, but Sally didn't care. They split up vaguely, the four of them. Not to the extent of leaving the room, but Donna was drawn to a different corner, and so the Doctor followed her, while Esther stayed by Sally's side.

"Do you know anything about this place?" she asked, "I didn't know Hollowmire had a sanatorium."

"I've always wanted to come, but it's hard to get to. There's some stuff about it, in that book," Sally explained, "It was built in 1897, the year the mine closed. Do you know why the mines closed? Because of floods and cave-ins, unstable. Maybe they flooded and caved-in because the mines were here, most of them, and the meteor destroyed them when it crashed? That would explain how Oc'thubha got into them. And then, here's something else I didn't think was very interesting at the time – when Hollowmire's mining industry was destroyed it became one of those hotspots for people with TB, people staying in this sanatorium. Crater Lake didn't get closed until after it was made redundant in the 1930s, after the vaccines were created. It's a medical village. After all, what else were they supposed to do with a sanatorium built to quarantine an alien plague after the alien plague stopped affecting anyone? Turn this place into a clinical retreat."

"I guess it makes sense, but you're speculating," Esther said.

"Oh, come on – you know I'm right, I always am. And now Crater Lake is being used as a gathering place for whatever dissenters this Ic'tharru thing is brainwashing," Sally said, "I'll bet you a fiver they're in the creepy cellar."

"You haven't got a fiver."

"But _you_ do, and I'll win the bet," she said assuredly. Esther didn't have an opinion either way, she was still looking out for spectres. "Look," Sally said, and Esther followed her gaze to see that Ten and Donna appeared to have found something, "Who's hanging around whispering together _now_?"

"All of us, I think," Esther told her, following as Sally went to see what they were looking at on the wall. When they got there, though, she wished Sally hadn't pointed anything out at all. It was that foul, dark substance, like watered-down tar, smeared along the walls. But not randomly, and not in a tell-tale, bloody-handprint kind of way either; they made words. Not words anyone could read, though. Well, anyone apart from Donna Noble, who had become a bit of a translator.

"It says, ' _hail Ic'tharru, devourer of galaxies_ ,'" Donna read aloud.

"Sounds like a lot of propaganda if you ask me," Sally said. Then she took a photo of it. Typical. The flash of her camera was joined by a screeching sound from somewhere, and then a loud bang and a rattle, like something had been knocked over. Scurrying, sharp footsteps vanished very quickly. Esther stared around the room, sure that whatever had made that noise had been watching them just before.

And then they heard gunshots.

"Christina," Ten said, then he tore away through the desolate entrance of Crater Lake Sanatorium to follow the noises. Esther couldn't help but think that was a bad idea, but she couldn't not go; she was their first line of defence. Donna might, apparently, be an extra-dimensional creature, but only Esther could shoot lightning bolts out of her fingertips. The only issue was that Esther couldn't run all that quickly in her heels, and her ankle rolled and she stumbled as Ten and Donna – who were both far more proficient at running than Sally – turned around a corner. Sally didn't follow, she saw Esther trip and stopped.

"Are you alright?" she asked urgently.

"My foot just hurts, I'm fine, I tripped," she said, "Just keep going."

"Yeah right – whatever made those noises doesn't sound very friendly, I'd rather stick with the Lightning Girl than those two," Sally said, "Seems like a safer bet. Check out that creepy wheelchair; I bet that's what it knocked over." She raised her camera and took a picture of a wheelchair on its side, the upturned wheel still spinning.

"What do you mean 'it'?" Esther asked.

"It didn't sound human, whatever made that screech. Honestly, _why_ wear those shoes? We're not going anywhere fancy."

"Shut up," Esther said, knowing full-well she had made a poor choice in footwear without Sally Sparrow pointing it out at her like a child saying 'I told you so.' Esther began to walk again, hoping they hadn't lost the Doctor and Donna in their brief lapse. Sally was right, though; they'd probably be safe enough.

They walked briskly, Esther with her hands in her pockets, trying not to stumble, Sally glancing around with her camera held tightly, probably looking for key photo opportunities. It was when they rounded that same corner, when the brightness of the moon through a caged window distracted Esther for a second, and Sally was looking at who-knew-what in a different direction, that the next scare of the evening came. And it came in the form of somebody tall, light-haired, Welsh, and called James Elliott, crashing into Sally Sparrow (hopefully by accident.)

She was thrown by mistake into a wall and Esther jumped. Elliott had tripped, probably over Sally's feet, and hit his head on the wall as the two of them fell, then he was slumped on her and she was dazed and briefly stuck under his weight in the corner. Esther didn't know if she was suddenly imposing on something, but Sally looked horrified at this turn of events.

Elliott, not knowing what – or who – he had struck with his shoulder as he, too, presumably pursued the gunshots that had caught the Doctor's attention, raised his head blearily, and then he met Sally's eyes and appeared to lose the ability to speak. She stared back, just for a moment, before regaining herself enough to speak.

"Get off of me!" she ordered, pushing him, and he in his probable-concussion just fell limply down on her other side on the floor while she scrambled away. Esther, hands safely sealed in her gloves, helped Sally to her feet.

"Sally," he said.

"Yes, Sally," she answered, "What are you tackling me for? Have you turned violent now because I've turned you down one too many times?" She was being cold because she was angry at being knocked to the ground – which was very understandable. But she was never normally so direct with Elliott. Esther knew that, because Esther had seen practically every text that had ever been sent between Sally Sparrow and James Elliott, because Sally always asked for her insight and advice when it came to yet again telling him 'no.' He was a very hopeful boy, she would say.

"He didn't do it on purpose," Esther said.

"I don't care, I'm gonna have a bruise," she complained.

"Shit – Christina," Elliott exclaimed, remembering what he had been running towards initially. He struggled to his feet and wobbled before trying to half-walk half-run in the direction they had all been heading. By this point, Sally had gone bright red.

Elliott too distracted to listen, Esther whispered, "You know you're blushing?"

"I am not," Sally argued.

"Uh-huh. You totally are," she said.

"I'm not – I'm just exhausted. I've been running. I never run anywhere, you know that, everyone who runs looks like a twat. I don't want to look like a twat," she said knowingly. Esther didn't care, Sally was blushing, one-hundred percent.

They followed the staggering form of Elliott around the corner and, in a nearby room that was large and had a few scattered, rusted bedrooms Esther assumed must have been a ward, they reunited with the others. Christina de Souza, whom Esther had never met or seen before that moment, was being berated by the Doctor for killing something. Christina didn't seem very fussed, though.

"It was going to kill me," she said flatly, "Look at it." She pointed at something on the floor, and Esther was struck dumb to see what she was pointing at. It was dark grey, looking like a skeletal gargoyle, with a faceless, horned head and a pronged tail and bat-like wings. It was very spindly and must have been seven-foot-tall, at least. It looked like a living nightmare.

"That's what those things were!" Donna declared, "In my dreams, the ones that woke me up, they looked like that, and the place they were in… it wasn't on Earth." Ic'tharru's influence, in order to reach Donna while she was in the time vortex, must be worryingly powerful. Unless she was just incredibly susceptible to it.

"See?" Christina said, "I was just saving my skin."

"We could have spoken to it."

"It has no mouth!" she argued.

"Oc'thubha said he didn't have a mouth either, but he still talked, somehow," Sally said, taking a few steps so that she ended up on Esther's left instead of Esther's right, so that she could get further away from the woozy James Elliott.

"Hey, it's wearing a watch," Esther pointed out. It was, as well, and it was a Rolex, not even something cheap. What did an interdimensional monster want with a Rolex? "Oh, gosh – it must have been a person once."

"Ic'tharru must be changing them, don't you remember, Donna?" the Doctor said, "The murderer, in the graveyard, he was on his way to turning into one of _these_."

"They live in the city. In Acnictexr," she said, "The entrance, however Ic'tharru is trying to get through, is nearby."

"Okay, I'm confused – Oc'thubha? Ic'tharru? Acnictexr? What are these words?" Christina asked.

"Basically," Sally Sparrow began, "Oc'thubha is the big alien god-thing that controls the village, but he's actually sort of alright and likes baking. He was ostracised from the rest of the extra-dimensional community for being too nice and forgiving, and crashed _here_ , in Crater Lake, in the meteor, and caused a plague by accident while trying to communicate. They built the sanatorium on top of the old meteor in the spooky lake to quarantine the people who had the plague. Now Oc'thubha lives in the mines and has the Followers of Oc'thubha to look after him and give us shortbread – but Ic'tharru is his evil-brother, or something, and doesn't like that he's still alive being good, and is manipulating people into betraying Oc'thubha and killing the Followers. Donna's the only one with the power to stop Ic'tharru from destroying our whole universe."

"I don't believe that anybody has the power to destroy the whole universe," Ten said glumly.

"Why don't you stick around and find out, then?" Sally remarked.

"There's a doorway," Donna said, very spaced out, like she was seeing things that the rest of them couldn't see, barely focused, "Underneath us." Then she began to walk over to another part of the room where there was an old, gross gurney lying on its side. On her own, she dragged the heavy thing away, everyone watching, and revealed a gaping hole in the floor. It led, from what Esther could see, into absolute darkness. Sally nudged her.

"I told you. Creepy cellar. You owe me a fiver."

 **AN: The next storyline is actually a Jenny/Eleven crossover with _Class_ \- you remember how I asked you guys if I should watch it and do a crossover - so I was wondering if you all have anything you want me to do for it while I'm planning? Even Jenny/Eleven suggestions if you want them to do anything, though this won't be angsty. Trying to make it a lighter one, comedy is the priority, will be set halfway through the series.**


	71. City of Nightmares

_City of Nightmares_

 _Ten_

Acnictexr. That was its name. Its pronunciation was as hard for him to get his head around as the place itself. Once they stole through the cellar of Crater Lake Sanatorium, past more sinister, alien languages written on the walls and a few skeletons he tried to ignore, they had come across an area which… well, for want of a better word, it vibrated. In front of his eyes, the walls seemed to shimmer and blur and warp and Donna, regaining some of the clarity of her mind, said that this meant the walls of reality were thin, those slivers of void separating the universe from the pre-universe. And so Donna had used her powers to open a doorway, a portal, through from their world to the world of the Elder Ones.

They had stepped through the blue phosphorescence of Donna's creation, a conglomeration now including Christina de Souza and James Elliott – though the boy was practically concussed – and into the world of Acnictexr, which was almost as indescribable as the colour of the knife Ten still carried with him. He wanted to dispose of that ghastly instrument while they were there on the other side of this breach in this unknown realm, get it out of human hands for good. It struck him that they didn't even have a plan of action now. They'd come into this monstrous world without knowing what they should be doing. Hopefully his go-to tactic of improvisation would prove itself as apt as usual…

It was a horrible place, unlike anything the Doctor had ever laid his eyes upon before, but it was simultaneously a fantastic and ultimate piece of evidence proving to him the existence of this 'before the universe' land allegedly home to the Beast of Krop-Tor, the one with such powers of physical manipulation it had kept a whole planetoid from collapsing into a black hole at the edge of time. The alleged Vh'ozuth. The sky and the ground were all tinged in varying shades of the perplexing and non-existent colour, which didn't hurt his eyes as much now he was rendered permanently ill-at-ease simply by the shape of the land and architecture in Acnictexr.

Walking through it was like walking through a surrealist painting, a dreamscape conjured corporeally by Dali's psyche, a horribly tangible recreation of Tanguy. These sorts of things were not supposed to exist; it was devastating and impossible and mind-bending to see heavy things balanced on objects the width of needles; things curved and bulging and floating beneath a rippling orb in the sky that could be a moon or a sun or something more sinister. The very air seemed to glow and all of the buildings looked like ancient ruins. In the sky, far overheard, were swarms of those same distant and mutant things like the one Christina had shot and killed in the sanatorium. Even the puddles of liquid around them looked too dark to be water, but reflected the world back both crisply and with horrid distortions.

"What's the plan, then?" Christina asked him. Her voice sounded like it was coming from miles away, and the gravity was pulling him sickeningly to one side and then back again, like they were rocking on a ship in a perpetual storm. His head swam. He was struggling to thing properly in that hell. "Destroy this place?" Ten didn't know.

"I'm not sure this city is all that safe," Esther said, "I doubt that any of these buildings are structurally sound."

"Aren't we just meant to be closing the doorway? Like, the one we came through?" Sally Sparrow asked.

"It's not that easy," Donna began, "There's a connection that needs to be broken. Something's powering the rifts, something here, and they link to the meteor. The power source needs to be destroyed so that they can't access our world anymore."

"Wouldn't something like that be guarded?" Christina asked.

"If you think of it in terms of the multiverse, maybe not," Donna said, "Who's to say that all the parallel worlds weren't equally created by this pre-verse we're in? Maybe this is the hub for every single universe in existence, right in the middle? They wouldn't care about losing connection to one, not one where they banished one of their own to." Ten was taken greatly by surprise by that. In fact, all of them were.

"Speaking of 'losing connections', you're not going to disassociate from your brain too much, are you?" he asked her carefully. He could see what was happening. She wasn't _Donna_ anymore at that moment; the Doctor-Donna, that alter-ego that sometimes sprang up, had made another of its unusually-timed re-emergences.

"It's a proximity thing," Donna answered.

"Her brain?" Christina asked.

"It's a long story – some inter-dimensional creatures took my brain out and put it in a jar," she said, "It unlocked forgotten parts of my altered genetic structure. Elliott was there."

"Yes, yes," Ten said nervously, "Don't strain yourself. You know what happened last time."

"Your memory wipe and the repairs to fix it are still in effect, you know," she told him, "They're a physical thing. The further away from my brain I get…"

"I understand how it works," he told her, "You got all that knowledge from me."

"I don't think we should stay here for long," Elliott said guardedly, looking around. He seemed to keep trying to walk next to Sally Sparrow, and every time he did she slid away to be walking on the other side of Esther (caught in the middle of this) until he followed again. Whether he was doing this on purpose, Ten couldn't really tell, and didn't care particularly.

"Oh, really? Because I've been looking for real estate opportunities. Do you think any of these buildings are rent-controlled?" Sally remarked.

"What do you care? You don't pay your rent anyway," Esther said.

"He's right. Just being here could have devastating effects. This isn't like when we went through that rift in London," Ten mainly addressed Christina, "That was just to another planet. But this? This is a living nightmare."

"Then it's a good thing you have me," Donna said, "I'm not like Rose, I can't only manipulate the Alphaverse. You heard what Oc'thubha said, I'm _extra-dimensional_. We destroy however they make their rifts, leaving them stuck in this wasteland, and then I'll get us out. Easy-peasy."

"Don't jinx it," Sally said. The bipedal bat-things still swarmed high overhead, miles and miles above so that they looked like blots against the sky, which looked like it was raging a storm the likes of which he had seen before on Jupiter. Yet the air around them was stagnant, and dead, and dry.

"Can you tell where their power source is?" Ten asked Donna.

"I've been leading us towards it this whole time. Did you think I was just walking around aimlessly? _Ooh – doesn't that creepy spire full of monsters look like a nice place to go_?" she nodded ahead at what was, yes, a creepy spire full of monsters. "A prime tourist attraction, that is. Not a death-trap, or anything." She didn't say much more, just continued on their path through the archaic old city. Who had it been built for, he wondered? Not the creatures swarming the dominion of the Elder Ones, and not the Elder Ones themselves because they were, as Oc'thubha had explained and as he had seen for himself, _massive_. Bigger than comprehension, sometimes, if the Beast of Krop-Tor was anything to go by.

They walked over narrow, fragile bridges towards this spire, which was sunk on a much lower level. They had walked out just before the beginning of this ginormous bridge, and it curved upwards horribly steeply so that they were gasping by the time they reached the top. But they, the six of them, surmounted it, and saw laid out beneath them the rest of the building this spire belonged to. It looked like a cathedral, but an infernal one, something that shouldn't even be allowed to exist it was such an insult to every single faith that had ever been concocted in any parallel reality. It was huge, and so black in colour it might be rotten.

"That's where Ic'tharru is," Donna said, "Using the power source to communicate through the rifts."

"Um… right. Ic'tharru. What, exactly, do we do about that?" Christina said, "I don't think my gun will do much."

"Yeah, and, um, I don't think lightning will help, either," Esther said, "Humans can survive lightning strikes pretty easily. If this thing is as huge as everything else here… it'd be like getting static from the TV remote." That was a fair point, Ten thought. Even if Rose was there, this Ic'tharru would remain undefeatable.

"Esther should just run in, destroy it, and run back out again," Donna said.

"Are you kidding me? In _these_ shoes? Just _run in there_? I was always terrible at gym class," she said.

"What? No, do the fast thing."

"The what-thing?"

"That whole running-at-the-speed-of-light thing you do."

"Who the heck told you I could run at the speed of light? I'm not the Flash."

"I saw you do it, in 2029."

"In _2029_? I mean, I… theoretically, even if I could do that back on Earth, I couldn't do anything that would exert that much electricity here. Electricity isn't just a hobby, I need it to survive, I'll burn up without it. I couldn't maintain something like that in a place with no electricity at all enough to get into that cathedral and back."

"Then it's a good thing we've got me," Christina de Souza declared, "I'm the most celebrated master thief of my generation; infiltration is my specialty."

"I thought Jenny is like, _the_ master thief?" Esther questioned. Christina was offended.

"A master thief at stealing peoples' wives, maybe," Christina remarked. That was cold, the Doctor thought, but he didn't want to get into an argument about his daughter's relationship. He tried not to think about all that. "I'm infamous. All you have to do is find another way in."

"If you suggest scaling it and abseiling down from above-" Elliott began.

"We can't do that. I don't have my ropes. You just have to remember the old adage _start from the bottom and work your way up_."

"And try not to look at any ancient god-creatures that might make your eyes bleed," Sally added, "That's my idea of a fun day out. Really family-friendly."

Christina called it an adventure in retrospect. The Doctor called it a calamity. The cathedral structure turned out to be colossal and full to bursting with some sort of substance. This substance was huge and looked leathery and fleshy, and it pressed against any cracks and blemishes in the exterior of the building. When he reached to touch it to see what it was, Donna grabbed his hand out of the air and asked him what the hell he was doing, _that's Ic'tharru_. Ic'tharru, whatever it or he was, nested in that wicked caricature of a church. The strange flesh of this Elder One was about as much Ten wanted to see of it, if Oc'thubha was telling the truth about the bleeding-eyes thing.

They walked the whole length of it until they found an opportunity to actually get into the place, though every cell of his body was telling him not to do that, and to get as far away from that hell as possible. He never wanted to step foot in another twisted plane like this.

It was a very small crack in the wall Christina found, and when the six of them slid inside they discovered it was a very narrow tunnel. They could follow it in either direction, but Donna told Esther (who was at the front, being as she was the Lightning Girl) to go to the right to get to the device that was providing the energy to create tears in all the universes. The narrow tunnel led to a narrower, steeper staircase, and again he wondered who the architects of this city had in mind when it was built. They crept up and up and up for what seemed like miles and hours in Ten's head, but time didn't work properly in Acnictexr, that much he could detect.

And there they were, high up, on another level of that ghastly cathedral. They could see the mass of Ic'tharru from up there, they could see the bat-things crawling across the rafters. The walls were lined with enormous books, which the idea of even perusing caused a sickening clenching in his stomach. They could not look at Ic'tharru, though. His eyes passed over the fiend for just a second until they started to itch and burn. It wasn't hard to look away after that, and with Oc'thubha's warning in mind.

But the power source was there, too. It was a very large and luminescent orb, filled to them brim with a spectral, cosmic energy, the same unperceivable colour as everything from that frightful realm was. That drew their attention away from the blind-spot that was Ic'tharru, who had yet to notice them. They were of little significance, probably. Flies on the wall. Nothing.

"How do we get down there?" Ten asked.

Donna began to speak, but Christina interrupted, "Easy. I have a grappling hook." Whatever Donna had been about to say, she stopped saying because she was so surprised at this grappling hook thing.

" _What_?" Ten exclaimed, and she pulled a gun out of the side of one of her high boots, a compact thing with a claw sticking out of it. Then she shrugged and shot it into the air, scattering a pocket of the bat-things. _Great_ , he thought. Now she had got their attention. Still, it was a remarkable thing to watch, because she managed to get a solid grip with the claw of that thing, and then she just jumped over the stone barriers in front of them and swung down there like Spiderman.

But it wasn't as stable a grip as they thought; when she was close enough to the stone platform with the glowing ball sitting on it to easily survive the drop, the stone grotesque she had latched onto crumbled. _Oh no_. Christina was fine, she just rolled out of the way. But that grotesque and the wire from her gun fell down through the air and landed. Right on top of Ic'tharru. A growling noise deeper than anything he should normally be able to hear, which reverberated through his very bones, sounded within that hellish structure. Christina, far below, shrugged innocently, like this _wasn't_ her fault.

"What were you going to say before she interrupted?" Elliott asked Donna.

"Hmm? Oh. I was going to say I could just make us a portal to get down there…"

"Do it now, quickly," Ten said, "We need Esther to destroy it."

"We need Esther to _what_?" Esther asked, but she went unanswered, because Donna spread her arms apart and very easily created her blueish, flickering puncture in the world, and another appeared simultaneously in the air by the side of Christina de Souza. She waved at them through the mirage. Ic'tharru was moving, was lumbering around, turning, he thought. Had it been asleep? _Did_ those things sleep? He didn't think he wanted to find out. But they were so close now – another minute and they could have it, they could be out of there.

Ic'tharru's movement was even louder and more devastating when he stepped through that portal to join Christina, everyone following quickly with Donna last of all. Donna nearly collapsed now she was so close to such a powerful container of whatever the energy powering the rifts was. Ten turned his attention to her.

"Donna? Donna, stay with us, we need you to get us out of here."

"Break it, Esther!" Sally ordered Esther Drummond, who was panicking, understandably. Ic'tharru was approaching, was unravelling its many slithering appendages from the columns and the ruins, was bringing its many mouths and eyes and limbs towards them. He had to keep sparing searing, painfully glances at the monstrosity to try and gauge how much time they had left until it smote them.

Esther fumbled when taking off her insulated gloves; Ic'tharru _roared_ , a terrible sound that the Doctor thought might make his eardrums explode. His head rang, and everything became white noise. Maybe his eardrums _had_ exploded; it was impossible to tell. Esther grabbed for the source finally and exuded more electricity than he had ever seen, as much electricity as she could expel without simply dissolving herself, channelling millions of watts of burning lightning into that one object. When it blew up, it was devastating. A pulsation of the spectral stuff rippled out from the epicentre of the destruction, and Ic'tharru roared even louder than it had done before.

"Donna! Get us out of here!" Christina ordered. Donna was knocked off her feet for a few seconds after Esther had destroyed the thing linking the universe to the pre-universe, but now, with terrifying determination, an incredible rift sprang out of the space between her fingertips. And through it he could see, like watching a flickering, black-and-white film, the quaint and shadowy cobbled streets of Hollowmire, which was a sanctuary compared to its dark counterpart of Acnictexr.

Ic'tharru screeched and the Doctor shouted at everyone to run through the rift, with Sally Sparrow and James Elliott dragging Esther – who was nearly unconscious after exerting so much of her power in an electrical dead-zone – through, Christina next, and then him, having to leave before Donna as much as he hated to do so. He landed in the cold street on the other side, feeling the world's gravity right itself and the atmosphere return to that which he knew so well.

But the portal was still there, still indigo and crackling at its edges, Donna still on the other side. With the wall of the dimensions between them, the connection eliminated, the Doctor could see Ic'tharru for a split-second. That mass of black tentacles and appendages and a thousand-billion eyes and pearly-white razor-blade teeth rolling like heavy smoke towards Donna, roaring numbly in pursuit. He reached his hands in and dragged Donna through, and in the blink of an eye as she collapsed on top of him on Hollowmire's high street at six in the morning, the portal disappeared. The ghost of Ic'tharru's image was left suspended, hauntingly, in the dust of the air for a second until it floated away and dispersed. They were safe.


	72. Dirty Laundry

_Dirty Laundry_

 _Esther_

She had overheard before Ten and Donna left the night before her lecturing him on how he had to talk to Rose about some business, something about him feeling overwhelmed with their upcoming wedding. Sally Sparrow had barged in and asked if she was invited to it, and he had reluctantly replied yes. That was when James Elliott had asked if he could be her plus one, and her mood had soured and she had shrugged him off. Elliott had hung like a well-intentioned shadow, a dejected puppy, over the previous day, even more so than the hellish city of the Elder Gods and their struggle with Ic'tharru to sever the connection between Acnictexr and Hollowmire.

Through her brief separation to any kind of regular electricity, after going through the dark Crater Lake Sanatorium and then into the pre-universe itself, Esther had become so exhausted her single goal had been to come home and go to sleep, and so that was what she had done. She didn't even manage to get changed into pyjamas, just kick off those awful heels and throw her coat onto the floor and then collapse into bed. She woke up in the middle of the night blearily and got changed, hearing some unusual noises coming from the attic she chose to ignore, and then crashed out again.

But it was scarcely an hour later – and she knew it was an hour because she had a clock right next to her bed she always paid close attention to so that she could feel assured when she got into arguments with Sally about what ridiculous hour she had been woken up at _this_ time – that she was awoken again. Odd noises had ceased and been replaced by shouting from upstairs, the shouting of Sally Sparrow and the shouting of somebody else. Somebody male. Somebody, she noticed when she strained her ears to listen for just a few moments, Welsh.

 _Uh-oh_. Not good. Esther rolled out of bed doggedly, wanting to know what exactly Sally had done now, because she had a vague idea she would prefer not to entertain in the greatest of detail. An icky idea. Dare she even intrude? Possibly. If there was anything untoward going on, it was her duty, as a decent person, to try and help. Not that she suspected that of Elliott, but… she struggled to find any reason _against_ attempted intervention in Sally's affairs. It didn't really go that way, though.

She stepped out of the room into the hallway and was immediately subjected to seeing Sally in her pyjamas running past her down the stairs towards the kitchen. She didn't even notice Esther. Elliott shouted her name and pursued from above, but was frozen, in his boxers, by Esther, holding up a hand brimming with electricity to warn him against making any move further towards the stairs. Below, she heard the slam of the cellar door. The turn of the key in the lock.

"What's going on?" she asked Elliott.

"Nothing," he said.

"She's just locked herself in the basement," Esther said, still keeping her hand primed to shoot him. She probably wouldn't shoot him, but she _could_ shoot him, and he didn't really know her well enough to judge if she would or wouldn't make an attack in defence of her housemate.

"She just went off – I don't know, I didn't do anything, okay?" he said. Esther was surprised Sally actually had the nerve to bring a boy back to her room, mainly because her room was filthy. She wished she'd had some warning so that she could have dug out her earplugs, then she might miss all of this.

"I think you better go get dressed while I go speak to her," Esther told him, "Seriously, I'm not a big fan of… indecency. I don't really know you well enough to _not_ feel weird about seeing you in your underpants. I've never known anyone that well." She really did not want to see some half-naked guy in her house, but at least he did what she said and slipped back upstairs to the dirty attic, while she picked up her dressing gown from the hook on the back of the door and traipsed downstairs to investigate. A chair had knocked over in the kitchen.

Esther went to knock on the heavy wooden door, but got no response. She rarely went into the cellar, only when they needed logs for the fireplace.

"It's just me, Sal," she called, "Are you gonna let me in and tell me what's up? You can lock the door again right away." A pause. "Elliott's not here, don't worry." _Then_ she heard the key turn in the lock again. At least Sally Sparrow was more decent than Elliott – Esther was not a fan of skin exposure. Yet another reason why people often made fun of her by calling her a prude, which she did _not_ appreciate. Why couldn't she live her own life the way she wanted? That way being not having to be around people who were partially (or worse, _fully_ ) nude.

"I've made another horrible mistake," she said pitifully. Esther sighed.

"I'm sure you haven't," she said, though she wasn't sure at all. Sally dragged her by her elbow into the cellar, and Esther found herself thinking about where Sally's hands had been and when they had last been washed, resolving that she was going to launder her dressing gown as soon as she could. Sally hissed with pain when she got a jolt of static electricity.

"I keep telling you not to drag me places," Esther said. Sally ignored her, Esther stepping aside on the rickety, wooden staircase so that she could lock the door. That staircase was a death-trap; it had no railings at all and looked like it had been constructed very haphazardly. Esther didn't know anything at all about carpentry though to fix a banister to it – she wondered if Jenny did…

"I – bloody – I slept with him!"

"Well, yeah, I… figured," Esther said awkwardly, "What's this 'mistake'? Wait – you're not trying to tell me you didn't use… you know… um… the, uh… the… contra-thingamajig."

"Esther, you're a child," Sally told her sharply, "And no that's not what I'm trying to tell you, honestly, I'm not an idiot. But I _am_ an idiot." She retreated back down the stairs again, clutching the key to the basement door in one hand, and went to skulk in the corner next to the rattling boiler, the only source of heat down there. It was freezing. Esther followed, wrapping her arms around herself, walking through the many shelves and cardboard boxes Sally kept down there. Honestly, there were all sorts of doomsday supplies kept in that hovel; an entire mountain of toilet paper, a hundred cans of baked beans alone, hundreds _more_ cans of all variety of objects. A hefty amount of dehydrated astronaut food you could buy online as a kind of gimmick. Tankards full of purified water.

"Okay, I don't… I don't think it's… _that_ bad, really? Is it?" she asked, "You like him, he likes you… I know you do, don't deny it."

"Alright, fine," she hissed, "Maybe I do. Obviously I do, in fact, because I've gone and bloody _shagged_ him. I'm as bad as Clara."

"I don't think you are – at least you know him and you remember his name," Esther pointed out, "We've met him a bunch of times. It's like a… usual thing. From what I understand from, uh, the TV, and stuff…"

"I don't want to go out with him, though," she said, "I'm leading him on."

"No means no, regardless of anything that's already happened. I'll just zap him if he won't leave. Or I'll get Jenny to come and sort it," Esther shrugged, "C'mon, there's no need to worry. But, um, sparing me like, the gross details, how did this even _happen_? You came back with me."

"He showed up."

"At our house?"

"Yeah, he wouldn't go away."

"Man, that's a little… shifty."

"I haven't slept for four days…" she put her head in her hands. Esther had been standing up next to her, but now sighed again and sat down on the dusty cellar floor by her side (not close enough to shock her by accident, though.) The dirty floor was yet another excuse to wash this dressing gown.

"You gotta start taking your pills," Esther told her, "I see that bottle of zolpidem every day in the bathroom cabinet. Sarah always used to refuse any kind of medication. Then she jumped off a building."

"I don't want my brain to get messed up."

"Clearly your brain is already _majorly_ messed up," Esther pointed out, then drifted towards a change of subject, "Anyway, I just can't believe you actually took a guy into your room. It's disgusting."

"It's not that bad."

"It definitely is."

"Just because I don't have OCD like you doesn't mean I'm messy."

"Well, first of all, you _are_ messy, and second of all, you can't just use 'OCD' in such a colloquial way like that – you're making a joke out of an actual disorder."

"Your face is a disorder."

"Gee, thanks."

"It was a spur of the moment mistake, okay? I don't want a relationship, and certainly not a long-distance one. And I barely even know him. I'm just disoriented and not thinking clearly."

"I can just tell him to get lost and you can block his number in your phone, you don't _have_ to see him, nobody's forcing you," she said, "Besides, you've, um… y'know, got it 'out of your system' or whatever now, so… I guess like emptying the trash can on a computer?"

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"I know…" she muttered, "I don't want to. The whole thought grosses me out. I'm sorry."

"It's fine. At least you're not prying for details."

"I can't think of anything _worse_ than _details_ , gosh," she cringed, "Look, he's gonna come downstairs in a minute, but I can go head him off if you tell me what to say to him."

"You're not going to force me to talk to him myself?"

"No, why would I do that? Just tell me what you want me to talk to James about and I'll get rid of him. I can just threaten him if it comes down to it," she shrugged, "Do you want me to tell him to leave? Honestly, I'll just shoo him out."

"Please do, just… I have, like, no excuse. I'm just a mess."

"Well, look, I'll make him go away now, alright?" Esther said, getting to her feet. She was sure Elliott would be dressed by now. Probably lurking upstairs waiting for her. After she smiled and climbed carefully up the crooked staircase again she realised that this assumption was correct, Elliott was hanging around there in the kitchen, looking nearly as embarrassed as Sally in the basement did.

"What did she say?" he asked. Had he been eavesdropping?

"I think you should leave," Esther told him.

"Leave? Why? You can't just screw someone and kick them out with no explanation! I'm a real person, not a bloody gigolo!"

"Well, I… all this stuff is beyond me, okay? She's kind of having a crisis and I don't think you forcing her to talk to you is really gonna help," Esther told him seriously, "You should just go – maybe she'll sleep on it and call you, I really don't know what's going through her mind. She's unpredictable. I'm sure you've figured that out by now. Everything she does she does on a whim – I don't know how anybody lives like that, I need at least a week's notice… anyway, just – leave, okay? Go, James, I'm sorry that this probably isn't going the way you'd like. I'm sure you'd love to just have a girlfriend suddenly, but that's… a pipe dream." While she said this, she waved her (un-gloved and dangerous) hands at him to shepherd him out of the room, and eventually, finally, out of the front door.

"Wait – just speak to me, will you? Not her, you," he said.

"Well I don't think you're going to get very far trying your luck with _me_ – you know I'm asexual?"

"No, but I wasn't gonna try anything Esther," he said firmly. She sighed and stepped out and closed the door behind her. She didn't have anything against Elliott, she thought he was okay. "What kind of bloke do you think I am?"

"I don't really know you," she said.

"She should have just… she shouldn't… not if she doesn't like me! Why do that?"

"I don't know. I'm not entirely sure Sally Sparrow would make a great girlfriend at the moment anyway," Esther said, "You don't know her all that well. You know… you know her fiancé she was with for six years left her, right? And that's why she moved here? Plus, he insomnia… there're a lot of reasons for her… I can't pretend to know what's going on in her head." She tried to get him to leave without just telling him something like Sally was too much of a mess to have a relationship, even though that was probably the truth. "I just – I'm sorry, but you should really go, James." And finally he did. She wondered where he was even going – he and Christina were probably in a B&B somewhere, she guessed.

Only when she returned inside did she check the time and see it was eleven in the morning; she'd barely have five hours' sleep. But she couldn't go back to bed, otherwise she wouldn't sleep that night, and it would have chaotic effects on her entire daily routine. Chaotic effects were already being had on her daily routine, even, because of this fuss about kicking James Elliott out of the house because Sally had (presumably) woken up in the cold light of day and thought _what the heck is this!?_ Not that Esther knew at all what Sally had been thinking.

"He's gone," she called down to the cellar, "Front door locked. You can come back up." And Sally did come back up, still looking horrified and borderline ill. "If you want my opinion, I don't think this is all that bad. At least he's nice. You could have ended up with some total jerk. So that's something."

"Maybe."

"Anyway – I have an idea. I know you always want eggs when you get too tired, so how about you go have a shower and I will make us brunch?" she said, "Scrambled egg on toast. Just what we need after going to a nightmare zone like Acnictexr."

"Yeah," she said meekly, "Sounds good."

 **AN: See, I was gonna write Ten and Rose fluff for this chapter, but I really do not care about Ten and Rose. I don't even _really_ care (and I don't think any of you guys do either) about Sally Sparrow and James Elliott. But I like Esther, so you get what you get I suppose.**


	73. The Ghost of Clara Ravenwood

**AN: This storyline is set in between "Brave-ish Heart" and "Detained" (episodes 5 &6) of ****_Class_** **.**

 **DAY 147**

 _The Ghost of Clara Ravenwood_

 _Charlie Smith_

Coal Hill Academy was in the grip of a horrible storm, the worst storm so far that year it had been said on the news, and highly unexplainable. It was practically tropical, and their borough of London had been experiencing a humid heatwave for the last two days because of it. But this was normal. And besides, it _was_ tropical, the remnants of some ancient or futuristic hurricane coming through one of the many rifts. People were blaming the many problems of the Wi-Fi lately on the storm, too. It kept cutting out and breaking, and people were seeing unusual symbols when they tried to log onto the school's network. Neither of those things were their current concern, however.

"I can't believe you've forced me to drive you all the way out here in _this_ weather – I wonder if throwing you out into a hurricane would count as me making an attempt on your life?" Miss Quill mused bitterly, walking behind Charlie and Matteusz.

"And if I died that would count as you failing to protect me," Charlie said, unimpressed. Matteusz was the one leading the way, it was Matteusz's idea that they come there in the first place to look into the alleged claims of more than a few terrified students. Death was an essential part of the curriculum at Coal Hill, and they went through grief counsellors at the same rate Hogwarts went through Defence Against the Dark Arts professors. Seeing people die was one thing, but seeing people who were supposed to be dead come back to life in front of them was something else. The main thing they were thinking was that it was a re-emergence of the Lankin, come to try and feed on them again.

"I don't understand what it is we're doing here, I see enough of this hovel during the day," Quill complained, but Matteusz walked with purpose, glancing nervously down corridors on either side of them while the rain hammered down outside. It was like the school had been enveloped by a waterfall; walking there that morning had been a complete nightmare.

"Looking for ghosts," Matteusz said.

"I told you, it could be the Lankin," Charlie reiterated to Quill.

"I don't see any slimy plant-tentacles anywhere, so I doubt it. Who is this woman?"

"She was a teacher, she died," Matteusz answered.

"Oh, boohoo. Teachers die all the time here. Mr Armitage died just the other week," Quill commented.

"Yes, but they do not come _back_ all the time," Matteusz said, "Some of the younger ones, they are scared – shouldn't we look into this? For their sake?"

"What we should look into is expanding the school budget to afford a better counsellor."

"Be quiet, Quill. If Matteusz wants us to look for a ghost, then we'll look for a ghost," Charlie said. Matteusz smiled a little. Then Charlie had to go and add, "But, you know there's no such thing."

"No such thing? Does your Cabinet of Souls not hold ghosts?" Matteusz challenged, "There are all sorts of things in this universe to see – why not ghosts?"

"That's different, that's a Rhodian thing, but ghosts? Impossible."

There was a flash of lightning outside and an immediate roll of thunder which shook the school building to its core, and a shadow illuminated itself at the opposite end of the hallway to them. Matteusz jumped and grabbed Charlie's arm, but darkness fell within a second. There was silence for a second as the thunder echoed and died away again, replaced by the droning sound of the rainstorm.

"God, the two of you; you see one shadow and you piss yourselves," Quill said.

"You saw it as well?"

"Probably just the cleaner," she said.

"It's the middle of the night," Charlie pointed out.

"So? It's not up to me what hours Dorothea wants to make the cleaners work," she said.

"Come on," Matteusz said, pulling Charlie lightly by his hand for a second, but he ran off quite fast, leaving Quill and Charlie to follow. When Matteusz got to the other end of the hall, though, he saw nothing, no trace of the mysterious figure he had seen before. "She was here, I saw her."

"What's your fascination with this dead teacher, anyway?" Quill asked.

"I liked her, she was… a friend. When things were hard," Matteusz answered, somewhat cryptically, "Why don't we split up, cover more ground?"

"Suits me. What harm can a ghost do?" Quill shrugged, "The sooner you discover there's nothing to worry about the sooner I can go home and hate my life in peace."

"Fine, Quill's right," Charlie said, and the trio divided, each of them going a different way. Charlie took an immediate right as he wandered down the corridors, some of them covered with puddles from leaks in the roof caused by the lashing tropical storm they were in the midst of.

Charlie didn't know this teacher they were after. He had never met her. All he knew was that she was dead, and her name was on the enormous memorial wall of the deceased in the entrance of the Academy. He wondered if other schools on Earth had those cenotaph-like structures, had minutes of silence every month for those who had died in unusual, soon-forgotten circumstances. He didn't know how this one was supposed to have died, but she was hardly mentioned, whoever-she-was. There were just so many metaphorical bodies buried underneath that school now, the memory just washed over them. He always thought this ability to forget was a remarkable feat of humankind.

He froze, thoughts interrupted completely, when he thought he saw twitching, dark movement at the end of the corridor. At night, all these halls were identical, and they were all plenty creepy without the added worry of some phantom prowling up and down them.

"Is somebody there?" he called, wondering if it was Quill playing a cruel joke. But while she was cruel, he wasn't sure Quill knew what a joke was, or that she could be bothered doing something so petty. He walked slowly, cautiously, wondering if perhaps Matteusz's superstitions held some sort of logic in them, at least; if, maybe, there _was_ the ghost of a long-lost teacher stalking the halls, haunting the place.

He jumped when he heard, from above, banging, scraping sounds, like there was something in the ceiling. He looked up to follow the sounds with his eyes, and then heard a particularly loud thud and stumbled.

"Come out now and stop playing around," he said, trying to conjure some sort of authority in his voice, but just hearing himself tremble. Another lightning bolt outside terrified Charlie out of his wits, and he was nearly ashamed of the way he was acting. He staggered away from the source of the noises above, towards the earlier disturbance he had seen in the shadows. Dimly, he could have sworn he saw something scurry away out of the corner of his eye as he backed away sightlessly and rounded the corner.

But when he did, what he saw nestled there in a store cupboard was far more mysterious and shocking than any noise or twitch he had quite possibly imagined in his own fear, fear begun probably by them splitting up. Whose idiotic suggestion had it been to split up? Oh, right, he remembered. His boyfriend's. What could Matteusz or Quill do to help now, though? There he was, in that corridor, looking at the ghostly image of that blue box that had rescued both he and Quill from being murdered by the Shadow Kin back on Rhodia.

And there it was again, this mirage, and Charlie could hardly believe that the TARDIS standing before him, softly humming with its ambient sounds, wasn't merely a projected phantasm of his own desperate imagination. He approached the TARDIS carefully; it had been months since they had seen the Doctor, since he had come and ridded them of the Shadow Kin temporarily, had given Ram his new leg, had put Quill and the group of them in charge of defending Coal Hill. He stepped towards it, holding up a hand, making to check that it was real, that maybe the Doctor had come to put an actual stop to the strange happenings at Coal Hill.

Charlie jumped again when the door was rammed open from the inside by a young man, tripping and stumbling over, his tweed blazer only half on, hanging off one arm, a banana held in his mouth, some sort of device in his free hand. He was halfway out of the TARDIS, this stranger, when he met Charlie's eyes and frowned at him. He pulled on the other sleeve off his jacket and then bit into the banana, right into the middle of it, with its skin still on.

"Eurgh!" he exclaimed. The odd device he was holding was on a leather strap around his neck, so with one hand he took the banana, and with the other he just spat what he had already bitten off into his palm and stared at it, "Why does this banana taste so disgusting? What's wrong with it?"

"You bit into it with the skin on," Charlie pointed out to the stranger.

"What? Oh, I suppose I did. Sorry. I'm distracted," he reached over and wiped his hand on the wall, and then dropped the partially-eaten banana into his pocket. Then he went back to studying Charlie, stepping all the way out of the TARDIS and shutting the door. He had unusual hair, this man, and didn't appear to have any eyebrows. Charlie could have sworn he still heard rattling from above, unnerving him. "Anyway, pleased to meet you, is this your school? Do you have the deed?" he held out his hand, the mushy one, for Charlie to shake.

"Uh…" he faltered, not knowing whether to touch him or not. The man removed his hand.

"Yes, good instincts, stranger-danger and all that. Don't talk to funny men who live in phone boxes," he said in an oddly approving way, then beckoned Charlie closer, "Listen, I don't know who you are, but I need a favour. I'm looking for a girl; blonde, about so high," he put a hand in the air about a foot below his own head, "Cute but with memorable eyes and a wonky thumb." His own eyes bored into Charlie's as he asked that, speaking very seriously. Then the noises from above reached a crescendo and, right in between Charlie and the stranger, a humanoid form came crashing out of the ceiling. The man didn't take his eyes from Charlie's once as this happened, and then said in the same serious tone of voice, "Never mind. I found her."

"I'm confused…"

"When are people _not_ confused? Wouldn't it be a boring life if we all went around being not-confused all the time? We'd never ask any questions, or solve mysteries. That's what you teenagers do, isn't it? Solve mysteries? Drive around in a van? Do you have a dog?" he asked as he crouched down to help the girl on the floor to her feet.

This girl was odd, too; there she was, little more than five feet tall, a lopsided woollen scarf loosely around her neck, wearing a long and very fitted coat and carrying on her back what looked like a frankly enormous firearm of some description. A heap of junk, Charlie thought, but he didn't doubt the danger of it. Matteusz always hated guns, and Quill couldn't use them.

"What's _this_?" she asked when she had stood back up, looking at a mark on the side of her otherwise-unblemished black coat.

"He spat banana into his hand," Charlie said. No explanation came as to why she had been crawling through the vents in the first place.

"I did not!"

"You did _what_!?" the blonde girl hit the strange man in his arm.

"Ow! That's child abuse!"

" _Child abuse_!? How is it child abuse? _I'm_ the child!"

"Yes, the child is the one who's abusing me."

"CHARLIE!" Yelling interrupted whatever _this_ was. It was Matteusz; Charlie would know his voice anywhere. He didn't care about whoever these two weirdos were anymore, hardly had time to think about it, he just dropped everything and made a break for it, the two of them following right behind, with the weird device and the massive gun.

He saw another twitch in the shadows, a scurry of movement, but he ignored it completely, he was so focused on running back to Matteusz. Charlie nearly collided with Quill, also following Matteusz's shout.

"Who are these two?" Quill asked.

"Uh – the Doctor? I think?" Charlie said. But they found Matteusz again a second later, standing, horrified, in the doorway of a classroom. "Are you okay? Why did you shout?" Charlie went to check if he was alright.

"I saw it, I saw her," he answered, Charlie touching his face, "The ghost of Miss Oswald." Thunder clap outside. "Down there, I swear it."

"I believe you."

"You saw it?" the stranger, the Doctor (maybe?) asked.

"Who are you?" Matteusz asked.

"Look! Jenny!" the stranger pointed something out to the blonde girl. And there it was, the thing they had been hunting, the figure of a woman. Charlie vaguely recognised her from old photos hanging around in the school, but that distant apparition was definitely real. "It's right there – get it!"

"No! What if she needs help?" Matteusz asked, "Put that gun down!"

"It's fine," the girl, Jenny, said, raising the gun, then she added to the stranger, "You know this is the first time I've fired this thing since I had my cast taken off my thumb?"

"I'm sure you won't miss, just hurry up, it's coming this way!" And it was, _she_ was, Matteusz protested.

"If it's a ghost, what's shooting it going to do?" Quill asked. But that question was shortly answered when this Jenny pulled the trigger on her huge gun and a six-inch, slightly-crooked, rusty spike shot out of the end of it, steam melting out of its metal seams, and the spike tore through the face of the ghost. That was when Charlie saw it wasn't a ghost, it wasn't even a person; its head shattered apart into electronics and wires, and it fell to its knees, and then to the floor. Charlie was stunned. Quill sighed.

"That wasn't another one of their robots, was it?"

"Depends on what you mean by 'they'," the stranger said, tapping the side of his nose.

"Look at that!" Jenny complained, "I just shot my girlfriend in the face! My girlfriend! I literally love her more than anyone in the universe and now I shot her in the face, broke it to pieces."

"Your stepmother, too. You know, Sigmund Freud would have a field day if I ever met him. Again. But I'd rather not, the last time I saw him he kept asking me questions about my father's penis," the stranger said.

"Sorry – did you say he's the Doctor?" Quill asked Charlie, who just shrugged.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, right, that's me, the Doctor," he said, beginning to walk off towards the dead woman on the floor. Matteusz was horrified and holding Charlie's hand tightly. "Wait – how is it you know me?"

"You shot her," Matteusz accused.

"You think I would shoot my own wife?" the Doctor asked.

"No, you'd get your daughter to do it for you," Jenny muttered. They all steadily approached the body, and the Doctor went right up and just kicked it. It didn't work. "Does that count as domestic violence?"

"I hope not. At least it's dead, blasted thing – must have got lost. You've got a very odd school here, haven't you? What's the matter with this storm? I've been detecting a lot of _stuff_ with my _thing_ here," he showed his device, which had a lot of flashing lights and spinning dishes, "My timey-wimey detector."

"Good god, he's an idiot," Quill said.

"Oi! I don't even know who any of you are! How do you know me?"

"You rescued us, Doctor, from Rhodia," Charlie said.

"Rhodia? I've never been to Rhodia. It's on my bucket list, though – I hear it's very beautiful. Not as beautiful as Gallifrey, of course-"

"Messaline is quite nice now it's been terra-formed," Jenny interrupted.

"But still."

"If that is not a ghost, or a person, then what is it?" Matteusz asked.

"A dreadful thing, really, called a spoonhead," the Doctor explained, "It's a discreet, mobile server. They wander around and suck out peoples'… souls, in a way, and upload them into a computer to help feed the Great Intelligence. I stopped them a while back, but this one must have gotten lost, strayed into one of your rifts. Understandable it decided to wear Clara's face, it could be the one who downloaded her, for all we know." That explained the recent issues with the school Wi-Fi, Charlie mused.

"You know Miss Oswald?" Matteusz asked. The Doctor and Jenny exchanged a look with one another.

" _Miss Oswald_?" Jenny questioned, like she was figuring something out, "…What school is this?"

"Coal Hill Academy – how do you not know that? You're the one who dumped us here. Though it was a different you, I suppose you've regenerated," Quill remarked coldly

"Regenerated?" the Doctor asked, "Who did you meet? What did he look like?"

"Much older. Wiry. Scottish."

"Ah," said the Doctor.

"Oh," said Jenny.

"That explains it," they said together.

"Explains what? I am confused," Matteusz said, Charlie holding his arm.

"Betaverse, I suppose… we're from a parallel universe," the Doctor answered, "Well, they're not completely parallel, they more sort of… zig-zag. A lot of overlap. We get the wires crossed _constantly_. We were only chasing the spoonhead. This is Jenny, my daughter. Very proud of her and her keen aim, though I hate guns."

"Let it go, I don't shoot to kill. Not at anything that's actually alive," she said, "You know that."

"But you know Miss Oswald?" Matteusz continued, "Who is dead? Did she not have a stroke?"

"A stroke? I'm sure she's had plenty of _strokes_ , usually from weirdos, when she's drunk," the Doctor said, looking at Jenny like she should find that funny.

"Drunk weirdos? Are you talking about yourself, dad?" she asked. His smile faded. Jenny sighed. "Look, it's complicated, Clara – your Clara – she used to travel with the Doctor." None of them had known that. Had any of their circle even known that? One of the esteemed Doctor's companions, teaching at Coal Hill? "She died in a… you know, it's a very odd way, and I found an ex-girlfriend-eighteen-year-old-Viking to ask her about it just recently, and it still didn't make much sense. Something to do with a raven? And a chrono lock? I don't know. She's not even dead."

"She's definitely dead," the Doctor said, "Your one is."

"She's a vampire."

"That counts as being dead. But – wait – you said Rhodia?"

"Quill and I," Charlie explained.

"Quill? _Quill_!? You're a quill and you're calling yourself _Quill_? That would be like me coming to a school and calling myself 'Mr Time Lord,'" he scoffed.

"Wouldn't surprise me, you seem a bit slow," she said.

"Why are you not living on Rhodia? Why are you here?"

"The same reason _you're_ not living on Gallifrey," Quill said, "Rhodia is gone. All the Quill, and all the Rhodians, wiped out by the Shadow Kin. But you already mostly dealt with that. The other one."

"We call him 'Old Twelvey,'" Jenny said.

"My condolences for what happened to Rhodia," said the Doctor seriously.

"You saved us, just us. I'm the prince of the Rhodia," Charlie said.

"Prince, really? Monarchies are a flawed system of government with only the interests of the upper-classes at heart," Jenny said, and the Doctor gave her a confused look, and she added quietly, "…Mum says…" He rolled his eyes.

"You mean Miss Oswald?" Matteusz asked.

"No! My real mum, the Doctor. A different one. It's weird," she said.

"Can't stand that woman."

"You'll turn into her one day," Jenny quipped.

"Are we all caught up with the explanations now? Because I had a very fun evening planned of trying to pretend the sounds of Charlie and his boyfriend coming from upstairs don't exist," Quill said. Matteusz shifted guiltily, but Charlie gave Quill a dark look.

"Aren't the Rhodians and the Quill at war?" the Doctor asked.

"They were. Andra'ath was their most celebrated terrorist-"

"Freedom fighter," Quill interrupted, "He stuck an Arn in my head."

"An Arn? That's archaic, taking away somebody's free will," the Doctor said.

"What's an Arn?" Jenny asked.

"A tiny creature that sits on my brain and kills me if I don't protect the prince here," Quill said resentfully, "But I can't use any guns or weapons to defend him, or it also kills me. It's a wonderful life of slavery."

"It's not slavery, it's-"

"Shh," Jenny cut them off, "I heard something." They all silenced. She raised her huge gun again.

"I thought the Doctor hates guns?" Quill asked.

"Yes, well… there's some arguments I'll never win with her."

"Don't be mean to Emmett," Jenny whispered. They all followed her gaze to the opposite end of the hall, the rain still pummelling the roof above, still dropping down through the cracks and making puddles in front of the lockers.

And then Charlie saw what he'd been seeing all evening, the same tiny, scurrying shadow; it whooshed past far ahead, small and fast and making odd noises. Jenny lowered her gun, leaving it hanging off her back by its strap, and then reached into a bag she had across her shoulder. She reached very deeply into this bag, in fact, all the way down to her shoulder, and then pulled out a huge walking stick.

"What's _that_?" Quill asked.

"It's my vampire-bashing cane," she said, then to the Doctor, "Killed your wife once."

"Everything's killed my wife once." She brandished it in her hands, the bat-shaped headstock making a very painful looking bludgeoning instrument. All five of them crept down the halls towards whatever it had been, though Charlie assumed it wasn't much of anything. Not compared to what they usually found in Coal Hill.

And then something flew at them – or, jumped at them – something furry – or, possibly feathery? Charlie couldn't see, but it came right for Jenny, who was at the front of the group. And then, in an instant, it was dead. She swung that cane at it and smacked it down to the floor, and the dark mass splatted, then the Doctor pulled a large torch out of his pocket. When he switched it on, what he illuminated was wholly horrifying.

"What _is_ that?" Jenny asked. He reached down to touch it.

"Oh, don't do that, you'll catch something," Quill remarked, but he ignored her, he picked it up by its wing. Because it had wings. Even though the rest of it looked like a rat. It had the body of a rat, the tail of a rat, and then wings like a pigeon, and even more shockingly its mouth morphed into a beak halfway down its face. The Doctor dropped it. "Nothing that unusual."

"Really?"

"We had a dragon last month."

"A dragon!? Blimey. What I wouldn't have given to have seen a dragon. I slew a dragon once. You know St George? That's me. Kidnapped Rose a long time ago because it thought her hair was gold," he rolled his eyes and wiped his hand on his trousers. Then spotted something else on the wall. "What's that?" He walked over and squinted at it.

"Just a missing poster," Matteusz said.

" _Just_ a missing poster?" the Doctor frowned, taking it down from the wall where it had been blue-tacked. "For someone from your school? You don't sound very bothered about that. Don't any of you know this… Josh Hart?" he read the name from the poster.

"Lots of people go missing at Coal Hill, it's hardly news. Listen, Doctor, I don't mean to sound rude – or maybe I do, I can't say I care – but isn't it about time you left now? You've killed your spork-face-"

"Spoonhead," he corrected. Quill looked sick to death of him.

" _Whatever_ it is. It's dead now. So isn't this your cue to clear off?" she crossed her arms.

"If you want me to. I suppose so," he glanced between their faces for a moment.

"I still have some questions about-" Matteusz began.

"No, no. The Quill is right. I suppose if this is New Rhodia, or something, I'm not one to argue. The pair of you have fun finding your feet again. Come along, Jenny, we're leaving," he declared, "Probably somewhere more exciting to go, anyway, rather than this poxy school." And so the Doctor swept away, with Jenny at his heels, though she seemed perplexed.

"But, but Doctor – you never said – she's a vampire?" Matteusz continued to ask questions about Clara Oswald.

" _Sorry_ ," Jenny mouthed at him as she left, shrugging. And then the two of them disappeared around the corner, and out of their lives.

* * *

"I don't get it," she asked as Eleven held the door back onto the TARDIS open for her, which still sat in its lonely store cupboard, her ducking under his arm, "Why did we just leave? That thing was half-rat half-pigeon. Didn't you see it?" He didn't answer, went towards the computer on the console. "Dad?"

"We're not leaving, not for long," he said, "There's something funny about that place." Jenny shut the door behind them. The console room was empty for now, thankfully.

"I think I have to ring Ravenwood and say sorry for shooting her in the face…"

"Oh, feel free. But I have an idea. All we need is some jumpsuits and your spaceship."

"I'm not wearing a jumpsuit. I have a look I'm going for," she said, "It's a kind of a combination of Lara Croft and the main one from _Underworld_."

" _Underworld_? You've been watching films now?"

"It's about vampires and Clara fancies the girl in it," Jenny said.

"Name one girl Clara _doesn't_ fancy," he muttered, and Jenny paused, and thought about this, and realised she could not name one girl Clara didn't fancy. So she changed the subject.

"Anyway, I've got my coat. This coat can't be compromised, alright? I went through a lot of trouble to get it."

"You're as bad as your ex-husband. Speaking of which, where is Jack?"

"I don't know, haven't seen him since he went swanning off after hearing Oswin say something about Kent the other night. I was distracted," Jenny shrugged.

"Fine, no jumpsuits. But your spaceship isn't a debate."

"You can have the spaceship, but _where_ are you going to park it?"

"Oh, I have a very good idea about that, Jenny, don't you worry…"


	74. Revenge of the Fiji Mermaid

_Revenge of the Fiji Mermaid_

 _Misc._

"Sorry, I got slightly lost there when you started talking about wormholes and biscuits – who did you say you were again?" Dorothea Ames, new, replacement headmistress at Coal Hill Academy, asked the puzzling, bow-tie wearing man in front of her.

"Oh, yes, I do tend to get carried away when it comes to quantum physics and… baking. We're pest control. Exterminators," he produced a sheet of blank paper, "Here because we heard about your rat problem."

"I wasn't aware we have a rat problem," Dorothea said politely, though she was smiling, and she knew he was trying to trick her with a wallet of psychic paper. Plus, she always took care to review the CCTV tapes from the night before; it was remarkable how much happened at the school during the night when it was supposed to be closed, "I haven't seen many rats."

"It's not an issue with the amount of rats, it's an issue with the rats themselves," he said. The CCTV and the Governors had also informed Dorothea that the Doctor's police box had been seen in one of the storage cupboards. "Just call me the Doctor," he said. They were in the entrance hall of Coal Hill, students milling about, generally ignoring her.

"Ah, yes," she said smoothly, " _That_ rat problem." This rat problem, whatever it was, wasn't anything to do with the Governors. Therefore, she decided that the Doctor could run around and do what he liked. He wasn't all that much of a worry, really, just an inconvenience. Letting him think he had fooled her into believing he was a representative of some pest control company would just make him unsuspicious of the school's authority figures. _Let the Doctor have his fun_ , Dorothea thought to herself.

"We're going to need you to section off the entire sports hall," he said curtly, "We have a great deal of sensitive equipment and poisons."

"Anything if it will help with the rat problem," she said, "I'll let the PE staff know to take the children outside for PE today." The Doctor cast a glance over his shoulder at the door, where the tropical storm from the night before was still raging quite ferociously. A girl's umbrella flew out of her hands and smacked a Year Seven in the face.

"It's a good thing the weather is holding up, then," he said.

"Yes," Dorothea agreed, "If you'll excuse me, I have places I need to be, Doctor…"

"Just a second," he said, and then he fumbled with the inside pocket of his tweed jacket while the short, blonde girl at his side who looked so young she could easily be a pupil there as well rolled her eyes, "What do you know about this boy?" He brandished a crumpled missing poster at her.

"Josh Hart?" she asked, "Good achiever, could have done better in his mock exams results, his mother hosts a book club twice a month, nothing unusual. It's a tragedy he's disappeared. Teenagers are often going missing, though, I'm sure Josh will turn up."

"He's been gone for a week already."

"And the Governors are very sorry about that, but the school have liaised with the parents and the police, there's little else for us to do. _Now_ , I really need to be on my way to check on the new football coach after there was a little incident with the last one…"

"Yes, yes…" he said, seeming disappointed, "But – don't you be coming in the sports hall either, Miss…?"

"Ames," she answered, beginning to walk off, "And I wouldn't dream of it." The Doctor smiled as she disappeared away, telling kids to tuck their shirts in as she went.

* * *

"What do you think, eh?" Eleven nudged Jenny with his elbow. Jenny, though, had grown distracted by something in front of them.

"I don't think she believes we're exterminators, that's what," Jenny said, "Look, dad." She pointed out what she had been drawn towards; a large, wooden board, much taller than the Doctor, and covered in names. Jenny had seen a name which was much too familiar sitting on the thing, which was, according to the words above it, the Coal Hill School Roll of Honours Board. " _Oswald, C_ ," Jenny read off it, crossing her arms.

"She's not gone," he reminded her.

"I _know_ that, obviously, it's just… do you think her grave is nearby?"

"What do you want to visit her grave for?"

"I want to see what it says on it," she said, "What if she picked a quote, or something, pre-emptively? I want to know what it is."

"Just ask her," he said, "Look above it, _Pink, R.D._ "

"I'm gonna send her a picture of it," Jenny said, getting her phone out. Eleven just let her, wandering down the board to look at all the other names. He had known a great deal of people who had Coal Hill School in its various iterations as their haunts, and found a name which struck as much a chord with him as Clara's name did with his daughter, right near the beginning.

"Would you look at this; _Foreman, S_ ," he said. Jenny, texting, frowned. The kids around them, all soaked and coming in from the hurricane outside, didn't pay the two weirdos milling about any notice whatsoever. Typical humans, always wanting to ignore things that were out of place.

"Who's that?"

"My granddaughter, Susan," he said, "Your… erm… I'm not sure… Niece?"

"You have a granddaughter?" Jenny asked seriously, putting her phone away. She had presumably finished bothering her girlfriend with the fact her name featured on a list of the dead.

"Not for a long time, hundreds of years. Nobody anymore. Just the two of us," he said, then mused, "I wonder if the two of you would have been friends…" Jenny was none too surprised she didn't know about this Susan character. There was an enormous amount she didn't know about her father, and about the Time Lords. She wondered if she would _ever_ know everything about him. "They should put Clara's name on the billboard twice after you shot her in the face earlier." Jenny scowled as he began to lead them away towards the sports hall.

"I've been thinking I might get a stick."

"A stick? Do to what with?"

"Hit people."

"Charming."

"Some sort of extendable one. A staff. And I can lean on it, and look like the wise old master of some sort of lost fighting art," Jenny explained, "Then I'll beat them up."

"I don't like the thought of you going around and beating people up."

"I don't mean in a _rampage-y_ way. Like, when Jack starts saying things, I could just clout him."

"I very much love the thought of you going around and beating people up – so long as they're Captain Jack," he changed his tact immediately, "Where is Jack, anyway? I haven't seen him for days." The two of them pushed through the crowds of kids, though there weren't all that many. Probably people were skiving because of the weather.

"How should I know? He's swapped rooms with Donna to avoid me."

"That's immature of him."

"Yeah, well, it doesn't matter. It's not like I spend much time in my room anyway," she said, opening the doors into the sports hall.

* * *

"What do you mean, pest control?" Quill asked Dorothea coldly, "Pest control why? I know the children can be dreadful sometimes but I'm not sure they need eradicating." But Dorothea Ames did not explain herself as she told Quill this news of the sports hall's closure that morning, cornering her on her way to her Year 9 Physics lesson, Charlie and company still following her like a pack of lost dogs.

"For the _rat problem_ , Quill," Dorothea said like this should mean something to her. Annoyingly enough, it did; Quill knew exactly what she was talking about, exactly why she was mentioning it in front of the little group of 'crime fighters' in their vicinity, and exactly who these 'unusually-dressed exterminators' were. She rolled her eyes.

"Good lord…" then added sharply, "I'll be sure to let the students know they should skip their PE lessons to avoid going out in this storm."

"Wonderful," said Dorothea, like she was choosing to ignore the last part of Quill's sentence. She probably was. In any case, she took her leave, and Quill turned her bored, long-suffering eyes on the others. Except, they weren't there. They had just taken off, almost as soon as Dorothea had turned her back. _Typical_ , thought Quill. But oh well. At least it meant she wouldn't have to look at them anymore. She turned her attention for the moment back to scaring the life out of some fourteen-year-olds.

* * *

"I don't get it, what's the big deal about pest control? And the school having rats?" Ram Singh questioned as Charlie led them all very swiftly away from Quill and Ames.

"It's not pest control, it's the Doctor," Matteusz explained.

"The Doctor? He's come back?" April MacLean asked.

"Who was the Doctor again?" Tanya Adeola interrupted, all of them walking together through the halls as a big group, most of them soaking wet from the horrible rain. Except April and Ram, who had come in Ram's car, which annoyed the rest of the group somewhat, because why couldn't Ram have given them _all_ a lift? Quill could have hung out in the boot, or something.

"He saved us from the Shadow Kin," April reminded her, "Gave Ram his new leg – he was in that weird box-thing."

"He brought Quill and I to Earth, remember?" Charlie said.

"Oh, _him_ ," Tanya realised.

"We ran into him last night, when Matteusz made us look for ghosts, but it wasn't a ghost. It was some kind of robot," Charlie explained.

"Like that robot Quill snogged?" Ram asked, amused. Charlie frowned.

"I don't think so."

"It looked like Miss Oswald," Matteusz began, "You know, the-"

" _Incredibly_ fit English teacher?" Ram suggested. April elbowed him. "What? She _was_ incredibly fit." The conversation was cut off when Charlie pushed open the doors of the sports hall first, and what they were faced with stunned them all to silence.

"Don't you know what quarantine tape looks like?" the blonde girl from the night before, this Jenny, this daughter of the Doctor, demanded, pointing a revolver at them. They all shrieked and jumped as she brandished it, and then she realised with some surprise what she was holding, "Oh, sorry – she's not loaded. You're the boys from yesterday. Where did that severe woman go?"

"Quill's got a lesson on," said Charlie, unnerved by the gun. The girl was sitting on a fold out chair, but she had the chair the wrong way around, her legs around the back of it, and was leaning very awkwardly over it to do something on a futuristic laptop sitting on a different chair by her side. But the girl wasn't the most interesting thing in the room by far, even if Ram _was_ staring at her a little bit; the most interesting thing was what was behind her.

"I thought you said the Doctor had a 'box-thing?'" Tanya asked April. The girl looked up from her computer again, the gun on a fold out table by her side. It was a quite a set up with gadgets and wires, but no Doctor. Just that enormous silver thing, shining like a mirror, sitting right there in the middle of the room. Jenny glanced from the UFO to the quintet

"He does, but it's not here, this is mine," Jenny explained, "We got rid of his because it's rubbish."

"Oi!" a male voice shouted from one of the changing rooms sticking off the edge of the sports hall, now home to a massive, glistening spaceship, apparently. And then a man stuck his head out of the door, a man much younger than the one they had been expecting – all of them save Charlie and Matteusz – and addressed the girl angrily, "That's part of your heritage."

"My dead heritage," she pointed out, amused. He barely even registered the group of students, just vanished again, and the girl looked at them all, "I'm confused. Who are you all? Did we get to do introductions properly yesterday? I was a bit distracted because I shot my girlfriend in the face. But I rang her up afterwards and she forgave me, she thought it was funny." She pointed at Charlie, " _You're_ the prince of the Rhodia who has that woman as your slave, right?"

"She's not my-"

"She is a bit, mate," Ram said, then to the girl, "Yeah, that's him."

"I've got it. You're a gang of ragtag, alien-fighting teenagers, aren't you?" she said knowingly, "We know another one of those. They've got superpowers now, apparently. But not in this universe. It happens _all_ the time, the people the Doctor leaves behind go and become 'defenders of the Earth.' That's what he usually calls them."

"I suppose that's a pretty fitting description…" Tanya said.

" _Well_ ," she began, getting up off her chair, leaving her gun behind, "Why don't we all do proper introductions now we're not chasing a stray spoonhead that got lost because my father doesn't know how to do his job properly? I'm Jenny, Jenny Young. But I have a lot of names. It's been 'Harkness' for months, but I don't fancy clinging onto my ex-husband's name anymore, not when Major Young recently got her name cleared for committing genocide. And currently searching through the toilets in the girls' changing room is my dad, the Doctor."

"The Doctor… has a daughter?" April asked.

"Yep, home-grown in a machine using his very own tissue samples over two-hundred years ago," she said, "But, enough about that – who are all you? And what's your name, prince-boy?"

"Charlie," Charlie answered.

"And I'm Ram," Ram said, getting his name in quickly.

"April," said April.

"Tanya," said Tanya.

"Matteusz," said Matteusz, but he had his eyes narrowed at this Jenny, "What do you keep meaning, you 'shot your girlfriend?'"

"I thought I explained? We're from another universe. We call our universe the Alphaverse, and yours the Betaverse. _Your_ Clara Oswald didn't die. Well, she did die, but she was brought back, by, um, ours. Not ours, feels weird saying… Beta Clara didn't die. Alpha Clara brought her back. And _then_ she died _again_ , and that was kind of my fault. You really should _expect_ someone to get bitten by a vampire when you go to Whitby in the 1890s…"

" _Vampire_!?" exclaimed Ram, April and Tanya.

"But a nice vampire. She lives in Yorkshire now."

"Eurgh," said Ram.

"I know," Jenny sighed, "It's pretty bleak. But she's… fine, really. She's my girlfriend. She knitted me this scarf the other day, it's the best thing I've ever seen in my entire life," she indicated a woollen scarf around her neck.

"And she's your stepmother," the Doctor returned to the room wearing some very long gloves which were generally used for artificially inseminating cows. Or worse, giving them manual bowel evacuations. They went all the way up to his shoulders. He was carrying a plunger, as well.

"Alright, she's not my stepmother, it just happens that _you_ married the other one," Jenny said, "Don't bother the alien-kids with that, it's just confusing. It even confuses _me_."

"I'm a real _exterminator_ with this plunger," he said, brandishing it at her, though he was stood quite a distance away, "Do you get it? Exterminator?" She said nothing. "Like a Dalek."

" _Oh_ ," she realised, "It's not very funny."

"You're married to the same person…?" Ram asked, "Isn't that a bit… wrong?" They both paused, and thought, but neither of them said anything until this young Doctor changed the subject.

"Jenny, I need your help with something."

"With what…?" she asked suspiciously.

"That thing in the toilet, it's wedged right in there, and it's a wriggler. I need you to come and get it with your little hands."

"You want me to stick my broken thumb down a toilet?" she asked.

"Well the plunger isn't getting it, and I need to get it out. I'd rather not disassemble the whole toilet, the last time I did that… it doesn't bear thinking about. I always get into trouble when I mess around too much with plumbing. Unless any of you have small, girly hands and want to volunteer?" he asked the teenagers, and April and Tanya very tactfully hid their hands behind their backs.

"Fine, but if anything happens to my thumb, you're telling Martha it was all your fault. Just like when my thumb got broken in the first place," she said, taking off her coat carefully, and that scarf she was so proud of, presumably so she didn't get gross toilet water all over herself. They all saw the fresh scars running down the knuckle of her thumb now, yellow and bruising and still slightly pink along the jagged edge.

"Jenny!" the Doctor exclaimed, pointing at her arm. There was, the group noticed, a very neat bandage wrapped around it, " _What_ happened to your arm!?"

"Nothing!" she said. He just stared at her. "Alright, fine, a mafioso shot me when I was in that car chase the other day. It's just a flesh wound! Do _not_ tell Martha or she'll kill me." Tanya wondered who this Martha they kept citing was, who sounded very threatening if she ever got whiff of an injury.

When Jenny followed the Doctor into the changing rooms, the teens all followed as well, Jenny taking a fresh pair of those huge gloves from her father to put on. Whatever it was they were after, it certainly _was_ a wriggler. Ram could see it over Jenny's shoulders as she went to kneel down in front of the loo, a big mass writhing around and splashing water out.

"What is it?" Tanya asked.

"Not sure. Something with the same acute energy traces as that rat-pigeon," the Doctor explained, then he looked at Tanya again, "How old are you? Are you in sixth form? None of you are wearing uniforms, so you all must be."

"I'm fourteen," she answered quietly.

"Tanya's a genius," April said, smiling, like she was a little proud. This comforted Tanya.

"My sister-in-law is a genius," the Doctor said, "She's the smartest human being who's ever lived."

"What is her IQ?" Matteusz asked.

"Three-fifty-two," Jenny answered, then she stuck her non-broken hand into the toilet to grab whatever it was that was stuck down there, alive. "It's a good thing I'm so much stronger than you, isn't it?" She was certainly strong enough to free whatever it was that was stuck in there, that was for sure, because she pulled it right out after just a few seconds.

And that was where things got _weird_.

Whatever it was, it yowled, it shrieked, it made hissing noises, and it went to savage her, and she shrieked right back and practically dropped it as furry, wet, dirty fingers extended and went straight for her face.

"Not my eyes! These eyes are new!" she exclaimed.

Ram was the one who acted, faster than the Doctor, who didn't know what to do that didn't involve possibly killing the creature. It would undoubtedly try to maim anybody who went near it. So he grabbed it round its half-smooth, half-hairy, _all_ disgusting belly and lobbed it straight at the tiled wall of the changing rooms. It splatted there, all wet and clumpy; he had bashed its brains out. He had heard the crunch of its skull splitting apart and releasing curdled brain matter onto the tiles.

"Ew…" said April.

"What _is_ that? I got it on my hand – it's not toxic, is it?"

"I don't know," the Doctor said, unfazed, going to see what it was. It slid, dead and slimy, down the wall, leaving a trail of bloody pulp behind it. He knelt down, squinted, Jenny still shocked. "Kids your age shouldn't be seeing things like that."

"We've seen worse-"

"I had my leg ripped off-"

"Should've seen the dragon-"

"Those Lankin vines-"

"Quill on the toilet," Charlie finished. They all looked at him.

"You've seen Quill on the toilet?" April asked in horror.

"Not on purpose!" he protested, "I could have gouged my eyes out."

"Don't say that, I've had my eyes gouged out," Jenny interrupted, "It was horrible. It was even worse when they were growing back."

"Well, I personally worry about what kind of an education the five of you are getting here with people dying all over the place," the Doctor said, "These are very important qualifications you're sitting right now. Let's do a quiz: have any of you ever heard of the Fiji Mermaid?"

"It was a hoax," Tanya said.

"Correct," he said, "I'd give you a biscuit, but I don't have any. Very famous hoax, man took half of a monkey and sewed it onto half of a fish and said it was a mermaid – I'm quite sure it's in a museum now, and definitely fake. I've been and analysed it. But _this_ …" he picked it off the wall with his still-gloved hand, "it was definitely alive a minute ago."

And that was exactly what it was, just how he had described this 'Fiji Mermaid.' It had the top half of a monkey, and the bottom half of a fish, scales and fur and human-esque face and flippers and all. Even gills on the monkey portion of it.

"Isn't it an alien?" Ram asked.

"No! What kind of alien looks like this? No, no. This is much more sinister than just a lost alien, and it's bigger than that rat-pigeon from yesterday," he said, "I wonder where the monkey came from. Not an alien planet, though. This is more Humpty Dumpty than _ET_ , taking things apart and putting them back together again."

"There was a break-in at London zoo recently?" April suggested.

"Interesting…" and then he dropped the thing right on the floor at his feet. "Do any of you know a boy called Josh Hart?" Jenny sighed and stood up.

"Why do you keep asking everybody about that? He's a teenager, they're always going missing."

"Especially here," Tanya said, "Way more people die and go missing at Coal Hill than at other schools."

"He's in Year 11," April said, "Josh Hart. He plays the violin, he asked me for help with his music exam a few months ago."

"You play the violin?" Jenny asked.

"She plays everything," Ram said.

"I play the fiddle," she said, "And the harp. Or, I used to, haven't really tried it out since I broke my thumb. This sociopath got me to play the fiddle all the time in her speakeasy, way back in the 1930s."

"Yes, anyway – don't you all have a lesson you should be in?" the Doctor questioned, "We have to get to trying to analyse the energy signatures of these weird animals, see if we can't find out if there's any more of them and how they came to be. But I'd appreciate if you could put up this black-and-yellow tape on your way out," he produced a roll of it, "Possibly a quarantine sign? Don't want anybody else walking in here and seeing that massive spaceship, do we?"


	75. Decomposition: A Lengthy Process

**AN: So I've finished all my essays a week and a half early but basically, even when term isn't on, the days where I literally had no other commitments apart from this fic are gone now I have to be doing reading and revision and writing scripts for Nexus (subscribe on YouTube if you like top 10 videos about relatively obscure facts), so as much as I'd like to swap back to doing daily updates, I don't think I will. Plus, ever since I came back off break after "Omegaverse" I've made the chapters way longer; instead of being 1200-3500 words they're now more like 2200-5000 words, and it's pretty arduous to write all that every day. So I'm gonna stick with the thrice-weekly, Monday/Wednesday/Saturday schedule, which is good because it means I don't get so overwhelmed that I have to be taking breaks all the time.**

 _Decomposition: A Lengthy Process_

 _Matteusz Andrzejewski_

"Do you often sit alone in school canteens to eat?" Matteusz asked the blonde girl, Jenny, feeling distinctly like he was interrupting something. She had been sitting there, phone in hand, absently eating food from a large mountain she had. Almost the whole canteen was empty, aside from other sixth-formers who came to dinner early. Matteusz didn't often hang around in there, but he had seen her, alone, through the doorway, and had come to pry. She looked up from her phone immediately.

"I was investigating the kitchen," she said, "The Doctor is prodding dead animals to see if he can get anything from them; I'm not too into autopsies. Every living thing has to eat eventually, so I thought I'd nose around the kitchens. I didn't find anything, but they gave me some free food because I'm nice and they like me." She smiled and waved at one of the dinner ladies then, who smiled and waved back like the pair of them were old friends.

"Can I sit down?" he asked. This puzzled her.

"Why shouldn't you? It's _your_ school," she shrugged, "Feel free. It's a big table, I don't have a monopoly on it." So Matteusz did sit down, opposite her, at one end of the rectangular table. Then he marvelled at the amount of food on her plate – it was three entire cheeseburgers atop a mountain of chips with two flapjacks waiting for her for pudding when she finished all that. "Matteusz, right?" she asked when he was about to speak. He nodded. "Where're you from? I'm horrible with accents."

"Poland," he answered.

"I wonder if I can do Polish…" she mused.

"How do you mean, ' _do_ Polish?'"

"Like, uh, it's a party trick, I was showing it off just this week to, um…" she paused, "Just say something to me in Polish, anything, it's tricky at first."

" _Something like what?_ " he asked, though he never normally spoke Polish when requested.

" _Anything – and I can just assimilate the language. Clara thinks it's amazing, I had to yell at these two guys in Italian just the other day_ ," Jenny said in perfect Polish, no trace of a foreign accent at all. She could have been from Warsaw for all Matteusz knew, if he hadn't met her prior.

"I prefer to speak English – Polish reminds me of my parents," he said.

"What's up with your parents?" she asked, dropping it immediately.

"They kicked me out recently," he said, a little guarded.

"Can you not, I don't know, reconcile? I reconciled with the Doctor after I ran off and went to stay with Clara for weeks," Jenny said.

"What did the Doctor do?"

"I don't want to talk about it," she answered, picking up one of her burgers, and biting into it. After chewing and swallowing, she said, "These burgers are great – I've already had two of them."

"You've already had _two_ burgers?" he questioned. There was still ten minutes before lunch officially started, five minutes before kids started showing up as they got out of lessons early.

"My metabolism is _out of this world_. Literally. Get it?" she asked. It was a bad joke, but it made Matteusz smile a little. "Did you want something? Not that I mind the conversation – you just seemed a bit purposeful when you came over here. You can have a burger if you want, I've got loads of food on my ship." He kind of did want a burger, and she pushed the plate towards him, so he picked one up and unwrapped it from its yellow-coloured paper, yellow so that you knew it had cheese in it.

"Miss Oswald was really a companion of the Doctor?" he asked.

"Yeah, a… while ago," Jenny said, "It's actually been ten years to her, but she's forgotten it all. The only person who can fill in the blanks is this insolent little Viking who really likes being enigmatic and talking in circles."

"I feel as though _you_ are maybe talking in circles," he said, and she laughed.

"I get that a lot."

"She was a friend to me," Matteusz said.

"Who? Clara?"

"Yes, I used to talk to her, about… some personal things. Being who I am."

"Who might that be?"

"A homosexual," he said, and he thought she nearly laughed at his use of the word 'homosexual.' "I don't like the word 'gay.' Teenagers and children, they use it as an insult, I've been called it a lot. There were a lot of rumours about her in the months before… after Mr Pink died." She sighed and put down her semi-eaten burger. He didn't take another bite out of his.

"Clara helped you come to terms with that part of yourself?" Jenny asked quite seriously now.

"I suppose yes, she did, and she died."

"Oh, she died because she's a total cocky idiot," Jenny said, though she spoke in an odd way that was both sad yet fond, "Thought she'd try and be like the Doctor and did something reckless and heroic. She's so kind, but… misguided sometimes."

"She died _because_ she travelled with the Doctor?"

"Lots of people do. He's dangerous."

"Can I ask you a question?"

"Oh, sure," she said. He was worried he was going to be nosey and annoy her, but she smiled so warmly when she talked he didn't know _what_ kind of awful thing he would have to say to do that. He watched the scar on her thumb as she lifted her burger to take another bite from it, waiting for him to talk.

"You have a lot of guns," he said, "Does the Doctor not care? Does Clara not care?"

"Are you not a fan of guns?"

"I hate the things."

"There are a lot of things you can do with a gun that don't involve killing people. I have them for scare tactics," she shrugged, "If scare tactics don't work, you can hit people with them. Then if _that_ doesn't work, shoot them in the joints. I've never missed a shot my whole life."

"And does Miss Oswald not mind you using them?"

"Oh, she hates it. She's always like, 'Jen, don't keep your guns in my house,' and, 'Jen, why is there a hunting rifle under the bed?' and, 'Jen, would you stop cleaning your blood-caked, rusty metal spikes in the shower with my expensive soap I got on two-for-one in Lush?'" Jenny stopped speaking for a moment, and then she said something else in Polish, possibly because some of the kids now flocking into the room had started to take a keen interest in this unusual conversation they could overhear, " _I love her a lot, though. I'm lucky to have her and have her be so understanding_."

Tacitly agreeing with this decision to stop speaking so that they would be so easily understood by children who didn't have any business listening to this relatively private conversation, Matteusz resigned himself to answering Jenny in his native language.

" _Doesn't she ever mention being a teacher here?_ " he asked.

" _I never really ask_ ," she said, " _I always figure she'd just get sad if she talked about it, being a teacher was like, her dream job, and she can't do it anymore. What with the whole being-a-vampire-thing. It's not really very safe. You know, if you really like, you can talk to her. She's just at the other end of a phone. I'd take you all to visit, but it's a bit tricky going back-and-forth through the universes._ "

" _You don't need to do that, it'd probably be weird_ ," he said, though he appreciated the offer.

" _Are you sure? All she does is sit around all day in a bookshop, I'm sure she'll like the distraction_."

" _I_ -"

There was a ghastly, wailing scream, which cut through the idle chatter and the clinking of cutlery and plastic trays and rendered the whole canteen completely silent. There was a brief pause, and then Jenny dropped her food immediately and picked up her bag from the bench by her side. She jumped right over the table as she dashed towards the noise, and Matteusz was too stunned to follow for a moment. He did, though, albeit in a far less athletic way.

Jenny had vanished in the crowds, but Matteusz followed her by going in the opposite direction to the masses of children and teenagers coming towards him. They were all hurrying to get away from something quickly, and in Coal Hill, that something could be anything you could imagine. He broke through them all and stumbled when he did, and then it was just two more corners to go until he found what all the fuss was about.

There was a large group of familiar faces assembled already in one of the corridors lined with lockers; there was Jenny, obviously, and at the other, far end stood Quill and Tanya, with the Doctor and April right in the middle. They were all staring at an object lying on the floor. It had been April who had screamed, and even now she had a hand over her moth and was gawking at the gruesome thing.

It was a head. A decapitated head. And there it lay in a pool of some sort of noxious fluid that was bloody and gooey, skin hanging off its sallow face and milky-white eyes, lips pulled back to reveal black gums, hair matted and falling out in clumps. There was a little nest of maggots in one of the ears. April was horrified, as was Tanya, but Quill, Jenny and the Doctor merely looked perplexed. The Doctor even had his arms crossed, contemplating.

"What's happened here?" Quill asked.

"April told me she could smell something funny in the locker," said the Doctor, "Came to find me to get me to see if it was anything… _weird_. And look at that! A head! Not what you'd usually expect to find in a locker, I assume. It fell right out after I used the sonic screwdriver to open the door."

"It's amazing how they can keep finding more ways to make a mess even _after_ they die," Quill said, unsympathetic.

"You ought to learn better bedside manners."

"I think we're beyond the stage of bedside manners. Crematorium-side manners, maybe?" she suggested coldly.

"Oh my god, that's Josh Hart," Tanya exclaimed.

"What!?" the Doctor shouted, and then he made to pick it up.

"DON'T do that!" Jenny shouted right back at him, making him freeze. He met her eyes, like he was asking for permission to touch it. If he was, she didn't give it, "Leave it alone."

"But it's in Josh Hart's locker," said April, "That was why I went to get the Doctor, since he seemed so interested."

"Jenny-"

"Don't touch rotting heads," she said sharply at him again, and finally the Doctor withdrew, very sourly.

"Why would his head be in his own locker?" Matteusz asked.

"Yes, it's not normally within the behaviour of heads to open lockers and hide in them," Quill commented, "Why bring a head all the way here and stick it in a locker?" Jenny went and crouched down next to the head, the Doctor staying notably at bay as she did. "It's discoloured. On the cheek. Like it's been bitten by something venomous." There was some funny colouring, but Matteusz thought it just looked like a bruise. Then again, Matteusz didn't know anything about venomous bites.

"Venom? No way," said Jenny, "The head's been torn off the body, like by an animal. But then…" and now she touched the head, to her father's slight annoyance, to push it so that it rolled over onto its other side. Its mouth lolled open, bloated, dry tongue hanging out, and a fly flew out of its ear. She had clearly seen something, so the Doctor came to look over her shoulder.

"Are they-"

"Rattlesnake bites," she said.

"So I was right."

"It's another one of those animals, those hybrids," said the Doctor, "Has to be. A rattlesnake, crossed with… I don't know, a wolf? Lion?"

"How do you know it's a rattlesnake?" Tanya asked.

"When you live in the bayou for thirteen years, you learn what a rattlesnake bite looks like. Diamondback, to be precise," said Jenny, "First that monkey this morning, now a rattlesnake – they're not exactly animals native to the United Kingdom. The adder is the only venomous snake in England."

"Anything could come through the rift," said April.

"Didn't you say there was a break-in at the zoo?" the Doctor turned to ask her, and she faltered, "Was anything taken? Say, a monkey? A rattlesnake?"

"I don't really know, I just saw it in the paper, I didn't read the article," she said. Matteusz took out his phone to look up this recent incident at London Zoo.

"There's energy traces on those corpses," the Doctor said, "Evidence of advanced genetic tampering – they're combination creatures."

"Many animals were stolen," Matteusz said, reading from his phone, "From the zoo. But nothing large. A diamondback rattlesnake, a capuchin monkey, a vampire bat – the list is incomplete, though."

"Convenient," Quill muttered, "Maybe it's just this Hart boy. One of his 'creations' killed him. It's easy enough to believe."

"And then what? The monkey-fish tore his head off and put it in his own locker, do you think? No, no, no. This is strictly human. A cover-up attempt. What better place to put Josh Hart's head than Josh Hart's own locker? Like burying a body in their own garden; bury a body in _your own_ garden and you'll almost definitely take the blame for it if someone ever finds it. If someone put his head in their own locker, they'd be caught immediately. Imagine if you were a teenager," the Doctor began, then paused, "I suppose none of you lot do. Jenny, imagine if you were a teenager – or you, Quill, I know the Quill don't have much by way of childhoods, it's all 'time to eat your own siblings' and then 'time to eat your own mother' and then 'time to eat the bodies of your fallen enemies in combat.'"

"The Quill do not eat our fallen enemies," she argued, but he ignored her.

"Anyway. Adolescence. Picture it. You find a machine just lying there in your school – fallen through a rift in time and space, though you're not to know that – and you discover you can make fantastical creatures like pigeon-rats and monkey-fish and snake-dogs. Wouldn't you tell your friends? Find somebody to share it with?" he said.

"You think Josh Hart's friend killed him? Wouldn't it be easier if it was one of his enemies?"

"A boy like Josh Hart? Inconsequential? Nobody notices when he's gone? No. Anyone who 'deserves' death would probably have quite the reputation, not an anonymous average-achiever like him," the Doctor explained, pulling something out of his pocket. It was that same, crumpled missing poster, "Time to ring the phone number on here, I think. We've got some information about Josh Hart's whereabouts, after all."

"That's the number of his parents, are you crazy? You can't ring that!" Tanya protested. He couldn't ring it, anyway, because he didn't have a phone. He had to ask his daughter for hers. Jenny gave it up to him, and he frowned when he saw the screen.

"Your girlfriend says she loves you," he said.

"Does she?" Jenny smiled, "Aww…"

The Doctor then dialled the number on the poster, put the phone on speaker, and held it out for them all to gather around, and listen. It rang for a whole thirty seconds before cutting to the answerphone.

" _This is the Vanderbilt residence_ ," said a sleek, posh, female voice, " _We can't take your call right now, so leave a message and our butler will get back to you_." It ended. The Doctor hung up without leaving a message, and gave Jenny her phone back.

"Nicholas Vanderbilt," Tanya said, "That's whose house that was."

"Who might he be?" Jenny asked.

"He's in Year 11," April explained, "Rich, poncey – and always hanging around with Josh Hart."


	76. How to Become a Mad Scientist

_How to Become a Mad Scientist_

 _Ram Singh_

Out of all of them, Ram was the only one who knew how drive and who had a car. That meant it became _his_ job to drive the Doctor and his daughter all the way out to Nicholas Vanderbilt's house. He didn't even _like_ Nicholas Vanderbilt; Ram kind of thought Nicholas Vanderbilt was a rich little shit. So it was him in the front of the car, the Doctor in the passenger seat, and Jenny and Tanya in the back. Nicholas hadn't been in school, and hadn't called in sick, so they were left on a bit of a manhunt.

"Maybe I won't get a staff," Jenny said thoughtfully, watching out of the window in the seat diagonally behind her father, behind Ram. It was hellish driving in the entrails of that hurricane, but it was a whole lot better than walking. The roads were full and traffic was bad; cars had been diverted after a telephone pole had been blown over by the wind and blocked off a whole street elsewhere. So they were just sat around in the bad weather waiting for the emergency traffic lights to let them move, despite Jenny's persistent advice that he should just drive on the pavement.

"Really?" the Doctor asked her. Ram couldn't tell if the Doctor was interested in what she was saying or not, they were both quite absent as they talked to one another.

"Yeah, what about a longbow? I'm good with a bow, and you can recycle arrows like you can recycle Emmett's spikes," she said.

"Who's Emmett?" Ram asked, interrupting them.

"One of my guns."

"You name your guns?" he puzzled, watching her in the wing-mirror. Tanya was slouched down against the door watching the rain pour down. It was impossible to see out of those windows, and he had the windscreen wipers going on max.

"Of course I do," she said.

"Oswin thinks it's weird," the Doctor commented.

"What do I care about what _Oswin_ thinks is weird? Oswin wouldn't know weird if it chopped off her other leg," she said, bored. Ram flinched, and met Tanya's eyes in the rear-view mirror. Tanya hadn't really been listening much until Jenny made that remark.

"Why do you say that?" Tanya asked as the lights switched to yellow so Ram changed the gears and prepared to drive off.

"Say what?" Jenny, oblivious, asked.

"About her leg getting chopped off." The car began to move again.

Jenny frowned, "Because she only has one leg, that's why."

"Yes, well, I suppose if one tries to kill themselves with a large bomb, one has to deal with the consequences," the Doctor said dryly, "She has an excellent talent for sucking all the life out of the room."

"I'll tell her you said that?" Jenny suggested.

"What? No!" he protested.

"Well don't say it then! She doesn't suck the life out of a room," Jenny defended this Oswin, "And besides, she's your sister-in-law."

"Miss Oswald had a sister?" Ram asked quickly, spotting Tanya roll her eyes as he drove. Truth be told, he was a little distracted by thoughts of Miss Oswald's sister now.

"No, not really," the Doctor said, "It's complicated, they're more… clones. There's a lot of them."

" _Clones?_ As in, identical?"

"Pick your jaw up off the floor, Ram," Tanya told him, "Eyes on the road. You have a girlfriend." Ram scowled and carried on driving.

"Why were you asking about her legs, anyway? Does Ram have a keen interest in Clara's legs?" Jenny asked wryly, and he felt his face go hot and he did not answer. He'd been fifteen when Clara Oswald had still been teaching at Coal Hill, and teenage boys had certain… wandering thoughts. And wandering eyes. And wandering hands, upon occasion.

"The Shadow Kin chopped it off," he said.

"You see, Jenny? Swords: dangerous," the Doctor told his daughter sharply.

"Then you gave me this weird robot leg, from the future or something," Ram said, "Makes me shit at football."

"I used to have a robot hand," Jenny said, "It was pretty good at punching things. And robot eyes, too, after Oswin gouged them out. Have either of you seen _Alien_?"

Ram said, "Yeah," when Tanya said, "My mum won't let me." Ram added, "What about _Alien_?"

"One of them got me, their facehuggers, in another universe. Like how we're in the Betaverse now; that one's called the Etaverse. Oswin calls it. Anyway, their acid blood got in my eyes, and it was right after I regenerated. Everyone's all, 'use your excess regeneration energy, Jenny!' as if I even _have_ excess regeneration energy."

"And I thought _we_ had weird lives…" Tanya said. Jenny laughed. "You talk about this Oswin a lot."

"That's-"

"That's because she fancies her," the Doctor cut her off. She went red.

"I do not!"

"Oh, please, everybody knows you do."

"I have a girlfriend."

"Yes, a girlfriend who looks _exactly like her_ ," he said. Jenny looked like she wanted to continue this, but realised at the last moment that he was only teasing her. She shut up, and he looked smug, leaving her a bit miffed. Sounded like a lot of dirty laundry that didn't need bringing up, Ram thought to himself as he turned a corner in the car. _Complicated_ dirty laundry. And really, he wasn't all that interested. He had enough to worry about in his own life without listening to this too.

"I think it's this street," Tanya said. Quill had retrieved the Vanderbilt address from the Coal Hill system, and Tanya had been sat giving Ram directions via Google Maps in the backseat for the last half-hour they'd been crawling around suburban London in a typhoon.

"This isn't a street, this is their own personal driveway," Ram said, staring around. It was a mansion, a huge mansion right there in _London_ of all places. "He lives in Wayne Manor but he comes to a comprehensive school, why's that?"

"Does Coal Hill have a good reputation?" the Doctor suggested as a reason for Nicholas Vanderbilt's place of education.

"No," Ram answered.

"Kids keep going missing and dying," Tanya said. They drove right up to it, the gates wide open and the drive empty of all vehicles. As the house grew on the horizon, it became more apparent that there was something amiss with this fancy place. He drove them all the way up to the door so that they'd hardly have to walk, but going out into the weather was still unpleasant enough. He had half a mind to just stay in the car, if he wasn't interested in what was going on. Jenny and the Doctor didn't appear to mind the rain that much.

"Imagine living in a house that big – what do you think they do with all those rooms?" Tanya asked him.

"Swimming pool!" the Doctor declared excitedly, "Perhaps they have a swimming pool? I've got a swimming pool. And a library, a huge one, and a greenhouse. And this one has been trying her luck trying to get a gym built."

"It has been built, thanks very much," Jenny quipped at him, "It's great. You know Helix's handset was originally a VR games console? I made it make some holograms for me to swordfight with."

"I'm glad you're amused," he said, walking up to the front door. It was large, oak, engraved, had a fancy door knocker that looked like the head of a lion. Just the type of gaudy crap Ram expected from a house belonging to a family called _Vanderbilt_. They even had their name on a big, gold sign on top, but it was grimy and had been battered badly in the weather. He took some pleasure seeing that. The Doctor knocked on the door. Ram wished he'd brought a coat with him.

When no-one answered the third time the Doctor knocked, he just got out his weird-looking screwdriver with its green light and waved it like a magic wand at the lock while it buzzed. Then he tried the door himself, and found he couldn't open it.

"Put your back into it," Jenny said, smirking.

"You try, then, there's something the matter with it."

"Maybe if you got a screwdriver that works on wood…" she said, a joke Ram didn't understand. But the Doctor stepped aside and let his daughter try her hand; she tried the door normally, then tried to force it with her shoulder. Ram thought this was kind of funny, being as she was – what? Five feet tall? Something like that? Tiny. "It's barricaded."

"So, what do we do? Leave?" Tanya asked.

" _Leave_!?" they both exclaimed.

Jenny continued, "No, no, no. You think I was admitted into the Blacklight Society because I just walk away at every barricaded door, or safe, or elaborate laser-tripwire system? The day I was born I did twenty somersaults over a bunch of explosive laser-tripwires."

"What's a 'blacklight society'?"

" _The_ Blacklight Society," the Doctor told him a little quietly, "It's an infamous thieves' guild."

"They prefer the word 'prestigious'," Jenny said, standing back and glancing around the house as though she was scouting it. She probably was. "Anyway, _I_ am a _master_ at infiltration. This will be easy." And then she just wall-ran up the front door and grabbed onto the lintel above. She scaled it with an ease Ram thought impossible, like something out of _Assassin's Creed_ , hanging off the window ledges and jumping to the next ones until she found an open window she must have spotted from the ground. Who'd leave their window open in this hurricane, he wondered?

"That's great, but how do _we_ get in there? This house is freaky, will she be alright on her own?" Ram asked.

"Jenny will be fine on her own," the Doctor said, "She can take care of herself."

"Why'd you come here with her, then?" Tanya asked.

"Because, I…" he began, thinking about what he was going to say, "I haven't been a particularly good father until very recently, and I enjoy spending time with my daughter now that she lets me." They were distracted when a rope was thrown out of the upper window Jenny Young had just climbed into. "Lightest first, then?" the Doctor said, looking at Tanya.

" _Me_? I don't know how to climb up a rope," she said.

"It's easy," Ram said.

"Says the athlete."

Ram shrugged, "I'll catch you if you fall."

"You'd better…" she said, approaching the rope Jenny had dropped very guardedly. In the end, it was a lot less of Tanya climbing the rope and more Jenny pulling the rope until she could haul the girl through the window herself, and then Ram went up second and the Doctor last of all.

It was a new kind of hell they were dragged into. He had never seen anything like the mess they found in the Vanderbilt house. It was appalling, a real shit-show, the walls all filthy with mould crawling across the ceiling, wallpaper peeling down to reveal old, wooden walls full of rotten splinters. It reeked, too, like the entire place was festering, which it very well could be.

"Eurgh, this is rancid," said Tanya. It was a bedroom, the bed unmade like it had been recently slept in, though the sheets were stained and dirty, all the other windows blocked off by planks of wood. Did the Vanderbilts really live here? Maybe they'd abandoned it and the house had become a squat for homeless people.

"And that's not all," Jenny said, motioning to the door as she wound her rope back up to put in her bag. The door had about twenty different locks and bolts on it to keep it tightly sealed, all kinds of mechanisms in place to stop that door from being opened easily.

"Has this kid been locking people in his room?" Ram asked.

"Of course not," Jenny said, "All those locks open from in here. And the window's not blocked. He's not trying to keep himself in, he's trying to keep something else _out_."

"Like whatever killed Josh Hart…" Tanya realised.

"Tell you what, though, those locks aren't very strong," she said. Ram was about to ask how she knew, because they looked plenty strong to him, when she continued, "You've just got to get in the right place…" Then she lifted her leg up and kicked it dead-centre, hard, and all the locks broke, chains and screws torn off, and the door slammed open with a dent in it the shape of a small, girlish foot.

An even greater stench hit them from the rest of the house, wafting from the other rooms and the hallway. The room they were in led into a corridor, another boarded up window at one end. All the other doors were pulled off their hinges, leaving the space open and practically breathing with its stink. It was like death and excretions, all mixed together, and Ram didn't even want to know what had been going on in there. Surely the kind of people who paid for a gold-plated plaque with an engraving of their name to go above the door wouldn't let their house deteriorate to this level? It was dark, too, hardly any sunlight getting in through more and more boarded up, moulding windows, the air full of dust and the coatings of filth from the floors kicked up and floating. Ram coughed and felt like he might be sick just being in there; the hurricane continued to batter the house from outside.

"God, can they not afford a maid?" Tanya asked, gawking around. The floor, Ram was sure, was covered in faeces, all types of it. It was permanently damp and he was worried he was going to damage his lungs just by breathing in that hovel. There was straw down there, too, straw and all kinds of putrid footprints that definitely didn't just belong to a human.

"It's definitely a fixer-upper," the Doctor said, holding a hand across his mouth and nose for a second. Then out of his pocket he pulled a torch – an industrial type of thing much too large to ordinarily fit in his pockets, just like the kinds of huge objects Jenny kept pulling out of her really very small shoulder bag.

They heard noise from downstairs. Movement, grunting.

"If Nicholas is the one who made those things, then what if he's keeping them in the house?" Tanya asked in a whisper.

"What gave it away? All the animal shit on the floor, or are you psychic?" Ram quipped, and she gave him an annoyed look.

"April's not gonna kiss you for a week if you come back smelling like this," she retaliated, and then Jenny made a start, getting distracted from where she had been crouched down and looking at the floor while desperately trying to keep the hem of her fancy coat from getting shit on it.

"You and April are going out!?"

"Yes, she wouldn't stop talking about it early," the Doctor affirmed, "Seems quite happy."

"Aww, cute. Young love," Jenny said, "God, I don't even think I fancied anybody else until I was in my forties."

"Your _forties_?" Tanya asked her, "How old are you?"

"208," she said. Ram couldn't even imagine living to be two-hundred years old.

The noises downstairs continued. Something was definitely moving around, and it sounded like something big. And because the Doctor and his daughter were clearly mental, or something, they decided that the best course of action was to follow this weird noises. So they crept down mucky, slimy, creaking stairs, everything bloated and rotten, like the house was itself a corpse. If they pried beneath the surface, all sorts of horrors were going to start crawling out, like maggots from a wound. Like maggots from the wounds on the sides of Josh Hart's decapitated head. Ram was beginning to really hate maggots.

"What's _this_?" Tanya picked something up from on top of a cabinet when they got downstairs. It was dirty, and initially Ram went to swat it out of her hand, until she opened it and revealed it was some kind of notebook. A notebook full of writing.

"Looks to me like some conveniently placed plot exposition," the Doctor commented, but nobody else heard him as Tanya began to skim the pages looking for anything useful. Ram found himself walking almost on tip-toes, like that would help limit the grossness he was coming into contact with.

He found it unusual that all the furniture was still there. Chairs, bookshelves, a _piano_ of all things – they still sat around the fancy room in the entrance hall of that mansion. Well, they were pushed up against the front door to create a barricade, but nobody had cleared them out. What had happened to the Vanderbilts? They were rich arseholes, but he didn't think he wanted them to _die_.

"Oh my god, this is a journal of his… experiments," Tanya said, "Doctor, there's a drawing of something here." She held up the yellow, soiled pages for his eyes to see; it was an ink drawing clearly done with a fountain pen by somebody with a talent for artistry, and it showed some sort of technologically advanced device Ram couldn't begin to describe.

"Uh-oh," he said, "That's trouble."

"What is it?" Jenny asked. The noises they kept hearing were increasing in volume and tenacity, and coming from one of the rooms just off the one they were in now. They couldn't be Nicholas, could they? Maybe this was _all_ him. Maybe there were no more weird monsters. Maybe it was just a stray dog and a rattlesnake that had killed Josh Hart, albeit an unusually aggressive dog.

"Another SAI*, but it has a component missing, I'm sure. It's been bashed around coming through the rift, damaged," he said, looking at the drawing.

"What's an S-A-I?" Ram queried.

"Oh, sorry; Shape Alteration Inducer. Makes people shapeshift, most often unwillingly, but it can do other things, too. It's highly radioactive – you see, if only I had a Geiger counter with me. I've never been good at smelling radiation on things," he said, "I need to run more basic tests on things… could've figured this all out sooner if I'd just checked if those corpses were irradiated!"

"Well, this is why everybody says you're an idiot, father," Jenny said. He grumbled something incoherent and she didn't rise to it.

"It's got stuff in here about Josh's death," Tanya said, "' _The Hybridifier_ -' that's what he calls the device – ' _has claimed its next victim after the deaths of Mr Snuggles and Bernard. Now my only friend failed to share the joys of my creations as well, and Scrappy tried to eat him._ ' Then he drew a picture of a guinea pig and a dog – I guess that's Mr Snuggles and Bernard…"

"What a sicko – he's been feeding his own pets to these things?"

"They're his pets, too," Jenny said, "So Scrappy is the one we have to look out for."

"Nice name for a monster," the Doctor said. Ram was pretty sure that this 'Scrappy' was the thing pawing around in the next room, and after both Tanya and Jenny spoke its name quite loudly there was a smashing sound against a set of double doors which were nailed shut with a plank of wood.

"He's crazy," Tanya said, then she carried on reading from Nicholas' journal, "' _I hate to do it, but I have to get rid of Josh's body somehow, and the butchers are getting suspicious of me buying so much meat, not to mention my parents. Not that they care what I'm buying when they've been in Morocco for three months. But Scrappy won't eat the heads. I've had to take his head and put it in his locker – a good thing I found his key down in the den. I need to stop going down there, it's hard climbing back out every time I do_.'"

"There's a way in from above?" Jenny asked. This Scrappy sounded like it was throwing itself at the wall. "Let's see if we can't get a look at-" This Scrappy _had_ been throwing itself at the wall. And the door. And it was heavy, and strong, and the door – despite the plants of wood nailed across it to prevent exactly this kind of 'security breach' – splintered. They didn't have to go and find a way in from above, in the end.

He didn't know how he would describe it other than as a monster. Tanya screamed. Ram might have screamed a bit, too, but later on he would plead with Tanya not to tell April that. It crashed out and came barrelling towards the four of them; Ram and Tanya both made for the stairs, while Jenny and the Doctor both dodged out of the way, the former doing a very spy, evasive roll. For once, she didn't have a gun out. Not that Ram saw. And _then_ the thing – Scrappy – _mooed_. He'd never been scared of something that went moo before. Living in suburban London, Ram didn't see an awful lot of cows, and he wasn't sure Scrappy counted. It was only _part_ cow, after all.

"What _is_ that!?" he wanted to know, and the creature rolled its head to look at him. It was probably the most horrifying thing he'd ever seen in his life. There was a cow, or it had the body and most of the head of a cow, until its jaws morphed into those of a savage wolf with long, sharp, venom-soaked fangs. A rattling tail whipped around from side to side behind it, scales formed on its underbelly and udders until out of its sides sprouted eight huge, hairy legs like those of a tarantula.

It was going to charge at Ram until Jenny whistled and said desperately, "Here, boy!" How the hell had Nicholas Vanderbilt been controlling this thing? It was covered in blood and brutal viscera and turned its whole spidery form towards the Doctor's daughter instead, while Ram and Tanya retreated further up the stairs.

"I don't think that was a very good idea," Ram said.

It went for her. The room they were in was really not all that big, even if it _was_ a millionaire's mansion, and that thing could move _fast_ and had already killed Josh Hart and who knew how many other innocent pets? But it wasn't banking on Jenny, who did another of those trick rolls to get out of its way. It made to bite the space in the air where she had been, but ended up pulling itself onto the wall instead. Its spider-legs enabled it to walk on the walls, and then it jumped down from above the door where it hung, its tail slashing around, and tried to get at her again.

She joined Ram and Tanya on the stairs, Ram and Tanya who quickly began to run in a different direction as Scrappy gave immediate pursuit, crawling along the wall. All this while he wanted to know what the hell the Doctor was going to do about all this. Then Jenny shouted, "Catch!" at him, and threw that circular shoulder bag towards him. The brown leather disc whirled towards him in the air while she was preoccupied with keeping Scrappy's attention, Ram and Tanya still retreating. Now the Doctor was fumbling with the bag. Jenny was on the landing above now.

"What do you want me to get out of this bag!?"

"Any weapon!" she shouted at him, "And hurry up!" Scrappy jumped with the power of all eight of its horrible legs, and Jenny only had a second to jump herself, jump onto the thin, wooden railing of the balcony, which immediately snapped under her weight. She didn't expect this, didn't count on it, and so Jenny tripped and fumbled in mid-air, lunging for the ornate chandelier that hung above the room. But she missed, she fell. Scrappy collided with this chandelier and dust fell from the ceiling under this weight. When Jenny hit the ground she rolled quite easily and took just a second to regain her balance.

"Didn't you say your fencing has been coming along!?"

"What!?" And he threw something. Her eyes widened, barely prepared, and she stepped out of the way while Scrappy struggled to get a grip on the chandelier above them. Plaster dust fell, the ceiling began to crack, this thing that the Doctor had thrown ended up wedged in part of one of the bookshelves behind Jenny's head. Ram saw that it was a sword. Could she really manage to swordfight with her hand the way it was? It didn't matter because she grabbed it anyway.

"Is that a cutlass? Like pirates use?" Tanya asked. Ram didn't answer because he didn't know, and he was distracted by this sword suddenly lighting up bright orange along one of its edges. Molten-hot metal as Scrappy finally got the clue that it shouldn't stay clinging to that fragile chandelier for much longer. A few more seconds and it may have fallen and crushed Jenny. Scrappy leapt down from it, falling through the air.

It was all over in a moment. Jenny didn't need to use whatever these fencing-talents of hers were, because she just held out her arm, stepped back, and let Scrappy impale its own vicious, rabid, snakelike head on the white-hot blade of whatever weird sword she'd been keeping in her bag. She let go of the hilt and let Scrappy fall, and for a few seconds the beast writhed, making terrible noises, the sword burning up from the bottom of its jaw through its brain. The red-hot tip stuck out of the roof of its nose, yet it wasn't dead, just unable to bite and not possessing claws with which to tear.

It was just about to start to come at Jenny again, in spite of its injury, when its dabbling with the chandelier finally came to bite it. There was a tearing sound as the entire thing came crashing down from above. If Scrappy hadn't been dead before, it was certainly dead five seconds later, when the sharp shards of about a hundred broken lightbulbs and ornate, metal fixtures pierced it all over. It was left with its legs stabbed into the wooden floor like a pinned-up, dead butterfly left on show in a collector's cabinet. But it was smellier, and had more blood. When Scrappy went limp, the Vanderbilt house became quiet.

"…I suppose Nicholas isn't in, then…" Ram said eventually.

"You threw a sword at my head!" Jenny exclaimed, ignoring Ram.

"I threw it _to_ you! You were meant to catch it!" he argued. She glared. "Are you accusing me of trying to kill you now?" She realised how stupid that sounded.

"Well I'm not getting it back," she said, looking at scrappy, "The chandelier broke the hilt off where the power supply comes from. To think, I kind of liked that heat cutlass… hadn't thought of a name for it yet…"

"What about Iveanne?"

"Ha, ha." Ram got the feeling he was listening to a string of inside-jokes.

"What about Nicholas, though? Who we actually came here to get?" Ram persisted. The pair of them thought this over.

Jenny asked Tanya, "What's the latest entry in that journal?" and Tanya quickly flipped through to the end.

"It's from… shit, it's just from this morning."

"Oi! Watch your language. Who taught you to swear?" Jenny told her off.

"Sorry… um… this morning, he wrote something about… there not being any point to life."

"Typical teenager," the Doctor commented.

"Saying he doesn't want to go on like this."

"Again, typical teenager."

"And then he says he's going to hybridise himself and become his own ' _magnum opus_ monstrous creation.'"

"Like I said. A typical teenager."

* _The SAI first appears in Chapter 500, "The Case of the Ambiguous Isotope," and again in the short-stories in Chapters 617-630, then Oswin says she destroyed in Chapter 918 for it being too dangerous_


	77. Yet Another Human Centipede

**AN: I know, I said I'd update on Wednesdays, I'm totally awful. But basically I spend all of yesterday out in Leeds and then went to see All Time Low, my absolute faves, in the evening and didn't get back until midnight.**

 _Yet Another Human Centipede_

 _Miss Quill_

"This is pathetic. How old are you? Sixteen?"

"Eleven, miss."

"Eleven years old and you don't even know how to solve the hydrogen atom by path integral methods? Why do I even waste my time with you germs?" Quill said to the child, then she picked up the doodled-on piece of paper she'd been ridiculing and tore it in half, then scrunched the two halves into balls and dropped them onto the floor. "And now you're littering."

"But _you_ did that!" the girl protested.

"Did what? I'm sorry, are you accusing me of vandalising school property? I don't think anybody else in this room would back you up on that, would they?" Quill glanced around at the faces of two-dozen terrified Year 7s. "Detention, every day next week, and I want a thousand words on why Feynman _couldn't_ solve the hydrogen atom. And don't even think about answering me back in that insolent way you people have a habit of doing. It'll only make the outcome of this little encounter far more unpleasant for both of us." And the girl, who had a bit of an attitude problem, gave up and sat down with a grimace on her face. It was a good thing she _did_ have an attitude problem, too. Some of these runts would cry when Quill told them off. _You would have been eaten alive in the nest if you were a Quill_ , she wanted to tell them.

Quill skulked away through the rows of desks to get back to her own at the front of the room, where she sat back down and lifted her mug to her lips. It was empty, and it took all her willpower not to break the ceramic handle apart with frustration. Tea was sometimes the only thing that helped her get through the day, and what a day it had been. A perfectly ordinary one. How dreadful.

The day was just set to get even more like every typical day at Coal Hill Academy, too, when for the second time in the last two hours she heard screams wailing from somewhere deeper into the building than her Physics classroom. Everyone looked up and towards the door, Quill having to remove her eyes from her tablet. What could possibly be so important that it had interrupted her looking at muted videos of kittens on the internet? Despicable. She wouldn't stand for it. So she did what any responsible teacher would do, and slammed down her mug, storming out of the room and leaving her class completely unsupervised.

Most people were in lessons, and they were so accustomed to the goings-on at Coal Hill that when people outside started screaming, the children were under strict instructions _not_ to leave their classrooms. So it was just a few stray kids – skivers and older ones with free periods or little ones on toilet breaks – running towards Quill. Wasn't the Doctor supposed to be dealing things, under his guise of being an exterminator? Why should _she_ still be cleaning up peoples' messes?

"Typical," she muttered to herself, "Leave everything to Quill to sort out, because Quill will sort out everything, won't she? The national debt, just ask Quill. Conflict in the Middle East, Quill will know what to do. How about solving world hunger, Quill?" she continued to talk to herself like this as she walked, going the reverse direction to the fleeing kids, weapon-less and almost defenceless.

"Were you just talking to yourself?" Her speaking-aloud of her internal monologue was interrupted by April MacLean arriving from some other part of the school, meeting her at a cross-section of locker-lined corridors. Quill glared at her, not answering. "Did you hear the screams?"

"No, I just abandoned my class and went for a walk in the opposite direction to all these terrified students because I got bored," she said sarcastically.

"You _do_ do that sometimes, though," April pointed out.

Quill was just about to think of something terribly witty and sharp to say to April in response, but a cacophonous and monstrous shriek ripped the air to pieces and made April clutch at her ears to try and block it out.

"What the hell was that!?" April exclaimed. Quill didn't know, so she didn't answer again, just started to move towards it.

"Where's Charlie?" she asked, "Somebody find that royal pain and drag him here so that he can get threatened."

"We were revising in our free period, but he and Matteusz left to go to the toilet nearly half an hour ago and haven't come back yet," April said, perplexed. Quill stopped walking and looked at her, long and hard. "What?" Quill rolled her eyes.

"Your naivety would be cute if it wasn't so embarrassing."

"I'm not naïve!" she argued.

"Shh," Quill hissed when she heard a noise around the corner. April did shush, and Quill approached very carefully, and what she saw was ghastly even for _her_ seasoned, warrior's eyes.

She didn't know what kind of creature they were looking at, but it looked like a complicated amalgam of a whole bunch of other things which, going by what she had heard so far of the Doctor's involvement with the school, was probably accurate. There was its torso, that of a man, or more a boy, which was growing emaciated and dirty and had a sparse, thin coating of dark grey hairs. This body changed colour, grew darker and shinier. Halfway down he switched from being a vertebrate to an _in_ vertebrate, an exoskeleton growing on the lower half of his body with dozens of longish, insectoid legs sticking out of it, this whole part elongating and replacing his legs fully. But it wasn't just a half-boy, half-centipede, it also had enormous, leathery wings ripping through its malnourished skin and unfurling. It was sitting somewhat proudly in a mess of dead bodies – recently killed kids.

"Oh, this isn't good," Quill said. Another time when her bad habit of talking to herself got them into trouble. It looked around at them and they saw the snout and muzzle of a vampire bet set into a once-human face; it had been chewing on a torn-off piece of flesh from one of the recently deceased at its feet. All of its many, _many_ feet. Again they heard that shriek, coming from the mouth of this horrid creature.

"Nicholas?" April asked, shocked, her eyes glued to this horror, and it froze, like it knew her. When April recognised it, Quill strained her memory and managed to place it, too. Here he was, Nicholas Vanderbilt, indirect murderer of Josh Hart. April only had it subdued for a moment, though, because then it roared again and spat blood and chunks of meat at them.

"Run, _run_!" Quill said, having to drag April's arm in order to tear her eyes away from the mutated fiend Nicholas had become, "I don't think we have much chance of saving Nicky anymore!"

But it gave hot pursuit, of course it did. With its many legs combined with its wings it was a fast-moving terror to be reckoned with, leaping between the walls and the floor and the ceiling, going around in a corkscrew as Quill and April ran in the opposite direction. It kept shrieking at them as it went, a noise that was only partially that of a bat, the rest of it sounding like a human in a great deal of pain. Maybe he _was_ in pain. Or maybe he hardly knew what pain was anymore.

Glancing behind her, rounding a corner, Quill flat-out collided with somebody else.

"What's going on here?" asked Charlie, for that was whom she had very nearly knocked to the ground. He and Matteusz were – and no, she wasn't being hyperbolic – walking out of the gents' toilet.

"The pair of you are absolutely deplorable," Quill shook her head. Could have sworn she saw Matteusz trying to _discreetly_ zip up his fly, but discretion wasn't the boy's best quality. Still, she tried her damnedest to ignore what she saw, and what she knew had been going on between them.

Nicholas threw himself around the corner and crashed to the floor and wailed at them again, and she heard Matteusz swear in Polish out of a gut reaction to the sight of the thing.

"It's threatening you, I can fight it," Quill declared to Charlie.

"No, I don't think so," Charlie said, and then he began to run off following Matteusz and April, and Quill had to go with them because of that blasted Arn in her skull. Had to stay near Charlie to protect him.

They burst out of the maze of identical corridors into the brightly-lit entrance hall of Coal Hill, next to the memorial board of the dead and near the doors outside. Maybe if they went outside it would get taken away by the hurricane? Quill glanced towards the windows to see if that was a possibility. Maybe it was, but she became immediately preoccupied when she saw something she wouldn't think was a possibility in a million years: Ram's car hurtling towards the doors, people inside clearly shouting at each other, coming straight for them.

"Uh-oh," she said, "Get out of the way!"

She didn't know who was driving, but would bet all the Earth-money she had (which wasn't much, but still) on the reckless driver being a Time Lord rather than a human. The car shattered the glass doors and some of the windows, letting the full brunt of the hurricane into the school and blowing glass dust and shards around them.

The car stopped for a brief second when it had broken half the school, and Ram and Tanya within took this opportunity to get out of the way, rolling out of the backdoors.

"My dad's gonna kill me!" Ram protested when he saw the state the car was in now.

"I think _he's_ going to kill us all first," April said, pointing out Nicholas Vanderbilt's terrible form to them all, as the thing continued its rampage through the school to try and get its savage hands on anything it could eat. When Quill saw the Doctor get out of the driver's side door, she knew she had been right about the reckless driving. "What did you find at his house?"

"The two of you stink," Quill told both Tanya and Ram.

"Oi! We killed your favourite pet!" the Doctor shouted at Vanderbilt, who was taking advantage of the fresh, open spaces of this room to stretch his vampire-bat wings and fly around. He turned to his daughter, "I'll tell you something, breaking into a school by driving a car through the doors and having to fight a huge bat-monster brings back memories."

"Memories!?" Jenny exclaimed.

"Cut the nostalgia talk and find a way to kill it!" Quill shouted at the both of them.

"I don't know how to kill it! This time I don't have a large and convenient stash of explosive kitchen oil and a robot-dog-martyr to distract it and set off a bomb!" the Doctor argued. It was Quill, though, that Vanderbilt seemed to take a keener dislike to. Which she expected. Most people took a keen dislike to her.

"Get back, get back!" she waved her arms at the five kids surrounding her, shepherding them further up the stairs to the first floor while she remained, balled her hand into a fist, and connected her knuckles with Nicholas's animal face. She'd never sucker-punched a creature like that before, as it flew haphazardly towards her, but there was a first time for everything. And she was far stronger than she looked. After all, she had been the commander of the entire Quill army.

"I guess I'll use my last resort, then?" Jenny spoke to her father as Vanderbilt went spiralling towards the ground. The Doctor didn't seem to know what his daughter's last resort was, not until she pulled a plasma blaster from a few thousand years in the future out of her coat pocket, and slid a green-glowing cartridge into it.

"What are you doing! You can't shoot him!" the Doctor protested

"Shoot him already!" Quill yelled back. And Jenny did. She let it charge up to its maximum power and then shot a blast of green energy directly at Nicholas Vanderbilt's head, and hit him. Clearly this thing had been modified, because rather than just blow up his head like Quill was used to seeing plasma guns do, within a few seconds Vanderbilt had frozen and disintegrated into a pile of ash on the floor. Ash that was very quickly blown away by the power of the hurricane.

"You didn't need to do that," the Doctor said.

"Oh my god, are you an idiot? Yes, I did, because _you_ said the SAI was beyond repair when we scrounged it out of the cellar of that house and then _you_ set it to detonate in that mansion and take any trace of Nicholas's experiments with it," she told him.

"It's true, you did say that," Ram added.

"See?" Jenny indicated him, "You think I like shooting sixteen-year-old boys in the head now? Even Oswin can't reverse those sorts of changes, you know if she did she'd have found a way to fix Clara's vampirism by now. You killed a lizard with a roller coaster last week!" That shut him up alright. "You keep boasting about it. Ram and Tanya have already heard that story twice."

"That's true as well," Tanya said, both of them taking Jenny's side. It seemed Jenny's side was the correct one, and Quill had to agree. Then again, Quill didn't feel remorse about killing people, really. She was beyond caring.

"At least the hurricane is taking care of the mess," she shrugged.

"Of course you have no empathy – maybe if his teachers had _noticed_ something was wrong-" the Doctor began.

"Oh yes, I'm very sorry, next time I shall be a might more careful to look for the signs that one of my worthless students is building monsters in his big house and killing his friends. What are those signs, again?" she asked him sarcastically.

"…What about my dad's car? You drove it through a door," Ram pointed out.

"Oh, right – do you have mobile banking on your phone?" the Doctor asked.

"Yeah." The Doctor approached them on the stairs then, holding out his hand to take Ram's phone. Somewhat reluctantly, Ram handed the phone over, and the Doctor pulled out his screwdriver and sonicked it for a few seconds. Then he passed it back to Ram and Ram nearly dropped it.

"It's boiling hot!"

"Yes, that usually happens when I add funds to peoples' bank accounts through their phones," he said, "It'll cool off in a moment. Five-thousand pounds will be enough to get the scratches buffed out, won't it?"

"You gave me _how much_?"

"My father doesn't have any conception of money," Jenny said, watching the ashes of Nicholas Vanderbilt blow away and mix with the glass dust from the broken window. Rain was now pouring in through the front. It was at this point that Dorothea Ames decided to make her appearance, walking into the scene from the door nobody ever used at the side of the stairs. It wasn't her office, but Quill didn't care enough to ask what she'd been doing in there.

"What's happened out here?" she asked.

"Nothing. Rats. Huge ones. Broke the windows," the Doctor said quickly.

"One of the children decided to mutate themselves into a bat-centipede… thing," Quill answered. Dorothea stared at her for just a second.

"Is it dealt with?"

"Mmm," Quill assured her, fake-smiling resentfully.

"And the rest of the 'rat problem'?"

"Oh yes."

"Charming. You'll be leaving then won't you, Doctor?" Dorothea turned to him.

"Sorry, what?" he asked, looking between her and Quill, "You're not…? Why did you tell her?" he asked Quill.

"She's the headmistress, it's her job to know," Quill shrugged. Quill thought Dorothea probably knew everything that had gone on that day anyway.

"I'll go and find somebody willing to repair those windows in this storm," she said pleasantly, "The Governors thank you for your help in the matter, Doctor. Jenny. I'll give you the professional courtesy of not charging you for the damages."

"I never told you my name," Jenny said.

"I should think not, a woman as famously elusive as yourself probably doesn't give her name to anyone, Major Young," Dorothea smiled. Jenny's jaw dropped, and then Dorothea was walking away.

"She's always like that," Quill said, "I suppose you get used to it."

"Another one who favours the use of guns," Matteusz grumbled. Jenny glanced at him. It was almost as though he was disappointed in her.

"I didn't have a choice. Ought I have flogged him to death?"

"Oh, no. The mess would have been awful," Quill said.

"Who is that woman?" the Doctor asked, Dorothea now gone prowling elsewhere.

"The new headmistress," Charlie said, "We haven't managed to find out what's the matter with her yet. Seems like a problem for a different Doctor. One who didn't crash a car through the lobby."

"Mmm. Perhaps. I suppose it is _his_ responsibility… we showed up here by accident, after all… intriguing, though. Let me know if you ever find out about her and her… _Governors_."

"You're a major?" Quill asked Jenny.

"I'm a lot of things," she answered cryptically, "Right now I'm at a loss as to understanding how this school works. How do you actually get qualifications and pass exams? Are you ever even _in_ lessons?"

"Of course, I never miss a lesson," Charlie said.

"Not even to have a quickie in the toilet?"

Matteusz went red. Charlie snapped, "Be quiet, Quill."

"What's a quickie?" the Doctor asked.

"Even _I_ know _that_ ," muttered Tanya.

"Ask your wife. I'm sure she'll show you," Jenny said, leaving him puzzled. No doubt he _was_ going to ask his wife. He was a buffoon.

"I think this is our cue to leave," the Doctor said finally, "Property damage is usually a sign I've outstayed my welcome."

"Sure," Jenny said offhandedly, thinking, "I just have to have a word with Matteusz about something. I'll be right with you…"


	78. No Such Thing as Accidental Infidelity

_No Such Thing as Accidental Infidelity_

 _Oswin_

"It's all a question of creating life, you know? And playing god. But what's the difference between playing god and becoming a god, really? What _is_ a 'god'? People will worship anything if it sparkles enough. But I'm getting ahead of myself – take Nios, for example; her creator abandoned all the synths, just made them and got bored, didn't even want anything to do with the sentient ones. Isn't that what god did to humanity? And is creating life _really_ 'playing god'? People create life all the time, does that make genitals some divine instrument? God makes people able to self-replicate and pisses off. But if you don't piss off, would that make you better than a god, or too weak to be one? Not that I want to be a god, let me get that clear, I can't think of anything _worse_ than so many people forcing all of their aspirations and hopes onto me. But if I made something then would I have to listen? You know, maybe I'm overthinking it. Maybe it's nothing more than having a pet. Or maybe the message of _Jurassic Park_ hasn't sunk in yet. You're a machine, what do _you_ think?"

" _I do not possess the capability of conscious thought, Miss Oswald_ ," Helix's cool voice answered Oswin's stream of thoughts she was saying out-loud. She never normally thought aloud, because her mouth couldn't keep up with her brain, but she was distracted doing something else and multi-tasking slowed these processes.

"I'm just not sure that creating consciousnesses is the thing I should be occupying my time with, you know?"

" _I do not know._ "

"Of course you don't…" she sighed. For a few moments only she went back to tinkering with a lot of little bits of gold-plated metal and clockwork, working through a magnifying glass. Then she resumed, "And if you create something that _can't_ ask you for things, what kind of servitude is that? Like I've built myself a slave. And that's not full-consciousness, so it's pointless, something that can't ever ask for anything and doesn't possess the ability of want. No offence."

" _I do not possess the capability of being offended_."

"I think the desire to want anything is what draws the line between consciousness or not. Every organic creature wants _something_ , even a fruit fly. It's a pretty typically-pathetic human thing to want something that never wants anything from you in return. And there it is again! Want! That's it, I think. It's want-plus-intelligence which equals… life. Organs are just, I don't know, icing on a cake that's already intricate enough without crap like bowel movements and burping."

"What is this, the smartest girl in the universe tackles human nature and religion?"

Oswin had been so preoccupied with watching her hands and speaking to Helix she hadn't heard the door to her laboratory above the console room slide open. Maybe she ought to make it ding, or something, whenever she had a guest. But this was a welcome guest, so she didn't mind – not that she had ever given Jenny a key. Who needed a key when they had a sonic screwdriver and a penchant for sneaking around, she wondered? She looked up from what she was doing and smiled.

"Hey!" she greeted Jenny brightly, "I've missed your ugly face showing up here unannounced while you've been off licking out that vampire of yours."

"Ugly!?" she exclaimed, ignoring basically everything else Oswin had just said. Probably on purpose.

"I'm kidding," she said, leaning on her elbows on the table towards Jenny, who stood with her arms crossed near the door. Then she made a show of eyeing Jenny up and said, "Everyone knows you're totally _tasty_."

"Wow, thanks."

"What brings you around these parts to see little old me, then? You're surely not just here to humour me by letting me think out loud at you?" she asked, Jenny walking over to come and stand next to her. Oswin was just smiling, watching her.

"I don't know, seems like a bit of privilege hearing your thoughts."

"Well I have some real gems sometimes, Jen – like, if I shagged your girlfriend, would it constitute masturbation?" she said mock-thoughtfully.

"You let me know when you reach a valid conclusion so I can take precautions to keep you well away from her. And _don't_ call me 'Jen'," Jenny said, pulling out the stool next to Oswin's at the bench and sitting down.

"You'll be so busy keeping me away from Ravenwood you'll forget to keep me away from you," she said.

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"That you swoon every time I walk into a room."

"I didn't think you did much _walking_ anywhere lately," Jenny said. Oswin fake-gasped and leant away from her.

"That was a bit harsh to come from your new regeneration! Aren't you supposed to be all docile and non-snarky these days?" Oswin asked her. She shrugged.

"Why? Was that mean? I'm sorry..."

Oswin laughed, "Cute. Really, though, what do you want?"

"Where's your boyfriend?"

"Just one teleport away if you try any funny business."

"Ha, ha."

"He's setting up an orphanage," Oswin said, and Jenny stared at her, "Yeah, I know. It's _so_ amazing. I think he might be the most pure-hearted person, like, ever. Next it'll be a school for gifted-yet-disadvantaged youth, or a hospice. Then again, having to date me seems like charity work sometimes. Maybe one day he'll make an honest woman out of me out of the goodness of his heart." Jenny seemed to kind of like hearing her say this stuff about Adam Mitchell. "What?"

"You have a healthy relationship, don't you?" she said.

"Yeah. Which always surprises everybody," Oswin said a little bitterly. She wondered if Jenny had just come there to talk to her. She could have done, she supposed. "Why?" Oswin turned back to her delicate tinkering through the magnifying glass. Her lab was full of all sorts of half-built, lazily constructed devices, a lot of which didn't have much purpose. But _this_ she was working on now? It _had_ purpose. Just not a name.

"Everyone thinks you're going to cheat on him with me."

Oswin raised her eyebrows but didn't look away from her work, "I'm not, so don't get your hopes up. I wonder what it is about Clara that they think is lacking in so much integrity? Whatever it is, it rubs off on me. Even when she and Jane Austen-"

" _What_ about Jane Austen?" Jenny asked sharply all of a sudden, taking Oswin by surprise.

"They, um… my, you're very out of the loop. Hasn't anyone caught you up on what you've missed? She had her fight with Rose. Two fights, actually, but the second was just an argument. Not the pummelling like the first one," Oswin said, "They all went crazy, you know? Because of this… Project Crystal thing. While most of you namby-pamby Time Lords were off feeling sorry for yourselves because you caught cold. I can't be bothered with it all now – but it was a drug that made Rose go completely off her tits and try to murder Clara, dragged her through all sorts of time periods. It just so happened that in one of them she ended up smack-bang in Jane Austen's bed."

"And what did Jane Austen do?" Jenny asked in a very serious way; Oswin was not used to Jenny growing so serious sometimes.

"Kissed her. Then Rose tried to strangle her. Your dad keeps taking the piss about it," Oswin laughed slightly, "Why? You know what Clara's like."

"What's Clara like?" she continued with her seriousness.

"A babe-magnet. Or chick-magnet. Whichever one sounds more sexist, I pick that one," she shrugged, "Don't _you_ start going on about how you think Ravenwood's going to cheat on you. She wouldn't do that in a million years – and the pair of you might _have_ a million years if you don't go crazy-paranoid on – fuck!"

"What?"

"I'm trying to solder this thing and you're distracting me because you're my pretty friend whose relationship I'm invested in," she muttered, changing the setting on the electronic magnifying glass so that it zoomed in much more than it had been before. "You need a surgeon's hands for this. And Flek told me after I did that enucleation on you I should never try and perform surgery."

"Well what is it? I'll try," Jenny offered, "I have more finesse than you, and I can't get distracted by myself." Oswin sat back and eyed her for a moment.

"You and your dodgy thumb?" she asked.

"Yes, my dodgy thumb. My dodgy thumb has more collective grace than your entire body – not that that's hard," she remarked.

"Ouch," said Oswin, and then she awkwardly got up and stood at the side of the stool, baying Jenny to retrieve her cane from the floor where it had fallen as she did, so that she could stay standing up with relative ease. Jenny shifted over after that and stole Oswin's stool. "So what you're doing is-"

"Literally connecting components to this very elegant and bendy circuit board you've managed to make," Jenny finished her sentence, "I have a degree in advanced mechanical engineering. I know how to solder."

"Wow. Now you've managed to turn me on."

"You were turned on anyway."

"But now it's worse," Oswin complained, leaning on the desk next to Jenny with one hand. She was right next to her, too, invading her space, but only because she wanted to keep a close eye on what Jenny and her weird thumb were doing to her creation.

"Speaking of Flek, didn't you say she was going to get me some sort of brace for my thumb the other night?"

"I did, in fact; I've been conferring with Martha about it, we had a video call yesterday," Oswin said, "It was a bit cute. Quaint. Anyway. You know braces? As in teeth braces?"

"Yes…?"

"Well, the thing about your thumb is – according to two very attractive medical professionals – it's wonky. Hasn't healed right. Something to do with the severity of the damage combined with you running off to Ravenwood's sex dungeon for two weeks where your rapid healing couldn't be tracked," Oswin talked as she kept a sharp watch on what Jenny was doing with the circuitry, ready to stop her if she made the slightest mistake, "So they've decided that your thumb needs to be forced back into place. As in re-breaking it." Jenny nearly dropped the soldering iron.

" _What_!?"

"Oi!" Oswin leant over and grabbed hold of her hands before she could do any damage to the circuitry, "What do you think you're doing!? That's a very sensitive nervous system you're fiddling with made out of wirelessly-transmitting local data-nodes!"

"I'm not having anybody break my thumb again!"

"Pay attention to what you're doing, would you? That's a living thing," Oswin snapped. Jenny frowned. Somebody else cleared their throat, and they both glanced over, Oswin still tightly gripping both of Jenny's hands to keep her from ruining all her careful crafting. Nios was over there; she'd just come in. Oswin really needed to sort out the security on her lab.

"Hi!" Jenny smiled.

"What's up?" Oswin asked.

"Were the two of you just kissing?"

" _Kissing_!?" they both exclaimed, "No!"

"Why are you wrapped around her?" Nios asked Oswin. It had barely even registered with her that she kind of _was_ wrapped around Jenny, holding her hands, having an argument with their noses barely two inches apart.

"She's damaging my circuits."

"I'm not going to damage them – let go of me."

"Do you promise to be careful?"

"I _was_ being careful until you said someone's going to try and break my thumb again," Jenny snapped. Oswin narrowed her eyes at Jenny for a few seconds, then relinquished her, moving back slightly.

Looking at Jenny's hands every few seconds, Oswin asked Nios, "Did you want something?"

"That depends on if I'm interrupting some sort of illicit, lovers' rendezvous," she said wryly.

"Ha, ha."

"You said you would lend me a book."

Oswin was confused now, and it took her a few moments to remember what this was all about. She realised with a sudden, " _Oh_ ," and then moved away from where Jenny was at the lab table, taking her cane and half-limping to the other side of the room, where she picked up a book.

"What book is it?" Jenny called over.

"Don't be nosey," Oswin said.

"It's her brother's book," Nios answered, Oswin rummaging around with all sorts of things on the desk until she pulled a copy of Fyn's book with its smooth, synthetic pages out from the refuse, throwing it to Nios. Nios caught it, but Oswin was a rubbish throw so it was pretty much a miracle that she managed to.

"I thought you don't like Fyn's book?" Jenny asked.

"Because it's pretentious. I don't know, he's my baby brother – I practically raised him. It's just… odd. After being away for… well it doesn't even feel like for long..." Oswin became lost in thought for a second.

"What do you mean, raised him?" Nios inquired, turning the book over to read the blurb. There was no blurb, though, there wasn't much of anything except the name and the title. It had been procured by some obscure publisher, that was why. It was hard enough to get a budget for physical books at all in the 5100s, let alone afford to go printing fancy pictures and whatnot on them.

"Newsflash – my mother was a horrid woman who couldn't be bothered to raise her own kids. And here the lot of you are thinking I've always been unable to behave like a normal human being; up until I was seventeen I actually functioned very well as a member of a secluded and sheltered society. I was more a mother to Reker than our real one. He's named his two twin daughters after me."

"Aww, that's so sweet!" Jenny said, fawning.

"Pay attention!" Oswin snapped at her again.

"What is it you're making her do?" Nios asked.

"I'm not, she offered, because she was distracting me and I nearly messed up what I was doing," Oswin said, "It's a nervous system."

"Made from circuitry?"

"Well it's a very simple one," she said, "He's not alive just yet, though, I haven't finished the AI programming."

"Hang on, you're making an AI?" Nios asked her seriously, "To do what?"

"Help me," she answered, "Like… I don't know, like a pet. Not an AI like you're an AI – life is a spectrum, you know? It's not a contrast between intelligence and stupidity that draws the line between synthetic and organic life, it's purely a question of biology, and not every example of synthetic life has to equate to a replication of a human being. I'm not spoiling the surprise for the pair of you, so don't ask me anymore questions." Nios stayed, holding the book, watching Jenny delicately solder for a while longer.

"I'll take my leave, then. I don't want to interrupt your date."

"Yes, yes. Run along now and be sure to tell Donna all sorts of lies about how Jenny and I are having an affair," Oswin said as Nios walked out, "Make the details extra-filthy. Who knows what we were doing – but it sure did involve a lot of projectile vomitting" And then she was gone.

"Do you _have_ to be like that?" Jenny asked.

"Like what?"

"You know. Disgusting."

"Um, yes. It's my whole thing. Haven't you noticed?"

"I try not to. I think I've done. Come and check," Jenny requested, so Oswin limped back over with her cane to scrutinise Jenny's work. "Well? What's your judgment?"

"Adequate."

" _Adequate_?"

"I'm a perfectionist. It'll do," she shrugged, "That's all you're getting. Don't hold your mechanical-engineering-whatsit over my head, I'm cleverer than you are, you're forgetting." Jenny made a grumbling noise of acknowledgement. " _Anyway_ , did you want anything? That's got to be the third time I've asked you."

"Do you think I'm a bad person?" Jenny asked her abruptly.

" _You_? A bad person? That's the stupidest thing I've heard in my whole life."

"For using guns, though."

"Guns don't kill people, other people do," Oswin said, "Has somebody been having a go at you?" And then Jenny spun her a story of an ex-pupil of Clara Ravenwood's calling her a hypocrite for preaching pacifism and non-aggression while shooting someone in the head who 'could have been saved.' "That's crazy. That sort of mutation from an unstable SAI? Using the SAI again would probably just make it even worse. And a _different_ SAI would have a different isotopic signature, they're all unique devices. Like fingerprints. The kindest thing after killing him would be to put him in a zoo."

"Zoos aren't kind."

"Did you miss the point I was trying to make? Don't beat yourself up. A black-and-white sense of morality is nothing more than a gilded cage."

"I'm trying to figure out if I should go and see Clara or not," Jenny said.

"Ah, so you came to see me instead, for some sort of over-the-clothes quickie?"

Jenny seemed to remember something that amused her, "My dad asked what a quickie is today. I told him to ask his wife." Oswin laughed. "But for the record, no I did not. Would it kill you to not make comments like that when everybody _already_ thinks we're sleeping together?"

"Oh, please, people think you and I are sleeping with _everybody_ we talk to for more than ten seconds. Not in the least my own sister – and just the thought makes me want to ingest old semen until I choke on it."

"That's revolting."

"Again, I feel like you missed the point I was making. But you only saw Clara – what? The night before last? Can't you just talk to her on the phone?"

"Says the girl who literally _moved in_ with her boyfriend immediately after they got together," Jenny pointed out, and Oswin actually didn't have a way to argue with that. She tried, but ultimately stayed quiet, thinking about this, "Besides, stuff's happened. Maybe I won't even stay the night."

"You think Clara would let you leave her house _without_ you sucking on her clitoris at least once?" Oswin said.

"I'm going to be sick!"

"The thought of sucking her clitoris makes you want to be sick?" Oswin asked 'innocently.'

"Shut up! Stop saying that!" Jenny demanded, and Oswin burst out laughing.

"New Jenny has a weak stomach."

"You know what, I will go see her. If only to escape from the filth that is _your mouth_ ," Jenny told her sharply, "You're being worse than usual."

"It's because I'm in a good mood. Don't worry, I'm manic-depressive. I'll want to kill myself again in a few days," she said, smiling, which cast an odd tone over that whole sentence.

"Plus, there's a whole alligator steak in Clara's fridge I need to do something with. Make meat balls, or something."

"Mmm, moist, meaty balls," Oswin said sultrily, then changed tact, "But, um, if you do want to go see her then who am I to stop you? You're right, I'm hardly ever away from Mitchell. As long as you're both on the same wavelength about it and you're not smothering her, there's no harm. And the best way to find out if you _are_ smothering her would just be to ask."

"Right… thanks…" Jenny said, clearly taken aback by Oswin offering her a kernel of somewhat genuine advice, rather than more disgusting jokes only she found funny. "It's strange, you know, because being a teacher was her dream job. I feel bad for her sometimes that she can't do it anymore. But I wonder if Alpha Clara will ever get the idea in her head that she ought to try and teach?"

"As long as she takes the Doctor with her and doesn't leave me to babysit that old fogy."

"The Doctor? Teaching in a school?" Jenny asked incredulously, getting off the stool so that she could leave Oswin to her tinkering, "I wonder what _that_ would be like…"


	79. Back to the Future

**DAY 18,256**

 _Back to the Future_

 _Thirteen_

"This is way out of my depth, Frost," the Doctor hissed angrily at Celia, holding her pen she had just been using to mark draft coursework essays in a tight fist. She didn't really know anything about marking essays, but thought they were all doing a very good effort. Except Nathan Cross, who had spent the whole lesson drawing photo-realistic penises on his paper. Although, that in itself was a good effort. Maybe he could make a career out of it someday? He could put it on his CV.

"Teaching is out of everybody's depth," Celia said, unforgiving. She hated Celia Frost, head of the physics department and newly-appointed head of behaviour in the staff-shuffle the new headmistress, Lorna Moore, had been doing (she had made Clara the head of English, though.) "They're in your form and your wife has a lesson at the moment and can't take time out to deal with it. Honestly, woman, get over yourself."

"Don't talk to me like that," the Doctor said threateningly, standing up, "You haven't got any idea who I am."

"You're _my_ subordinate, Oswald. I tell you what to do when it comes to behaviour."

"Well that may be true in here, but out there-" she began, brandishing the pen at Celia like it was an actual weapon.

"Have you been drawing cocks on their exams?" Frost interrupted. The Doctor dropped her pen.

"No! That was Nathan Cross – who is in _your_ tutor group," she snapped, covering the penises with other sheets of paper. Celia glared at her. "Look, I just don't think I have the relative experience to deal with this incident."

"Get over yourself. We're all women, we've all had periods," Frost said, indifferent to the Doctor's struggle. Unfortunately, what Celia said was not true. The Doctor had not always been a woman and, subsequently – the Doctor had never had a period, not once. Reproduction didn't work that way on Gallifrey; and, personally, she always thought evolution had been a bit barbaric when it decided to make humans destroy and expel their own internal organs once a month. She had always felt the utmost sympathy for Clara.

"But I-"

"I don't care," Celia said finally, "You're pathetic. I'm in charge of you now, and if I say you have to deal with this, then you have to deal with this. I'm bringing them in."

"What? No! _No_ , Celia – I'm begging you. I really don't understand how to – _hi, girls_ ," her tone immediately changed to one of bright politeness, as if she was pleased to see the two teenagers Celia shepherded into the room for her to speak to. Over the tops of their heads, Celia smiled at her evilly, and then slinked out of the classroom, shutting the door carefully behind her. The Doctor glared at the door, then sighed, and embarked upon a lecture that Clara was _much_ better suited to: "Listen, girls, as a fellow, uh, _woman_ … I understand that puberty can be a… complicated time. But, erm, you know, tampons – they're not toys. And from what I hear – that is, I mean, from what I know, myself, when I have to buy them, which I definitely do – they're pretty expensive."

"But Doctor, she-" Georgia, the shorter, more generally well-behaved one of the pair of them, began.

"Oh, I don't care what she did. Haven't either of you seen _Carrie_? The original, of course, not that godawful remake. The next girl you throw a tampon at might turn out to be a murderer with psychokinesis. Then who'd be laughing? Not you two. You'd be dead," she said. Then she thought that that maybe wasn't a good thing to say. " _Plus_ , to reiterate my earlier point – they cost a lot of money! Imagine how much your mothers pay for them."

"They were school tampons, miss," Rita told her. Rita was the seasoned trouble-maker of them. To the Doctor's best understanding, something had happened between Georgia and her other friends that had led to Rita – that rogue – taking her under her wing. One day, the Doctor thought, Rita might be the head of some very successful small-time crime ring. She could have a whole gang of petty thieves at her fingertips; a bright future as a racketeer. Not that she'd ever tell her parents that on parents evening.

"They were _what_? Where'd you get that many school tampons from?" the Doctor asked. She didn't know a lot about the distribution of tampons in the school. As best she could tell, the girls' toilets all had machines in them, and if you desperately couldn't afford the machines, the office would gladly give you something to use. She had assumed they had brought their hoard of sanitary products in from home.

"From the vending machine, someone broke it," Rita said. The Doctor narrowed her eyes at this faux-innocence for a few seconds, then crossed her arms.

"Did you break the school tampon machine?" she asked seriously.

"No, miss!" Rita exclaimed, but she put a bit too much verve into her pretend-outrage. The Doctor raised an eyebrow, unimpressed by this attempt at deception.

"Okay, I know you're lying."

"Can't prove it. No CCTV in the girls' toilets," Rita said smugly, which was about as good as just admitting to it.

"She did break it miss, I saw her," Georgia said quickly. She wasn't quite as much of a rule-breaker as Rita would like, clearly, if she was grassing her up. The Doctor disagreed with that decision of hers; it would most certainly put her on Rita's bad-side if she were to get her into trouble, and Georgia couldn't really afford to go losing any _more_ friends. "She used a screwdriver." Well _now_ it was serious.

"A screwdriver!?" the Doctor exclaimed. Screwdrivers, in the hands of insolent, sixteen-year-old girls, would be a world of trouble for the school. The school, and whoever Rita decided to stab in the eyeball. Not that the Doctor would ever advise where it was best to stab someone, but the eyeball was a good target for a weapon like a screwdriver. Or inside the ear canal – but only if you had good aim.

"You're always telling us how useful screwdrivers are!" Rita now protested.

"Do you have a screwdriver on you now!?" the Doctor demanded, and she shrugged. The Doctor glared and held out her hand. "Give it to me. That's a weapon, you know. You're in a very genuine amount of trouble now, young lady." Begrudgingly, Rita fished the screwdriver (a pretty big one, too) out of her bag and handed it over. The metal shaft was slightly bent; probably because it had been used to force the tampon machine.

"You're only about ten years older than us…." Georgia muttered when she said 'young lady.' _Oh, if only you knew_ , the Doctor thought to herself.

"You could give someone a lobotomy with this," the Doctor told Rita sternly. These words had the opposite effect than what the Doctor would have liked.

"Really?" she got excited.

"Not that you're going to get it back."

"You're stealing my personal property, miss," Rita accused.

"You've got some nerve trying to pull that."

"I thought Americans don't mind when kids bring weapons into school?"

"Alright, shut up now, that's not funny. Just because I have this accent doesn't mean I support gun crime. I'm sure most people in America really hate the idea of getting shot. Both of you have detentions every night next week – but Rita, I'm going to talk over with your other form tutor what your punishment for bringing this screwdriver into school should be," the Doctor said.

"You mean Mrs Oswald?" Rita asked.

"Yes, obviously."

"Your wife?"

"Yes, my wife."

"Why can't you think of a punishment yourself, miss?"

"Because I have a real issue with punishing people far more than they need to be," she said darkly, trying to possibly scare them a little. It didn't work.

"Do you ever punish Clara, miss?" she asked, doing her 'innocent' thing again. God, she was conniving. Supply teachers often fell for this act. Then someone would be called in to tell them no, Rita did not have diabetes, so there was no need for her to be sitting eating an entire box of forty-two Ferrero Rochers in the back of her Chemistry lesson.

"It's two weeks' detention just for that! Get out now, the both of you," she ordered them, going red, "And don't call her 'Clara'! It's _Mrs Oswald_ to the lot of you. You'll learn it because she's going to be calling both your parents this week."

* * *

"You told them I'd do _what_?"

"Call their parents," Thirteen finished her story an hour or so later, the same day, while she and Clara wandered back out to their car carrying books for marking. The car was still that Ferrari of Adam Mitchell's they had been borrowing for quite some time now. Thirteen thought he must have forgotten they even had it, not that he ever really needed his cars. And he favoured his Porsche, when he _did_ drive somewhere. The Ferrari was just a bit _too_ flashy. That was why it had been keyed a couple of times by the school kids, and why someone had thrown a brick at it and left a nasty dent in the bumper. "Honestly, it was a _nightmare_. You're gonna help me out with punishing them though, aren't you, Coo?"

"I suppose so, since I'm the _head of department_ now."

"I was thinking more because you're their other form tutor. You're the head of the English department. Throwing tampons around isn't anything to do with English," Thirteen said, leaving Clara put-out as they reached the car. "I don't know what to do – she _did_ bring an improvised weapon into school."

"We'll think of something later tonight," Clara assured her, meaning, _Clara_ would think of something later tonight, and the Doctor would nod approvingly. Clara opened the boot of the Ferrari and put their books inside, while the Doctor went and climbed into the passenger seat, since she still wasn't allowed to drive anything that wasn't the TARDIS. Which was a real bummer, in all honesty. "Do you know," Clara began when she got into the driver's side, "I'm also the youngest head of department in this whole school?"

"You're in your seventies," the Doctor pointed out, leaning on the door.

"Yeah – well – Moore doesn't know that. I'm just that incredible. She loves my mock exams initiative."

"Nobody else does," she muttered as Clara found the key and started the car. The engine purred loudly.

"Do you not like Lorna?" Clara asked as she put the car into reverse.

"I don't know – I think she's trying too hard trying to be the kids' friend. She doesn't command any authority." Clara burst out laughing. "What?"

"You hypocrite!"

"Okay, yeah, I also try to be their friend, and that's why I _don't command any authority_. Hence me needing to get _you_ to help punish those kids. It's pathetic, god – here I am, the Oncoming Storm, and I can't even get some teenage girl to see that bringing a screwdriver into a lesson and throwing tampons around the canteen is wrong," she grumbled, "It's grating on me. I wish _I_ was the bad cop."

"No you don't," Clara said, "Most of those kids think I'm way too strict."

"You _are_. When I married a woman who sometimes eats mayonnaise out of the jar with her fingers as a snack, I never suspected she had the potential to be such a dictator."

"Is that a compliment? Because I genuinely can't tell."

"As long as you don't start bossing _me_ around…"

"I boss you around all the time, you just don't notice because I bat my eyelash and bring out the dimples," Clara said. Thirteen scowled. It was probably true.

"I just think that maybe promoting Celia might be what's best for the school."

"You hate Celia! Celia Frost is more suited to being an important member of the SS, not an important member of a teaching faculty," Clara told her, "You shouldn't be so quick to write Moore off."

"I guess. As long as she's not another alien disguising herself and trying to kill me, I don't think she can be that bad." There were a few moments of quiet while Clara navigated a tricky roundabout they had to take to get home, and then she swore.

"Shit!"

"What?"

"I forgot my bloody phone, didn't I?" she complained, "Urgh. That's the last thing I need. We're gonna have to go back."

"I'm not complaining," the Doctor shrugged. It would only add an extra ten minutes to their journey home, and they didn't actually have to be at any appointments. Nothing to be late to. And why would she complain about spending time with Clara? She wouldn't. Ever since how terrible things had been before her excursion to the past some months ago, she'd learnt to never take Clara's company for granted.

And maybe, if Clara had noticed her phone was missing just a little further down the road, the Doctor's estimate of an 'extra ten minutes' would have held true. Clara turned into a cul-de-sac so that she could turn around, swinging the Ferrari into the midst of an idyllic, village street (quaint areas like this was one of the reasons they lived in a town rather than a city.) And that was when it became clear that they were not getting home any time soon.

If the Doctor had had any kind of device capable of sensing temporal disturbances with her, this could have been avoided. But it wasn't, and it was always hard to detect rifts in space-time when you were inside a car with an incredibly beautiful woman sitting next to you (the struggles of marriage.) The Ferrari moved towards a row of houses and then, out of nowhere, _lurched_. It lurched forwards of its own accord, like Clara had just slammed down the accelerator for no reason whatsoever. And the whole car was pulled faster and then tore a window in reality itself. There was a blinding flash of light, heat all over, a noise like a sonic boom, one or both of them screamed at the surprise. In the brief moment in which they were nowhere, an impossible vacuum battered apart the car and forced itself onto them so that for a split-second the Doctor felt like her head was going to explode.

And then they were spat out at probably twenty miles an hour, which wasn't so fast until they realised they were heading straight for a dirty brick wall that hadn't been there five seconds ago. Clara hit the brakes but the car didn't respond at all, it just kept going down a decline until they were slammed straight into a building. The engine died, smoke rose up from beneath the bonnet, and the Doctor's seatbelt had tightened into a chokehold around her neck. She undid it quickly so that she could breathe.

"What the hell was that!?" Clara demanded of her, like she'd done something.

"Why're you asking me!?"

"What do you mean – _why am I asking you_!? Because you're the Doctor!" Clara said, trying to open her door. It didn't open easily, though. It was only when she forced her whole weight onto it with her shoulder that it crashed open and she fell out with it, right onto the thing, which had just broken all the way off the body of the Ferrari. The Doctor didn't want to try her own door, and so clambered out after Clara to try and help her to her feet. The car was battered and scorched, wholly destroyed in a matter of seconds.

"We went through a rift," she said, holding Clara's arms to steady her. And then holding them for a few more seconds after she was steadied, until dropping them to reach into her own coat pockets and find her sonic screwdriver. Clara stood gawking at the wreckage of the car.

"Me apples!" somebody yelled as the Doctor fumbled with the sonic. There was some guy just standing there, staring at the car, and the wooden wreckage of a fruit stand beneath it. A whole bunch of apples had been crushed under the burning wheels. Now the air smelt of hot apples and burning rubber, which was very unpleasant. "That's me 'ole liveli'ood!"

"Clear this area," the Doctor ordered him, "There's a tear in the fabric of, um… there's no point explaining it. Stand back."

"Who the bleedin' hell do you think you are!?" She ignored him. They weren't exactly in a secluded spot; it was a street. They'd just appeared out of thin air and run over a fruit stall. It was lucky no-one had been hurt. The Doctor scanned the air with the sonic screwdriver, but she didn't pick up any significant traces of temporal energy with it.

"Well?" Clara asked her.

"It closed behind us."

"Can't you open it?"

"No, I don't have any equipment with me," she said, "And the car's destroyed. Where are we?" The fruit seller was still shouting about their destruction of his wares. Clara began to wander off through the square they had crashed into; judging by the smell, they were at some docks, but the Doctor didn't have time to look around with this so-and-so wailing in her ear.

While the fruit vendor ranted and Clara meandered away from Thirteen's immediate vicinity and range of attention, Thirteen herself took her sonic screwdriver and went to try and pop open the hood of their smouldering car. When she managed it, smoke billowed into her face, making her cough heavily. She waved her hand around to try and clear the smoke and then leant in towards the engine, sonicking to try and detect what, precisely, was the matter. Their Ferrari suddenly looked like a heap of rusty junk, but there was always the possibility that she might get it to drive again, even though the wheels were melting into the apple-mush on the cobbles. Sonicking it did not go well. The gas pump exploded, and she went staggering back, at which point the fruit vendor and the few other people who had been observing what must be a very strange sight screamed and scattered. They shouted something about a 'devil machine' as they fled, and she watched them vanish until the whole area was emptied. It looked like a market, a dockside market.

"Damn thing…" she grumbled, fidgeting with the inner-workings of the car. Did she know a lot about cars? Not really. But if she could fix a TARDIS, she figured she could _definitely_ fix a car. It didn't look too complicated, it was just sort of… destroyed. The whole engine would need to be stripped and replaced.

"I'm pretty sure I've figured out where we are," Clara's voiced called. The Doctor looked up and saw her returning from whence she had disappeared. There was another bang from inside the car, and a thin stream of smoke spiralled up out of the bonnet. "Leave that alone, would you? Come on." Clara beckoned her to follow, holding out her hand, which the Doctor took out of reflex. Clara pulled her through the small market area, and she saw that these docks were not the docks by the sea. They were at the edge of a river. A very large and easily-identifiable river, and it was so easily-identifiable because, on the opposite bank and quite a way upstream past flocks of boats and barges, the smoggy outline of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament swam into view through the pollution.

"Urgh," Thirteen grunted, "Why is it always London?"

 **AN: Chapter 1011, "Bad Education," according to the traffic graphs I sometimes check to see that anyone's actually still reading this, always has way more views and visitors than any other chapter. So I was wondering, why is that? Are you guys re-reading it? If you guys ARE re-reading it, then please tell me what you think is so darned great. If it's anything to do with Clarteen I can always incorporate this mystery factor into this current storyline.**


	80. Tipping the Velvet

_Tipping the Velvet_

 _Thirteen_

It was a sight to behold. There they were, two women scandalously dressed for the period, pushing a burned-out Ferrari down the middle of a busy, early-evening, London high street. It was a chore trying to force that mechanical husk through the horses and carriages, none of which wanted to move, and they were getting even more stares than they usually did driving around rural England in a multimillionaire's sports car. Probably because these people had never even _seen_ a sports car before. Had they ever seen _any_ kind of car?

The icing on the cake was that Clara didn't have a phone, and the Doctor didn't have anything except her trusty sonic screwdriver. They were, at present, trying to push their wrecked car up a steep hill, over messy cobbled streets, between dozens of people who just didn't care enough to get out of the way or stop staring. The whole situation was enough to put them in a foul mood, and it did. They pushed and pushed up the incline, neither of them speaking, the Doctor angry at herself for not thinking yet of a way to get them out of this mess, and also assuming that Clara was furious with her. At least Clara's telekinesis made it a bearable task, but she couldn't take the weight of the whole thing. There was still _some_ effort being put into forcing the car up the hill.

"Are you sure this is the right way?" Clara asked her, "I swear, the streets look different than I remember…"

"Just trust me," the Doctor said through gritted teeth, her hands on the back of the car. It had been even worse trying to pull it out of its crevice in that market on the bank of the Thames, revealing just how crumpled the entire bonnet was, crushed like an aluminium can. But Clara was right, the streets _did_ look different, in very acute ways. Even the people, the dress… she was beginning to puzzle not about where they were, but _when_ they were. Was this not the 1800s she often frequented?

Shortly after these questions began to arise within her, she had the luck of spying a young boy, no more than ten, standing on a soapbox with a dwindling stack of muddy newspapers at his side, holding the front page up for all to see. When she was able to read the words on the headline she immediately let go of the Ferrari.

"Oi! What're you doing!?" Clara shouted after her, but Clara would be quite capable of keeping the car from slipping back down the hill and running her over for a moment or two. The Doctor wended her way towards the boy, tactfully bumping into some gentleman as she did and profusely apologising – while she slipped a stray hand into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a fistful of coins.

"How much?" the Doctor asked the newspaper boy when she had managed to discreetly steal from money, flashing the man a smile and letting him go on his way (it was funny, as any other of her selves, that would never have worked, but there were a couple of benefits to being a woman ordinarily assumed of not being capable of most kinds of petty deception.)

"Thruppence, miss," the boy answered, and she found a threepence coin in the collection in her hand and dropped it into the flat-cap in front of the boy's soapbox, picking up a newspaper from the pile and taking her new treasure back to Clara. She hadn't been watching Clara, and when she returned she found her caught up in the middle of a conversation with a man plainly offering to help her push her large, fancy machine up the hill.

"Shouldn't your husband be helping you with that?" the man, another gentleman, but this one a little more smug-looking than the one Thirteen had stolen a handful of shillings from, questioned, "Where is it you're going?"

"Just, erm – Crystal Palace, you see. For the Great Exhibition. It's a machine of the future."

"The Great Exhibition?" the man puzzled.

"Yep."

" _Great Exhibition_?" the Doctor also puzzled, returning. Clara turned to face her, now having only one hand to hold the Ferrari in place, clearly exerting her telekinesis to keep it there. The gentleman marvelled at this faux feat of strength, while Clara put her free hand on her hip. The Doctor swatted Clara's head (gently) with her newspaper.

"Ow."

"Look at this," the Doctor held it up for her to see and then, as though Clara couldn't read, she read aloud from the pages of the _London Herald_ , "' _Titanic sinks. Great loss of life. World's greatest liner strikes ice berg_.' It's 1912. The Great Exhibition was in 1851."

"My, my, do you not even know the date, miss?" the gentleman asked Clara, taking off his hat solemnly in the middle of the busy road, "I suppose it is true what they say about women not having the proper faculties for living in the working world. The two of you belong in a household, undoubtedly."

"Thanks," said the Doctor monotonously, "And I suppose if we belong in the household you belong on the streets?"

"The streets! I think not."

"You dress like you live on the streets."

"What a tongue on you!" he exclaimed, "I was only addressing your good friend who possesses more manners than the common Yank."

"The common Yank's good friend would kindly like you to piss off," Clara told him coldly, still with just one hand on the car. He finally did, and they watched him wander away to nurse his injured masculinity somewhere else. "Are we still good to go if this is 1912?"

"There's only one way to find out," the Doctor said, annoyed at the fact they had to carry on their journey while pushing the car along. Before she rejoined Clara in this plight, she went to toss the newspaper into the front seat; the whole front of the car had the broken-off door wedged inside it. Nothing was going to repair that thing, the Doctor was sure, as she resumed assisting her wife.

And so they continued their slow-paced journey through the masses of Edwardian London, following the Thames for what felt like much longer than it really was, passing St Paul's Cathedral – which signified they were almost at their promised destination. They received at least half a dozen offers of help from well-to-do, patronising men who thought the two of them incapable of pushing their car around the streets, and they always refused. Clara was just beginning to tire of the exertion of her telekinesis when they had to push the car around a tricky, sharp corner onto a darkened and very narrow alleyway. The Ferrari sat still on its own now. They must have been going for over an hour, if not two, at least, and the light was very nearly beginning to dwindle above the city slums.

But there they were, just entered onto that old haunt of theirs: Paternoster Row. The Doctor was greatly relieved to see the familiar horse and carriage belonging to Madame Vastra waiting outside, and they rolled the car up to be parked neatly right behind it. The Doctor walked up to the door and banged her fist loudly on it, ignoring the silver knocker that hung there. She had always ignored door knockers. She thought they were pointless, and lazy, and they never worked as well as just knocking normally.

Clara hovered at her shoulder, quite possibly saying something that went ignored by Thirteen, as the door was opened from within by that old buddy of theirs – Strax.

"Hi," said Clara and the Doctor together. Strax stared at them.

"Clara Oswald and her boy-Doctor are the last thing we need," he said in a very grumbling way, unamused by their sudden and unannounced arrival.

"Uh-huh. That's nice. Can we come in?" the Doctor asked him.

"I'm not sure. I'm under strict instructions about who gets let into the house. You've arrived at a very dark time, sirs." The Doctor's hearts plummeted hearing that, and Clara took hold of her arm.

"Oh my stars, what's happened?" Clara asked while Thirteen was rendered silent, then she whispered, "Has somebody died?"

"Far, far worse," Strax shook his head. Well, he sort of shook his whole body as well, Sontarans being the way they were. "It's Silurian mating season."

"Oh," the Doctor was relieved for a few seconds, and then she was not relieved, " _Oh_. Eurgh."

"Precisely, ma'am," Strax said, "Are you sure you wouldn't prefer to leave and return in a few weeks?"

" _Weeks_?" Clara exclaimed, "How long are they in heat for?" She asked this of Thirteen.

"How should I know? I've never dated a Silurian," she said.

"I tell you, it's been frightful for the last month," Strax said, "It only comes around every few years, but when it does – modesty be damned. It's garish."

"What's garish?" a woman's cockney accent floated in from another room, and here arrived Jenny Flint, who had flushed cheeks and wasn't wearing as much as the period generally considered polite. Clara crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows, and the Doctor tried to ignore everything Strax had just told them. "Oh, Doctor. And Clara." There was a pause. "Vastra can't see you right now."

"Surprise, surprise," said Clara, watching her carefully. Judgementally, even. Jenny Flint narrowed her eyes.

"No worries," the Doctor forced a smile, "This isn't necessarily a social call, Flint. We're stranded and we'd appreciate if you'd let us use your telephone to call the TARDIS." But Jenny's eyes had strayed away to something else.

"What the hell's _that_!?" she nodded at the car, she and Strax still blocking their entry into the house.

"The car we were in when we drove through a rift by accident."

"You can't leave that here; it'll draw undue attention to the house."

Clara interjected, "The occupants of _your_ house are a lizard woman, an anthropomorphic potato and a lesbian; it has plenty of _undue attention_ already." The Doctor snort-laughed and then tried (badly) to make it look like she had just coughed. It didn't get past Jenny, though.*

"Can I please just use the phone? I don't actually have any other friends to call on who are in London right now," the Doctor pleaded. Finally, Jenny and Strax stepped aside to let them into the familiar house, to their great relief, though it was quite dark and stuffy within. Then again, it usually was. Silurians loved their humid climates.

"Phone's down the hall," Jenny pointed, in case the Doctor didn't remember this.

And then the trilling voice of the house's owner called out from whatever depths she was lurking in, "Jenny, dear, can you not find the Vaseline?" and Thirteen nearly dry-retched hearing Vastra's request. Jenny went even redder than she had already been and quickly dug a metal tub out of a nearby door and scurried away upstairs again. Clara watched her go with a look of horror on her face.

"I did warn you," Strax said.

"That you did…" the Doctor muttered, following Jenny's directions to the phone. Clara, having nothing else to do, followed her as she went, while Strax made to linger in the hallway, ready to answer the door if necessary. Their phone was an old candlestick telephone, which the Doctor picked up so that she could dial in the phone number for the TARDIS, lifting the receiver to her ear with one hand and holding the rest of it, mouthpiece atop, with the other.

But the TARDIS did not answer. She must have tried the phone at least five times, and every time it rang out for over a minute, nobody answering. That didn't normally happen. Normally the TARDIS phone was answered far more punctually than it ever had been when _she_ was in command of the ship.

"Is no-one answering?" Clara asked, but she did not respond, instead straining to remember the number for Jenny Ravenwood's mobile.

"Does Jenny's number end in eight or nine?" she asked. Clara shrugged. "I'll try eight." So she did.

" _Hi, this is the Babestation chat line, here to fulfil all your erotic des_ -"

"Wrong number!" she exclaimed, jabbing the button to hang up with her finger. Then she explained meekly to Clara, "It's definitely a nine…" She thought this number might ring out, too, it took her daughter so damn long to pick up.

" _Hello?_ "

"Gee, finally," Thirteen said, "I've been trying the TARDIS for ages. Why are you not answering?"

" _Oh, hi to you too, mum_ ," Jenny said, plainly annoyed that the Doctor had cut the pleasantries and gone immediately to telling her off.

"Why didn't you answer the phone?" she persisted.

" _We're not on the TARDIS right now_ ," Jenny said, " _We're on holiday_."

"You're-!? Your whole life is a holiday!" Thirteen exclaimed, "What are you talking about?"

" _We're in the Caribbean, we left the TARDIS behind – it's in Orlando. We're on Adam Mitchell's yacht_."

"You guys are on holiday on a yacht and we're not invited!?"

" _Well you don't live with us! Plus, you don't even want to travel anymore_."

"Where are they?" Clara asked her.

"On a yacht, in the Caribbean," Thirteen answered bitterly. Clara looked just as outraged by this as she did. "Look, I need your help. Clara and I accidentally drove through a rift and now we're stuck in London in 1912. We need you to come take us back to 2024."

" _I just told you, we're not on the TARDIS. We're, like, a three-day journey away at least, and that's if we turn back now, which none of us really fancy_ ," Jenny said, sounding down the phone like she was shrugging, " _1912's not so bad_."

"Are you kidding me?"

" _What?_ "

"Just travel to the date when you get back to the ship! It's a god damn _time machine_ , Jennifer! It's April 16th, we're at Paternoster Row," the Doctor said.

" _If you're at Paternoster Row then what's the big deal? It's not like you're stuck in the street_."

"Nuh-uh, Jenny. We're not playing this game."

" _Who's playing anything? You sound like_ you _need a holiday as well,_ " Jenny told her, " _You're in a bad mood_."

"Of course I'm in a bad mood!"

" _You haven't even asked nicely or said please._ "

"Oh my god – I don't need to say please, I'm your mother, and I'm stranded here!"

" _With your friends, in London. It's not like you've just crash-landed on a barren, arctic planet without knowing a soul_ …"

"That was almost 260 years ago!"

" _So what? You're telling me now I should get over it_?"

"Maybe you should!"

And Jenny hung up.

"Jenny?" she asked oblivion. Nothing. She clenched her fist tightly around the receiver until Clara took the telephone off her, phasing it out of her grip and putting it back down on the table against the wall.

"What on Earth's the matter with you?" Clara asked her, "Since when did you have a go at Jenny like that?"

"We're stuck here-"

"I heard what she said, she's right. It's not that bad. It's just London and it's only 1912. And you keep ignoring me ever since we got here-"

"Because you're mad at me."

"I'm not," Clara told her. Thirteen hadn't looked at her at all this whole conversation. In fact, Thirteen had been avoiding looking at Clara ever since they first passed through that rift. But now she did, and she saw that Clara's expression was soft, and worried. There was no detectable trace of malice behind her eyes. "Sweetheart… won't you come here?" Clara came and wrapped her arms around Thirteen, and Thirteen held onto her. "Why would you think I'm angry at you?"

"Because this type of stuff happening is exactly the kind of thing you made us move to Earth to avoid!" the Doctor protested, then she buried her face in Clara's shoulder while Clara hugged her.

"Okay, I married the Doctor. These things just happen to you. It's nobody's fault. And anyway, isn't it better that _we_ came through a rift in space-time instead of some unsuspecting schoolkids? Anyone who walked through it would be disintegrated," Clara told her, stroking her hair. "Maybe you _do_ need a holiday. 1912 London could be just what the doctor ordered. Pun intended." Thirteen laughed slightly, but she did not let go of Clara. Then Clara lowered her voice to whisper in her ear, "What do you think they're doing with the Vaseline?"

"Clara!" she exclaimed, "What do you mean, _what do you think they're doing with it_? It's a _lubricant_."

"Yeah, but what are they having to lubricate? It was a _massive_ tub."

"I don't want to know."

"I… kind of _do_ want to…"

"Oh, no," Strax, walking past, interrupted. They only stepped away from each other slightly, Clara moving her hands back to the Doctor's waist, the Doctor's to Clara's shoulders, "Not you two as well."

"Don't worry, Strax," Clara assured him, "We wouldn't want to put you through that, especially with _those two_ up there." Yes, Thirteen noted, it was true; Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra upstairs were going to no extra lengths to be quiet. She was really trying to ignore it, the same way the middle-classes ignored homeless people in inner cities. As though they were a blind-spot. He looked at them very suspiciously.

"There's no way I'm going to sleep with her in this house that doesn't have a shower," Thirteen assured him, "That's just not on. When do you think they'll be done, though?"

"When dinner is ready."

"Doesn't Jenny make dinner normally?" Clara inquired.

"Jenny is otherwise engaged," said Strax. They heard a very loud and explicitly _human_ noise of pleasure from above. Yes, the Doctor thought, Jenny Flint most definitely _was_ 'otherwise engaged.'

"I'll do it," Thirteen offered, "Cook something. It might entice Vastra to let us stay."

* * *

As it happened, Madame Vastra was very enticed. But not to let them stay. She was rather indifferent to the matter of whether Clara and the Doctor could stay, shrugging and telling Strax he had better make up a bed in one of the guest rooms. When she did this she had her beady, lizard-eyes _glued_ to Jenny Flint, who appeared very exhausted. Dinner was a grim affair. It was grim because Thirteen, Clara and Strax had to sit there while, the entire time, Vastra and Jenny had an obscene amount of eye-sex. They were playing footsie under the table, as well.

"So, uh, as you can… see… we really don't have anywhere else to go… we were just wondering if you'd be kind enough to put us up for a while, until my daughter comes off her pleasure cruise," Thirteen said. Vastra didn't look at her, Vastra played with Jenny's hair. Clara had grown increasingly annoyed by this behaviour – which was definitely rude, 'Silurian mating season' be damned – and was on the brink of telling them off.

"I can think of a whole _different_ kind of pleasure cruise I'd like to embark on," Vastra said sultrily.

"Oh my god…" the Doctor muttered, putting a hand to her head. Clara dropped her fork.

"This is ridiculous," she said, then she waved a hand and the two of them, on their chairs, shot away from each other a few metres.

"Clara!" Thirteen exclaimed, "Don't do that."

"Just listen for five minutes or the two of you aren't going to touch each other _at all_ until you grow out of your horny lizard phase," Clara said sharply to Vastra. Her teacher voice. Thirteen had been right.

"That's racist," Vastra said.

"It's – what?"

"I don't look anything like a horned lizard. You can't say all lizards look alike. I don't even shoot blood from my eyes," Vastra said, "All you apes look the same."

"So now you're being a hypocrite? And one of those 'apes' is the exact person _you_ can't keep your reptilian claws off," Clara said, "Are we allowed to stay in your bloody house or not, you pervy dragon?" The Doctor thought Clara had crossed a line. Had crossed many lines, in fact, with Madame Vastra, who did not generally accept people speaking to her like that. But the fact remained that Clara and Thirteen didn't have anywhere else to stay, and that if she desired, Clara could keep both of them pinned to opposite walls, unable to canoodle. And Vastra knew this, and she obviously cared more about getting her leg over than about Clara being briefly disrespectful.

"Fine," Vastra said, regaining her composure after this embarrassment a little, "Stay. But you're going to contribute to the household chores while you do. This place is gathering dust while Jenny's been so… busy… and Strax can't reach the high places. Not like you and this _gift_ of yours, Clara." She referred to the telekinesis.

"Well that seems more than fair," the Doctor said, trying to diffuse the situation a little, "We'll be happy to do the housework while you're, erm…" she cleared her throat and didn't finish the sentence. Vastra was trying to stare down Clara, but Clara wasn't scared of Vastra.

"Aren't you going to stop this?"

"Are you going to behave?"

Vastra glared, "Define 'behave.'"

"Don't start having sex in a room with three other people?" Clara suggested sarcastically.

"Fine," Vastra said after some long deliberation, like this was a hard thing to undertake. Clara left it a few more moments for good measure, before she relinquished her psychokinetic grip on the both of them. After that, Strax escaped to go and make up this guest room for the two of them, and Jenny and Vastra resumed what they'd been doing earlier, dragging the chairs back to their previous positions.

It was with great relief that Clara and the Doctor finally got to go to bed, Clara very grateful for the roaring fire in the fireplace warming the room up thoroughly, courtesy of Strax. The Doctor was glad of that, too, and took care to assure Strax that he didn't have anything to worry about in regards to them stooping to Jenny and Vastra's level. After their agreement to assist with the housework, he had lost all his bitterness at their presence, and welcomed them and their help with open arms.

"Thank _god_ for that bag of yours," Clara said with relief when Thirteen went about sorting through the contents of her small, transdimensional bag. She took it everywhere with them in their car, just in case something happened. The only piece of alien technology she carried was their old tracking device, but that wouldn't be remotely useful right now. That rift was a one-trick pony; they were going to be stuck in Edwardian London until the Doctor's daughter took the courtesy of picking them up. Clara was mainly grateful for Thirteen's bag because it had spare clothes in it. "Now I won't get stuck borrowing some awful Victorian night-dress."

"No, you can run around wearing hardly anything like you usually do."

"Exactly. Just the way you like me," Clara remarked, and she laughed.

"Enough of _that_ talk," the Doctor said, both of them getting changed at the same time, "We made an oath to Strax. No funny business."

"Don't worry, I'm an old lady," Clara said, "I put those sorts of urges behind a long time ago."

"When? Last night?"

"Yeah. Anyway, c'mere," Clara said. She nearly tripped Thirteen up when she pulled her towards her by her waist and kissed her, which the Doctor quickly pulled away from, "I'm not trying to sleep with you!" Clara protested.

"Do you promise?"

"Yes, I promise – I'm trying to show you how crazy you are for thinking I'd be angry with you about this," Clara said, and Thirteen gave up and kissed her back, but not for long. Maybe it would have been a lot longer, had noises from the room next door (no points for guessing who was in _there_ ) drifted through the cracks in the wall.

" _Get the saddle_ ," it sounded like Jenny said. Then both Clara and the Doctor visibly cringed.

" _Ewww_ ," Thirteen whined.

"A _saddle_?" Clara whispered.

"Don't think about it."

"I don't need to think about it, I can hear it," Clara remarked, "Anyway, before they started… what I was _going_ to say is, Jenny's right."

"About the saddle?"

"No! Not _that_ Jenny, _your_ Jenny. About you needing a holiday. I think this'll be good. Despite _those two_. Maybe we'll be here for a few weeks? I don't know, all we'll have to do is clean stuff, and there's three of us to do it. I might write."

"Ooh, new poems? In which case our excursion will definitely be worth it, _C.O. Smith_ ," Thirteen called Clara by her pseudonym and made her smile.

"Exactly. Every cloud has a silver lining."

" _Show me your saddle sores_ ," Vastra said next door.

"Eurgh!" Thirteen exclaimed, making a horrid face.

"Why do we have to listen to that? Are we sure we can't sleep in the cellar?" Clara asked.

"It's cold in the cellar."

"I'll be plenty warm with you in my arms," Clara said quietly, leaning in to kiss her again.

" _Not THAT whip, that's the wrong one_ ," Jenny said, interrupting them.

"If in the middle of the night I mysteriously vanish," Clara began seriously, "I've probably killed myself having to listen to that."

* _literally one of my favourite lines I've ever written_


	81. Cherchez la Femme

**DAY 18,259**

 _Cherchez la Femme_

 _Thirteen_

It was an uneventful few days. They were supposed to be cooking and cleaning to help out, and Thirteen gladly helped Strax with the cooking (Jenny actually _did_ manage to tear herself away from her wife long enough to join them at least twice), but where the cleaning was concerned there was just not a lot to do. Mainly because neither the Doctor nor Clara were particularly messy. Admittedly, they were both quite bad when it came to leaving dirty laundry lying around their house, but they had always worked well at splitting up chores like that. But, in Paternoster Row, neither of them made much of a mess of anything, and Jenny and Vastra had been living almost exclusively in their bedroom, which was completely off-limits. Thank god. The Doctor didn't think you could pay her enough to clean that room, and that wasn't just because she morally objected to the concept of currency and the monetisation of necessary labour. It was gross.

And so they were left, with no TARDIS and no jobs, with very little to do. The Doctor busied herself poring over a collection of very interesting books and alien specimens Vastra had gathered in her upstairs conservatory, and Clara made good on her promise to try and write some poetry while they had this void of responsibilities. Though the Doctor, as was Clara's habit, was forbade from reading any of it until it was done. Clara always did this when she was writing poems about _her_. The Doctor did not mind, but it did mean Clara wasn't as good company as she usually was, when she sat hunched over one of her notebooks she carried around everywhere in case of a sudden bout of inspiration, scribbling.

The morning of their fourth day was a different affair, however, because when Clara grew stumped over use of the word 'cosmic' twice in one stanza, she put her pen away to re-join the Doctor at breakfast. Jenny and Vastra were not at breakfast, they had been up _very_ late the night before and were now sleeping in.

"I just want it to sound… I don't know, sophisticated? Hasn't my whole clandestine career been building up to this _one_ poem?" Clara asked her, like she knew the answer. The Doctor was eating a rasher of bacon with her fingers because she was lazy and had made too much, using up the last of the bacon that was in the house. This, Strax had told her off for, because Vastra always liked to have a frankly astonishing array of meats in stock just in case she got a craving for any of it. Anything she didn't eat would oftentimes be pushed off on the closest orphanage. Orphans in this time period scarcely got to enjoy bacon and steak and rump; it was a bit of a treat, Thirteen supposed.

"Sophisticated?" Thirteen questioned, tearing off a shred of crispy bacon fat to eat, " _You_?"

"How am I not sophisticated?"

"You drooled on me in your sleep last night," the Doctor told her. That shut her up. The Doctor went back to what else she had been doing, which was just reading that morning's paper. She had to admit, that was something she liked about living in one time and place for a while – the news. On the TARDIS, there was no news. The TARDIS was as fluid as it was static; a real paradox of progress. "I think you're putting too much pressure on yourself, Coo."

She was about to say something else, when they both heard a thud from above them. A few seconds of silence followed, then a girlish giggle that was becoming all too familiar.

"Unbelievable," Clara muttered, slouching down on the table, "It's nine in the morning. They've barely slept."

"No rest for the wicked," Thirteen jibed, and she smiled. Clara quietened while they tried to ignore the sounds from above, which were just on the brink of being _too_ intimate to stomach, and watched the Doctor read the newspaper.

"I don't understand papers in this time," Clara said.

"Can you not read English?"

"Very funny. I mean that, they're more than twice the size of papers in the future, and the font is half as big," Clara said, "How can anyone sit and read the entire thing? Is there even anything interesting in it?"

"Charles Lightoller has testified that the loaded forty less people in the lifeboats of the _Titanic_ than the boats could hold, that's the main story this morning," Thirteen said, "Wired last night in a telegram all the way from the Capitol Building. What a feat, y'know?"

"Is that true? They loaded the boats with less people?"

"That's what Lightoller says."

"Were you on the _Titanic_ when it sank?" Clara asked, and Thirteen paused for a while.

"…Yeah. But don't look at me like that! I didn't have anything to do with it sinking, and I saved a ton of people," she argued, "I couldn't exactly warn the Captain to steer a different way, it's a fixed point in time."

"Hold on, hold on – fifty years of being married to you and I've never even known this?" Clara was shocked. Thirteen was about to speak again, but instead of hearing her talk they heard a moan from upstairs, and she shut her mouth immediately. That was when their breakfast – which was almost done anyway – was interrupted by Strax, who'd been scrubbing the oven clean.

"Sirs – the pantry is almost empty as Miss Flint hasn't had the chance to go into the market to buy groceries recently," he said, "I have to take the carriage into town – would you care to come? It will be a completely safe trip, don't worry – I am heavily armed." The Doctor felt like this was just an excuse to get out of the house, but she and Clara were both very ready to do _anything_ to get out of there. "People have certain inhibitions about selling food to someone of my…"

"Potato-ness?" Clara suggested.

"Exactly," he agreed. And so he bade them to quickly hurry up and get themselves in order before things _really_ picked up upstairs, which meant scrounging some shreds of period clothes from the washing line hanging in the kitchen. At least Clara always looked stunning in period dress. As for herself? She didn't care what she looked like, but corsets were _not_ her thing.

"When I was a boy _nobody_ made me wear a corset…" she had grumbled to Clara when struggling to even put the thing on.

"You're always telling me how we have to fit in. Or was making me dress in Victorian clothes that time we went to Yorkshire fifty years ago just because you really fancy me in a bustle?" she had asked wryly.

It was a brief journey in the carriage, and if they didn't have to buy things and bring them back they normally would have just walked, but that didn't stop the Doctor from complaining the entire ride about the unrealistic standards forced on women in that century. It was something Clara had heard many times before, and it always amused her, especially when she pointed out how Eleven never would have thought of how corsets were uncomfortable. Eleven would have just told her she looked pretty.

"You _do_ look pretty, but I don't see how that's the point," Thirteen said.

"That's the _whole_ point," Clara had argued, "Why else wear one?"

"Maybe Jenny won't come and get us for another thirty years and we can hang around until the damn things go out of fashion," she had complained just as they arrived outside of Spitalfields, the covered market. They had never stayed long enough in a period aside from Clara's own to have to do shopping.

"I will watch the horse, if you don't mind. He's been of a nervous tendency ever since we ran over a cat six months ago," Strax said of the horse, a large black stallion called Archie. Strax wasn't lying, that horse was a nervous wreck, it jittered every time something crossed in front of it. He was getting old, too. The Paternosters had had him for over twenty years, now. "But don't worry, if anything happens, just give me the nod and I will deploy the grenades."

"…Sure," Thirteen said after a second, reaching up to take the shopping list from him while he remained in the carriage seat with the reins, "Don't shoot anything until we get back."

"Understood. As soon as you get back, be ready to shoot things. I always keep an assault rifle handy, Doctor."

"That isn't what I… whatever, keep your guns _holstered_ ," she said, shaking her head and then beginning to wander into the market with Clara close by, "It's a wonder he hasn't blown up Big Ben yet." Clara laughed.

"You never finished telling me your _Titanic_ story," Clara pointed out a short while later. It was a long shopping list. She wished they had a sack, or that she hadn't left her bag back at Paternoster Row. Then again, there was a wide variety of raw meat on Madame Vastra's shopping list, so she'd rather not be stowing all that in the same bag as their clean changes of clothes and toothbrushes. Best just to suck it up and carry the groceries.

"Oh, right," Thirteen said, "It was a long while ago now. I was in my… let's see… seventh regeneration. Y'know, when I had the umbrella and all the question marks. God, I did like those question marks… I still have that jacket, d'you think it'd suit me now?"

"Uh, no."

"I might wear it anyway…"

"You do what you like, sweetheart. _Titanic_?" Clara prompted, but at this moment they had just arrived at the vegetable section of the closed market. It had begun to rain; they could hear it bouncing and echoing loudly of the roof above. At least it wasn't too busy, though. Not over-crowed, at least. They had a fair amount of potatoes to buy.

"Have you seen this list?" Thirteen showed Clara when the greengrocer was finding the desired amounts of an array of fruit and veg for them. Tomatoes, apples, onions, broccoli; the usual things.

"No, why? Is Strax's handwriting bad?"

"Strax didn't write it, see?" Thirteen showed her. Both sets of handwriting were relatively neat, certainly too neat to be written by a three-fingered Sontaran, but distinctive enough that it was easy to tell one from the other. The more elegant writing said: _A variety of fruit to make sure Jenny is eating well_. The item 'sugar' had been crossed off and re-added numerous times, with a string of notes from Jenny wanting to know what on Earth Vastra wanted sugar for, which ended in what looked like a very bitter admission of Vastra's plan to try and bake a birthday cake. This back-and-forth concluded with: _you're a terrible baker_ , from Jenny, and a drawing of a smiley face. Clara and Thirteen were still to pick up the sugar, though.

" _Aww_!" Clara exclaimed, "That's actually really cute, they send notes to each other. Why don't we do that? We're married, we should do cute things." A man gave them a funny look as he went past. Lucky the greengrocer didn't hear Clara say that, the greengrocer who promptly passed them two brown paper bags full of fresh fruit and veg.

"You write me a sonnet every year for my birthday," the Doctor pointed out to her, "That's cute. Now, where _is_ the butcher's section? Look how specific it is – she wants every piece of meat from a different place."

"Sweetshop," Clara pointed out, grabbing the Doctor's elbow and steering her back.

"What do you want in a sweetshop for?"

"I fancy some sweets. You still have some money left what you nicked from that bloke, don't you?" Clara questioned.

"Probably…"

"Then great. Plus, Jenny wrote that she wants fruit pastilles," Clara said, pointing it out on the list. So the Doctor sighed and resigned to go where Clara requested, each of them carrying a bag full of veg, Thirteen with the shopping list between her fingers. It was up until she spied the jelly babies on a shelf and decided she wanted as many of them as she could possibly carry that she stayed relatively bored and cold. "Oh, remind me to get some cigarettes."

"With whose money?" the Doctor questioned her.

"I've run out."

"Oh, boo-hoo."

"Oi! I need them."

"You're addicted."

"Took you long enough to notice," she muttered. It was about that point as they bickered about Clara's smoking (again), when Clara's assortment of fruit pastilles, liquorice and humbugs was being weighed by the vendor, that they heard shouting from elsewhere in the market which drew everybody's attention.

"'Ere! That woman's a thief! Someone nab her!" a man was shouting. The Doctor and Clara both strayed away from their sweets to try and get a glimpse of what was going on, "That stuff's prescription only!" he was shouting. An old woman tore past them, carrying a bundle of something in her arms. She had a veil over her face hanging from her hat – like Vastra wore to hide her green scales – but it was only thin, and didn't stop the Doctor from recognising her at once. She didn't know if she had been recognised back, because then the woman had passed them, and behind her were two police officers, dressed all in blue, in pursuit.

"Uh-oh," said the Doctor, immediately dropping the whole bag of produce and turning to Clara, "Catch that woman – I'll distract the cops!" Clara was stunned, and it took her a moment to do anything. "Go, Clara!" and then she, too, dropped her paper bag, leaving apples to pulp themselves on the ground, running off after the woman on the Doctor's instruction. Then the Doctor returned to the sweetshop and lunged for the tub full of aniseed balls.

"Oi! What are you doing!?" the vendor shouted at her.

"Don't worry, I'll pay for them!" and she unscrewed the lid of the jar and threw the aniseed balls out into the middle of the market, which had exactly the kind of clumsy, comedic effect she desired. She tossed a shilling at the vendor and ran off to try and find Clara, the two police officers tumbling over each other.

She promptly found Clara in possession of this certain old woman in a shadowy doorway to one of the other exits.

"What's going on, then?" Clara asked her urgently, holding this woman against the wall. The woman was struggling, but wasn't really a match for telekinesis. Nobody was. Thirteen heard the police approaching, and with Clara and the woman ducked behind a stall selling an array of scarves which hid them from view for a moment, until they passed by. Then she could get back to her interrogation.

"Well, well, well," the Doctor said, crossing her arms. She was annoyed that this woman was a little taller than she, but nonetheless, plenty smug.

"And who might you be?"

"Oh, you know me," the Doctor said, "I believe you owe me a laser spanner." And her jaw dropped.

"I daresay, I can't believe my eyes."

"Uh-huh. Is it with you? Give it back. I don't trust something like that in your hands."

"Since when did you have a laser spanner?" Clara asked Thirteen, letting this woman go when she no longer tried to fight against being restrained. No, she was much too enthralled with the Doctor for that.

"Lost it," she said.

"You're a liar!" the Doctor exclaimed, "I bet you've got it stashed away somewhere."

"Who is she?" Clara asked, "I swear I recognise her…"

"Probably from the wanted posters," the woman said proudly. Clara frowned.

"What were you stealing?" the Doctor asked, and the woman hid her hands behind her back. But the Doctor had always been a better pickpocket than she gave herself credit for, and managed to wrangle it free. It was a glass bottle full of some sort of liquid. She lifted it to her eyes and squinted at it. "What is this?"

"That? The would simply be medicine, my dear. For my heart. I'm a fragile creature these days."

"Fragile my ass," she said. The woman scowled, and the Doctor turned the bottle over so that she could see the label. Then she gasped. " _Heart medicine_!? How stupid do you think I am!? This is nitroglycerin!"

"Yes! For my heart. Call yourself a doctor."

"Oh, your heart, your heart – there's nothing wrong with your damn heart," the Doctor snapped, "What's the game? Detonate this with _my_ spanner? Hmm? Whose house were you going to blow up with this?"

"That's a minuscule amount. It will be divided among the post-boxes. But blowing up a house seems like a marvellous idea…" _Goddammit_ , she thought to herself.

"You're not getting this back."

"Fine. I have other, less reliable places where I can find that sort of… medicine."

"Seriously, Doctor," Clara interrupted again, "Who is this?"

"Clara Oswald," Thirteen began, addressing her wife and speaking very bitterly "May I introduce her light-fingered-ness, Emmeline Pankhurst." And Clara nearly fainted.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Oswald," Pankhurst said, holding out a hand, "Are you a convert to the cause?"

"It's _Mrs_ Oswald," Thirteen corrected on Clara's behalf while Clara, now star-struck, shook Pankhurst's gloved hand, "And sure thing, she believes in votes for women, but I don't think she believes in stealing nitroglycerin to blow up the postal system with. Y'know – _activist_ and _arsonist_ aren't synonyms. And you owe me a laser spanner*."

"That spanner is a valuable resource of the WSPU," Pankhurst argued, "We need it in a certain scheme of my daughter's against Lloyd-George. And what of you? You who was – if you don't mind my pointing out – most definitely a man the last time I saw you? How can I be sure you're even the same person – if not for your lack of finesse and brashness making it clear? You make a mess like writing a signature."

"Then I suppose that's how you know it's me."

"Come to lend your support to the cause?"

"Come to visit some old friends," Thirteen said coolly.

"Emmeline Pankhurst, sweetheart!" Clara hissed at her.

"What an interesting creature you are, changing your face, and this out-of-place accent," Pankhurst said, "To think I hardly believed you all those years ago when you told me you were not of this world."

"No, my world doesn't support blowing each other up."

" _You_ blew up your whole world," Clara told her. She paused.

" _That_ , my darling, is… totally not relevant, okay!?" she argued, and Clara put a hand on her hip and looked at her; her _you're-being-a-hypocrite_ look, so the Doctor protested further in the petty way she sometimes did, "She stole my spanner! My laser spanner!"

"I heard you the first hundred times," Clara said. They began to hear the police making their rounds again.

"I say, do you think you might let me leave? I'm a wanted woman, after all. Lucky they didn't see my face or half of Scotland Yard would be out here. And I have a rather urgent appointment to keep with a private investigator," Pankhurst said.

"Get out of here," the Doctor said, "But just you make sure I don't ever see your face again unless you're bringing me back the technology you stole."

"I'll be sure to avoid any funny, blue boxes."

* _Yes, according to the Tenth Doctor himself in S3 E1 ("Smith and Jones"), Emmeline Pankhurst DID steal his laser spanner_


	82. Greatest Detectives

_Greatest Detectives_

 _Thirteen_

The Doctor had to pick some more pockets while they were out, because they had to re-purchase quite a lot of the fruit and veg they'd bought, and because she'd had to pay for all those aniseed balls she hurled at the police officers. It was a bit annoying, but she always thought stealing was a victimless crime, especially when the people she was stealing from were all rich. She saw herself more like Robin Hood than anything else. It was often very evident where Jenny got her penchant for thievery from, and their time stranded in 1912 was no exception. And, to make up for the morally grey area of robbery, the Doctor had to use a portion of her stolen money to fund Clara's morally grey habit of smoking.

So that was why Clara Oswald now sat leaning over the writing desk in the parlour with a cigarette between her teeth, revelling in the lack of anti-smoking laws, even though the smell kept making Thirteen cough. Generally, Thirteen had sunk into the activity of helping Strax put things where they were meant to be in the pantry and the kitchen, with Strax debating putting in an order of coal from wherever it was they bought from. Upon occasion, Clara would call through and ask her for a suggestion of a word to be supplanted in place of one she wasn't very fond of.

Strax was hauling a sack of potatoes through the kitchen while Thirteen thought of the wittiest way to comment on the irony of a Sontaran carrying potatoes, when the doorbell was rung. Strax having his stubby arms full, and Clara knee-deep in a quagmire of poetry, it fell to the Doctor to go and answer it. It was fair enough; had they not offered to take on the joint-role of maid while they stayed? Answering the door wasn't something she could complain about, when she _had_ agreed to help. When she walked through the parlour she could hear Clara muttering to herself through her little cloud of cigarette smoke.

" _Zenith_ ," she muttered, "What's a zenith, sweetheart?"

"Like a peak. Or, in astronomy, the point right above you. Like the reverse of a focus in an earthquake," she said as she walked past. Clara seemed pleased with that, but the Doctor didn't stick around in that room which was beginning to smell very pungent. Vastra did not care if Clara smoked in the house, though. The most recent medical journals at that time declared smoking to be good for the health, opening up the lungs, or something. Yes, the Doctor thought as she approached the door, the lungs would be very opened up during autopsies to try and figure out why they had turned black and killed themselves.

The Doctor turned the handle to open the heavy front door and was pulled out of her thoughts on tobacco very suddenly by the sight of the one woman who had, less than two hours ago, promised to never show her face to the Doctor again.

"God dammit! You again!" she exclaimed in horror at the sight of Emmeline Pankhurst, her and her veil to hide her face and her bag full of improvised explosives. But going by her expression, Pankhurst had not expected to see the Doctor there.

"I don't see what it is about _my_ presence that makes you believe this sort of language is acceptable," she said coolly, then with a tone of greater annoyance, "I suppose it had to be you, didn't it? Funny. I don't see a trace of your box around here." The Doctor crossed her arms, but did not move to let Pankhurst into 13 Paternoster Row.

"What are you after? Were you following me?"

"I wouldn't follow you if my life depended on it, Doctor. I said I have an important appointment to keep with a private investigator. Or rather, an important appointment to _make_. Upon rumours of the sex of this figure, I supposed they might be sympathetic enough with the cause and familiar enough with myself to allow me the impoliteness of being so presumptuous that they would take the time to see me," Pankhurst, "But it seems it's been you all along. Not that I would have known before, considering I hadn't the foggiest you had swapped your body for another's. You are, then, the world's greatest detective?"

"The-?" the Doctor was surprised, but annoyed at herself for not figuring out that Pankhurst might be around the City of London to see the 'private investigator' they were lodging with. The commotion at the door with the Doctor preventing Pankhurst's entry prompted Strax, followed almost immediately by Clara, to investigate, as the Doctor rubbed her eye in confusion.

"I do say! What is _this_?" Pankhurst asked, pointing something out on the Doctor's hand. Her left hand. "The Doctor has taken a husband, has settled down?"

"Not exactly," Thirteen said, being cautious.

"Who is this woman? I am not to let anyone into the house without them having an appointment, and I am not to let anybody make appointments," Strax said, "Shall I get the bazooka?"

"No, Strax," Thirteen sighed.

"Ah. You want the force gun, then? An excellent choice. Tears your opponent limb from limb from afar – glorious to watch. Or would you rather I fetch the flintlocks to stage a duel?"

"What is this creature?" Pankhurst stared at Strax, who suddenly grew a might offended.

"I might say the same to you," he said.

"Well don't," the Doctor said sharply, "Go and make a tray of tea, would you? We have a guest."

"But Doctor, we are all under orders-"

"Strax," the Doctor interrupted him and gave him an imploring look, at which point he began to grumble and toddle away on his stocky, potato legs, back to the kitchen to do as she asked. The Doctor was allowed to resume her explanation of pseudo-lesbianism after that; "What was I saying? Oh, a husband. No, I haven't a husband. You met Clara this morning."

"I'm thinking that 'lachrymose' is underutilised," Clara said, still thinking of her poems, holding a cigarette between her fingers. She was putting across a real Byronic image. All she needed was a piano and some sort of physical impairment.

"What are you implying?" Pankhurst continued.

"When I was a man, I married a woman," Thirteen began, trying to explain in a way that was the least likely to trigger a bout of homophobia. She highly doubted Vastra would help anybody with homophobic tendencies, though. "And then I changed into a woman as well, and I was still married to a woman."

"How intriguing," Pankhurst mused, "And what is she?"

"Gay," Clara answered for herself, and then after a pause, "Oh, sorry – you mean what species am I? I'm a human. Are you gonna let her in?"

"Yes, let me in, the police are patrolling St Paul's just over there very closely at the moment," she said, "Like I said, I'm wanted. I would be out in the country if I wasn't so desperate to have you investigate, Doctor."

"It's not me you're after," Thirteen said, closing the door behind Pankhurst as she finally let her in, "The 'world's greatest detective.' That's not me."

"Then who _is_?" Pankhurst asked, taking off her hat and veil now that she was indoors, the Doctor locking the door now with its complex, alien locking system. It was at that moment that a sound was emitted from above, a rather terrible one that was becoming sickeningly familiar to the Doctor and Clara. It sounded a little like a velociraptor on a war path, mixed with a spark of female energy.

" _That's_ the world's greatest detective, having an orgasm," Clara said, "You'll have to wait a while to see her. Honestly, I wouldn't try to speak to her right now. It's like _Jurassic Park_ up there. Dibs not telling her she has a guest." The Doctor glared at Clara for that.

"You owe me," Thirteen said to her on her way past, now stuck having to be the one to interrupt Jenny and Vastra. There was no way Strax was going to do it. And Clara had just called dibs, and she was much too stubborn to be bargained out of that. "I'd've thought you'd love to get a glimpse of a naked Silurian."

"That _is_ a fair point…" Clara mused, "But, you know. I'm a married woman."

"Ha, ha."

"What do I owe you?"

"The last fifty years of my life back," the Doctor grumbled, and Clara laughed, as she trudged away towards the stairs and towards those noises they all always tried so hard to ignore. No doubt Clara would have tons of fun questioning Emmeline Pankhurst about the suffragettes. Thirteen marched right up to Madame Vastra's bedroom door and banged her fist very loudly on its surface. "Oi, Holmes and Watson, the pair of you need to put your clothes on pronto."

There was a pause, until Vastra called, "We are not to be disturbed!"

"Well, that's tough, because I've been very disturbed listening to the two of you for the last four days, and now it's time to make up the difference. You have a case."

"A case! _You_ take the case! Take the commission, too!" Vastra called, "I am _busy_."

"It's intriguing," the Doctor said, though she wasn't privy to the details at all, "She'll only talk to the world's greatest detective about it."

"I'm sure you will make a fine enough substitute for the time being."

"She's had to come all the way here incognito because the police want to arrest her."

"Then let them, it's of no business of mine."

"I'll tell Emmeline Pankhurst you don't have the time to see her, then?" the Doctor said. There was a bang in the room.

"Ow! You dropped me!" Jenny Flint exclaimed. The sound of a few different deadbolts being turned on the other side of the door, and then Vastra appeared, just sticking her face through the gap and standing so that the rest of her and the rest of the room was hidden from the Doctor's gaze. Not that the Doctor wanted to see into their room at all.

"Emmeline Pankhurst?" she said, "The suffragette campaigning for women's rights?"

"She's in the parlour, Clara's talking to her."

"The poor woman being left alone having to talk to _your_ wife about poetry and the like! Jenny and I will be down in ten minutes," Vastra declared.

"Ten minutes?" Jenny asked from within the room.

Vastra paused and then told the Doctor curtly her amendment, "Fifteen minutes." Then she made to vanish and shut the door, but the Doctor wedged a foot in it to keep it open.

"A word of advice," she began.

"Hmm?" Vastra prompted.

"Wipe your mouth before you come downstairs. Your lips are wet." And then she went that dark shade of green Silurians went when they blushed, and the Doctor let her disappear into her sex chamber to try and make herself presentable in a quarter of an hour. She half-limped down the stairs on the pain of her foot after Vastra had nearly slammed the door on it.

"What did you do to your foot, wifey?" Clara asked, frowning.

"She shut the door on it!" Thirteen protested, holding it in the air rather than put any weight on it once she had returned. She told Pankhurst, after getting the adequate sympathy she desired from her wife (who pouted and did her best " _Aw_ "), "World's greatest detective up there says she'll be fifteen minutes."

"Really? You got them to stop?" Clara asked.

"They're very excited to meet Mrs Pankhurst. Anyway. I've decided what you owe me; you owe me a date," Thirteen declared, "And _I_ get to pick when it is and where it is and what we do. You're at my mercy."

"That's either romantic _or_ you're threatening to execute me," Clara said.

"I wonder if an execution _could_ be romantic…"

"Let's not try and find out, eh? But, fine, a date. Although I withdraw my offer to help you find a solution to your tampon problem now," Clara said.

"Clara! I need your help with that!"

"What problem might that be?" Pankhurst interrupted them.

"The Doctor needs to think of a way to punish some girls who were throwing tampons around the school canteen. She's a teacher now," Clara said.

"You? A teacher?" Pankhurst said, "A teacher of what?"

"History at the moment," the Doctor answered begrudgingly, "Clara teaches literature."

"A literary mind! There are not enough of those in the female population, I do worry. Were you saying you were from the future? I do marvel at what the education system might be like then…" And so for the next fifteen minutes Clara merely told Emmeline Pankhurst some uninteresting facts about the surge of academies in Twenty-First Century Great Britain. The Doctor had little to say on the matter, and just hung around to stop Clara from saying anything she oughtn't to. But it had been a long time, and even in the company of one such as Pankhurst, Clara had learnt decades ago what she should and should not say.

Eventually, Jenny descended from the stairs. This was the first time the Doctor had seen that girl fully dressed to an acceptable standard the whole time they had been staying. It was practically a miracle – when she heard her walking down the stairs she had averted her eyes out of sheer habit.

"Is Vastra going to make her do that one-word test?" Clara asked.

"Oh, no, she says no such test is required of Mrs Pankhurst," Jenny said, curtseying to Pankhurst.

"Why not? Because she's famous? Famous people can lie," Clara argued, "The Doctor lies all the time."

"I think she should make her do the test," the Doctor muttered, "She's a rogue. Anything could happen. We caught her trying to steal nitroglycerin in the market."

"Well, maybe… the lady of the house might change her mind, then," Jenny said, then to Pankhurst, "Right this way, ma'am."

"I wouldn't shake her hand if I were you, who knows _where_ it's been," the Doctor muttered a few words of advice to Pankhurst, who was puzzled, but did not question it. Especially when Jenny kept her hands behind her back.

"The _lady of the house_ – I wish you called _me_ the lady of the house," Clara said quietly to Thirteen as they followed the other two up the stairs to Vastra's conservatory she always kept full of tropical plants.

"I'd rather not. I hope Strax hurries up with that tea," she mumbled.

And there was Vastra, actually clothed as well (for once), and sitting in one of the chairs in the very foliage-heavy room that was always kept much hotter than the Doctor would like. She did not know how Jenny coped with such heat, living in a time period before antiperspirant. Now, maybe the Doctor was in a little bit of a mood with Madame Vastra for all the persistent sex-noises she was forced to endure, but this was still Vastra's house, and Vastra's livelihood, and though the Doctor was not her biggest fan, Emmeline Pankhurst was still _Vastra's_ client. All Thirteen had done was let her into the house. Pankhurst would have shown up regardless of the fiasco in the market that morning; unless, of course, the police had caught her without the Doctor's timely intervention. So she decided to be polite and stand in the corner, beneath the shadow of one of Vastra's many plants (some of which were long-extinct and had been given to Vastra by the Doctor herself, no less), to observe.

"Are you going to do the one-word test?" Clara put the same question to Vastra herself now, after Vastra – complete with her veil to hide her reptilian features – had invited Pankhurst to sit in the empty seat opposite her in the dense thicket of the conservatory. The Doctor thought Vastra always looked like the ghost in _The Woman in Black_ when she had her veil on (a comment Clara found funny.)

"I apologise for the intrusion, my dear – but I fear this matter is much too complex to be given in one-word rhetoric," Pankhurst said. Through her veil, Vastra met Clara's eyes.

"She says the matter is too complex."

"You made my Echo do the one-word test."

"Of course, your Echo was on the prowl looking for the Doctor, and we hadn't a clue who she was. And that was when he was in his isolation, I'm sure you'll recall?" that question was addressed to the Doctor directly, but the Doctor did not reply to Vastra.

"Drop it, Coo," she whispered softly to Clara, and Clara did, crossing her arms and leaning sulkily on the wall to watch. She kept getting irritated by a leaf hanging down at just the right height to tickle the top of her head, and every time she absently swatted it, only for it to swing back to its same position, the Doctor smiled slightly. But that observation was neither here nor there – more important things were afoot.

"Then, pray tell, what are the details of this case you bring before me?" Vastra asked, leaning forwards, intrigued. She had her glass of blood on the table next to her, which she often pointed out to intimidate whomever she was questioning. She didn't do that this time, though she took a few sips from it.

"I worry about the integrity of the Women's Social and Political Union at this time," Pankhurst explained, "If we were not so careful about who we allowed entry, I would think an imposter in the ranks was responsible. It's a principle of the WSPU to remove any member who begins to question the legitimacy of the cause – anybody who does not believe wholeheartedly in equal rights for women."

"Understandable," Vastra nodded along. She was never normally so accommodating to clients. The Doctor was only half listening to what they were talking about; the rest of her attention was taken up by Clara. Which was funny, because Clara wasn't even doing anything. The Doctor just found her very captivating sometimes.

"Well, of course, there are those of us who simply cannot stomach the activism, so we are quite used to losing members, often at the same rate of which we gain new ones. But, as of recently, there has been a sudden halt on the amount of people joining the cause in its London branches, and an increase in those abandoning it. And more interestingly, the matter was brought to my attention by the husband of one of my ex-converts, who claimed I had manipulated his wife beyond recognisability, and no longer was he going to pledge his allegiance to the suffrage cause either," Pankhurst continued. And now the Doctor was growing intrigued.

"Manipulated in what fashion?" Vastra asked. As they spoke, Strax finally made his appearance with this tea he had been making. It had taken him a while, but maybe he'd tried to boil the kettle with a flamethrower, or something.

"It is beyond me, I'm afraid, I am less involved recently with the groundwork," she said, "But this is an issue that appears to be permeating higher into the ranks. My own daughter Christabel has been expressing some doubts, and an unusual distance in her daily presence. It is worrying. She used to be the strongest warrior of all of us in pursuit of votes for women. Yet I am too notorious throughout London to do any of my own investigations – and alas, deductions are not my area of expertise, so I did intend to seek out the basis for the rumours in the city that London's greatest detective is a woman, in the hope she may be sympathetic enough to aid me. For whatever fee, of course."

"Have you considered the prospect of a discreet smear campaign in the workplaces of these women, possibly leading to them abandoning the Union?" Vastra inquired. The Doctor tugged on one of Clara's crossed arms so that Clara let her arms drop to the side, meaning the Doctor could subtly hold her hand behind their backs', standing against her after Clara flashed a smile her way. With her free hand Clara took a cup of tea from Strax, but the Doctor was growing too invested to notice when he asked her if she would like one as well.

"I have heard of no such smear campaign, no worse than the newspapers normally report," Pankhurst said, helping herself to milk and sugar in her teacup.

"May I ask – you said you didn't personally know the majority of these suffragettes? But I assume the most dedicated ones are the ones _you_ are acquainted with?"

"You may be right in that assumption."

"Then, that is the thing most intriguing. But would it not also mean they are the ones most susceptible to merely being convinced otherwise?"

"Ah, but I have met one of them, you see – a promising girl, Maud Watts*," Pankhurst explained, "She is vastly different. You would have to see it for yourself, but her husband soon shouted me out of the house upon recognising me. I daresay he would not recognise you, though."

"He would certainly remember me if he had met me before," Vastra said.

"Believe me, ma'am, I am very aware that people often leave the cause when they take issue with our methods, but this is something different. I fear the husband of that other girl who accused me of manipulation is in the very vein you and I should be looking into, but as for myself, I must seek a refuge in London to keep away from the police," she said.

"Is there anything these women have in common at all, aside from their connection to the WSPU?" Vastra inquired, "Otherwise I am afraid I find myself short on leads."

"I can think of nothing," Pankhurst said apologetically, "Whatever information on them you like, though, I can provide, I have with me the WSPU membership book, an account of all those valuable women helping the cause."

"May I see this book?" Vastra asked, and Pankhurst fumbled around for a moment until she drew one such notebook, very small and easily concealed, from her pocket, and handed it to Vastra. "This appears to be in code, Mrs Pankhurst."

"Of course it is. You cannot really think I would carry around all the information of every suffragette under my wing _not_ written in a code?" Pankhurst asked, and the Doctor saw Vastra smile a little through the veil. Clearly, Emmeline Pankhurst was a woman after Madame Vastra's own heart. Pankhurst quickly explained how the code worked, which she would most likely not have done were she speaking to a male private eye, and Vastra puzzled over the ones Pankhurst had marked as those who had curiously left the Union.

"Jenny, my dear – be a darling and fetch the map, won't you?" Vastra bid her wife, who vanished away for a few moments to do exactly this.

"It's _Stepford Wives_ , then, isn't it?" Clara began while Jenny was briefly vacant, still holding the Doctor's hand, "Y'know, where they all get replaced by robots and made into ideal housewives."

"Well if that be the case, it will certainly be wrapped up very quickly," Vastra commented.

"Robots?" Pankhurst asked.

"A mechanical person," the Doctor answered, "The word comes from the Czech – it used to mean 'slave.' I don't think that kind of science fiction has really entered the general consciousness yet, though." Jenny wheeled 'the map' into the room then, which was a large and very detailed map of inner London pinned onto a drawing board. Vastra stood up and, with a bit of the thespian about her, threw off the veil in her usual over-dramatic fashion.

"I say!" Pankhurst exclaimed, "You are – you – what? I should not have given my WSPU contacts to one such as-"

"Silence your prejudices, there is a case to solve, Mrs Pankhurst," Vastra said, "This is a matter close to home for me. I may be a woman, but being an unregistered _non-human_ citizen, I will never be enfranchised. My wife, however, may soon enjoy that liberty on both of our behalves', thanks to you and your efforts."

"Another of you married to a woman?" Pankhurst questioned them, "Are all of you unworldly types of that persuasion?"

"Not really," said Thirteen, "Just the usual amount."

"I suggest, though, if you have any tendency towards bigotry of that kind – where you might impose upon somebody who they can and cannot love – that you escape this house very quickly, because while I shall still investigate this case, I am also very capable of calling Scotland Yard and making them aware of your whereabouts," Vastra told her coolly, "We have no such WSPU affiliations to worry us about their presence, and I have a few friends who frequently ask me for help among the detectives. Now, allow me to get on with my job, because I have noticed something very interesting about the addresses of these women.

"While they share no common workplace and even a few differences of class and marital status, they are _all_ from this same quarter of Lambeth," Vastra said, "I would suggest combing the area. There may be more affected women than just those in the ranks of the Union, if you say recruitment has utterly halted, and perhaps even men whose alteration is more easily concealed."

"You don't need to comb the area – any large building should give you clue enough," Thirteen said, "Whatever's going on needs space, and there's space in abundance in some of those factories and warehouses."

"There is an abandoned munitions factory in that district of Lambeth," Strax contributed, "I remember paying note of it, because I wondered if they were making any armaments of good quality when I saw people shuttling deliveries in and out."

"Impossible," said Vastra, "You're thinking of the Attaway Arms Company – that company went bankrupt soon after the Boer War ended, nearly ten years ago now. The building is yet to be leased out to anybody."

"Then I guess you've got your answer," Thirteen shrugged, "The Attaway Arms Company it is."

"Excellent idea," Strax declared.

"You're not coming," Thirteen told him, "Especially not if they're growing clones, or something. I'd hate for you to feel some sort of kinship and try to liberate them all."

"Doctor, allow me to express objection to your constant besmirching of the system of reproductive cloning. Especially when you yourself have a daughter of a machine."

"No," Thirteen said shortly, completely ignoring his very legitimate point about _her_ Jenny.

"But speaking to this Watts Mrs Pankhurst is so worried about may lead to more clues about what, exactly, they are doing, without putting us in the most immediate line of danger," Vastra argued.

"The domestic approach _is_ usually a good tactic, sweetheart," Clara said, Clara who was still holding her hand.

"Then it's settled. We'll split up. Jenny and I will go to the Attaway Arms Company – she's the best at covert ops – and Vastra and Clara can go speak to the Stepford wife."

"I thought you weren't interested in taking this case, Doctor?" Vastra challenged her.

"Before I heard all the juicy details," the Doctor said.

"Very well. Strax, you'll stay here and watch Mrs Pankhurst, give her the safe refuge she desires for the time being. Nobody will find her here, most certainly not the police," Vastra told him.

"But ma'am! You are going to a munitions factory!"

"Yes! And the Doctor is right about you not being allowed to come. Now, now, let me gather my things. The game, my friends, is on."

* _The name "Maud Watts" is, in fact, a reference to the film_ Suffragette _that came out in 2015; the main character isn't based on a real suffragette like Emily Davison and Emmeline Pankhurst are, and is played by Carey Mulligan, whom you all know as Sally Sparrow. Carey Mulligan is like, a major activist, she's pretty great and underappreciated if you ask me. Also it's a fucking good film, it has Helena Bonham Carter and Meryl Streep in it as well; you should all go watch it and learn some stuff about the history of women's rights – even you Americans had Pankhurst coming around and campaigning for the right to vote in the States_


	83. Desperate Housewives

_Desperate Housewives_

 _Clara_

"Maud Watts, Maud Watts…" Clara mused, walking at Madame Vastra's heels down a street in Lambeth after they had gotten out of a taxi carriage, "I could swear I've heard that name before…"

"I doubt it. Why should you have?" Vastra said, "A random housewife in 1912 and you are all of a sudden a connoisseur." The rain that had descended earlier whilst Clara and the Doctor had been in Spitalfields Market had come down quite heavily for a while, but had since retreated and in its place a dense fog with the remnants of chimney smoke had emerged. It was gloomy and hard to see anything, and Clara did not think the cigarette had in her hand was helping with the smog at all. Soon enough, though, Earth would be rendered uninhabitable; that was why her sister had grown up on Saturn. She doubted that a few stray cigarettes would do much more harm to the atmosphere.

"So, this Silurian mating season…" Clara began as Vastra led them down the streets to get to whatever encoded address they had scrounged from Emmeline Pankhurst.

"What of it? It's a biological unavoidability. Perhaps you humans are quickly on the way to developing contraceptives – but we Silurians, as there are so few of us awoken from our sleep beneath the ground, are none so lucky. I am only glad to have a wife. Could you imagine if I didn't? The kinds of people I might find myself with…"

"You're not going to try and sleep with _me_ , are you?" Clara asked, and Vastra stopped, and looked down at her through the veil, displeased.

"Why on Earth would you think I would do that?" she questioned.

"Well, you know…"

"I did just say, I have a wife – Jenny and I have been happy together for many years, now. Quite like you and the Doctor."

"I know that-"

"So what in the world could possess you to make an assumption on my faithfulness?" Vastra persisted, and Clara fumbled her words, now painted into a corner because Vastra knew exactly what Clara was getting at, and just wanted to force Clara to suffer through the shame of saying her impure thoughts aloud. "And with you, of all the people?"

"Because… well, because… because I'm pretty, okay?" Clara finally gave up, a slave to her own vanity sometimes. She saw a smirk on Vastra's lips, and Vastra continued to walk again.

"Ah, of course, how could I forget? Nobody can resist the great womaniser Clara Oswald when she is in town," Vastra commented, "I am sure ladies' corsets just throw themselves onto the ground at her feet when _the Phantom_ approaches."

"Very funny…" Clara muttered, taking a particularly long drag on her cigarette to try and get as much as possible out of it before they arrived at the Watt household and she would have to stub it out. "You support the suffragettes, then?"

"Votes for women! Why wouldn't I?" Vastra said, "I am a woman myself. There's always the possibility that my veil could trick the guards at the ballot box – maybe one day I will have my say after all. If not, Jenny will vote for both of us, which is quite a lot better than _neither_ of us having a say in how the country is run. These laws were written by men for men – and men are, you know, in the acutest minority. But I do wonder, you see, at Mrs Pankhurst's claims that recruitment has halted."

"It implies that it's not just suffragettes being targeted by… whatever this is," Clara said, following Vastra's train of thought.

"Precisely," she said, "Whomever this is, is not merely an enemy of equal rights, but an enemy of all womankind, and they are going to very great lengths to make a subservient population. More lengths than those fossils in parliament have the brains to go to, I would say."

"Funny, that."

"What is?"

"You calling somebody else a fossil," she remarked, and thought she caught a slight laugh from Vastra. Clearly, the intrigue of her newest case was keeping her in high spirits. "This all seems like more effort to go to than just giving women the right to vote in the first place, don't you think?"

"Hmm, well, people _are_ surprisingly stubborn sometimes, but I see your point. The movement _has_ been gaining momentum; at this point there are possibly more people in favour of new legislation than opposed, if only for reasons of keeping the peace," Vastra contemplated, "Regardless, this is number ninety-one." She nodded at a house, a narrow terrace sandwiched between a dozen other narrow terraces on either side. The garden, though, was surprisingly well-populated, and there were fresh clothes hanging out to dry on a washing line. "All of these flowers seem like an awful lot of work. Especially in a working class household."

"Planting a new flowerbed is exactly the type of thing an 'ideal housewife' might get up to," Clara said, following Vastra, who held the gate open as they approached the front door.

"But I do wonder where it is they've got the money. A house like this, I would be expecting both of them to work," Vastra said, "This grows more intriguing by the minute." She rapped her knuckles on the door, and they heard fumbling coming from within.

"Don't _you_ get it, just – sit down," a man's voice said, grumpily.

"But that is a woman's job," they heard a girl say within, Vastra and Clara exchanging an uneasy look with each other. Promptly, though, the door was opened, and by a young man, no less.

"Who are you? Not more Panks?" he asked coldly, "I've had enough of you coming round here. She's not interested anymore."

"Panks, sir? No," Vastra said, "I am a detective. One of London's best. I would be in charge of all of Scotland Yard if they would admit a woman into their ranks – but I make do with the most perplexing of private cases. I have been commissioned to look into a recent change of heart regarding your wife."

"Commissioned by who?"

"By _whom_. And I cannot reveal that, Mr Watts. Client confidentiality. But I have a noted interest in the curiosities around Lambeth, recently – I might I compliment you on the flowers in the garden?" Vastra said, "I noticed they are almost identical to the bright flowers in the majority of every other garden in this area." Clara had not noticed that. A clue that Vastra was correct about the far-reach of whatever faceless enemy they were after?

"Maud did that," he said.

"As I suspected," Vastra nodded, "May we come in? This is my assistant, Mrs Oswald."

"Hello," Clara smiled.

"We won't take long, I assure you."

"I'd like to see your credentials," he said, crossing his arms.

"I am not a suffragette here to try and bring your wife back to that cause, Mr Watts," Vastra said, but regardless produced a business card, and Clara was very surprised when it was legitimate and not psychic paper. Well, she supposed, scales aside, Madame Vastra _was_ a real detective.

"Vastra?" he asked, "An unusual name."

"I'm from the colonies," she answered shortly, "Feel free to keep that card." And, squinting at the writing on it, he stepped aside and let them in, where Vastra continued to peer around for clues in the room. "I have a few questions for you first, though, Mr Watts. Now, I have on good authority that you accused Emmeline Pankhurst of manipulating your wife."

"Aye, she did."

"On what grounds?"

"As soon as she joined that lot – my Maud hasn't been the same," he said, "I don't know what's happened to her, but I don't doubt that those Panks are to blame. And I thought it was alright, too, mind you – not that I'd tell most of my fellows, but what harm can come of letting women have the right to vote? I thought they had a point. But if they're doing things like _this_ …" They were in the kitchen, Maud in the living room.

"This kitchen is spotless, isn't it?" she said to Mr Watts.

"She's up half the night cleaning; I tells her to come back to bed, you know, there's no need for it, I've got hands meself."

"You most certainly do."

"But she insists, I swear it, and nowadays I let her get on. She gets agitated if I try to stop her from cleaning and washing."

"Does your wife have a job?" Clara asked.

"She did have one, but she quit," he said, "Another thing I blame the Panks for. Putting ideas into a woman's head that she oughtn't work for a man – but working for a man for little is better than working for nobody for nothing, surely? It's a pain to admit it, miss, but I can scarcely keep us afloat with my own earnings, that was why Maud got the job to begin with. Good of her to marry me, I think – for love, it was, not status."

"A job where?"

"A secretary, ma'am."

"A lot of the women in this area – do they work in a similar place?"

"Not that I know of," he answered. "Look, are you going to fix my wife?"

"I assure you, sir, if I have the opportunity to help her then I will," Vastra promised, "But at the moment, my colleague and I need to confer, so would you kindly wait for us in the next room for a few minutes? My area of investigation cannot be compromised, you understand." He begrudgingly did what she requested; Mr Watts didn't seem to like spending much time with his wife. When he was gone, Clara closed the door and Vastra lifted her veil and immediately went to examine a window box full of unusual flowers. She lifted the entire thing up.

"What's with the flowers?" Clara asked.

"The flowers appear to be the key," she said, " _A_ key, at least, beginning with the gardens themselves. Don't you think this is a beautiful flower? The sort of thing you might want in a romantic bouquet from the Doctor?"

"The Doctor doesn't really do flowers," Clara said, "But, I suppose they're pretty?" They were the colour of pale peaches with the edges of their petals tinged black, and grew in the most unusual shape, like a trio of rose-heads pushed together into one flower, yet all sitting within a funnel-shape like that of a daffodil, only larger. "Are they alien?"

"No more alien than I am," Vastra said, "This is _crocus asperata_ , a rare genus of flower that grew only in India until some point in the last century when the British trampled them all in their conquest, I assume. A tragedy for the world of flora. Or so it was thought, yet here it is, growing in the window-box of a brainwashed woman, isn't that curious? The ones in the garden are not so rare, but are indeed arranged almost exactly like the ones in every other garden for the last four streets we walked down."

"Meaning what? The flowers are mind-controlling people?"

"That would be ridiculous," she said, putting the window-box down on the ledge above the sink where it belonged. "But gardening is certainly an activity worthy of any perfect housewife. Have to keep up appearances, you know, though I thought that sort of behaviour died off somewhat in the last decade since Victoria's death. Anyway. Do you have any thoughts?"

"Yeah – why do you know all this stuff?" Clara asked.

"It's my job," she said, "The thrill from collecting knowledge is almost as fulfilling as the thrill of a good case, such as this one. Now, we shall talk to Mrs Watts and see what she has to say for her choice in flowers." Vastra pulled the veil back down and opened the door, Clara following, feeling decidedly like a tag-along. But she had to admit, she _was_ enjoying it. Vastra seemed somewhat less stumped than the Doctor, the Doctor who only ever seemed to put the clues together at the last moment when it was almost too late. "Mrs Watts, I assume?" Vastra asked the young woman sitting in the next room. There was only one spare chair, which Vastra took, Clara going to lean on the back of it and observe.

"Yes, ma'am," Maud said politely, standing up and curtseying to them when they entered the room, "Would you like some tea? Cakes? Biscuits? Bread? Any drink at all?"

"We're alright, thanks," Clara said.

"Are you sure? The slightest thing wouldn't be any trouble at all. After all, I feel more comfortable in the kitchen as opposed to in here, I'm useless in here. But the kitchen? That's the only room of this house that really feels like home," Maud said, sitting back down. Clara raised her eyebrows. This sounded like some sort of joke. Mr Watts grumbled something and proceeded to leave, which suited Clara and Vastra just fine.

"Now, Mrs Watts, I was walking here and I did notice the eccentricity of your flowers in the front garden," Vastra said, "A job well done, in my opinion."

"Ah, and as a woman, I'm sure you know all about flowers. We are better at noticing the pretty things in life, while the men are working and making those silly laws," she said, "My flowers certainly are pretty."

"Flowers _are_ a cultural symbol of femininity," Clara said, "Giving flowers, wearing flowers…"

"It's the _giving_ I am most interested in – you have some very noticeable specimens, I saw, in your window-box in the kitchen. I was wondering where _I_ might get some flowers of that sort?" Vastra asked. The smile on Maud Watt's face, which was wide and creepy and failed to be warm and welcoming, twitched. She was very unusual, and when Clara looked into her eyes it was like nothing was looking back, as though she were empty.

"Which flowers?"

"In your kitchen, my dear."

"Yes, they certainly are pretty."

"Where did you get them?"

"Get them? Why, I… they certainly are pretty."

"Do you think they may have been a gift?"

"They certainly are pretty. A gift, yes. I suppose they must be. Pretty things. I can't quite recall," she said. Malfunctioning robot, much?

"Are you familiar with Mrs Emmeline Pankhurst?" Vastra asked, and Maud's vacant smile disappeared.

"She is no friend of mine. She is hardly a woman at all, if she can't see things for how they're supposed to be. The men in charge, and we as their dutiful servants and wives, the mothers of future generations of powerful men and well-behaved women," she said. This was definitely an unusual thing for a woman who had once been a suffragette to be preaching.

"Have you met her?"

"She briefly captivated me, but I changed my mind about all that nonsense."

"I must say I agree with you about it being nonsense, but what, precisely, changed your mind?" Vastra asked.

"I saw reason, ma'am."

"Did anybody help you to 'see reason'?"

"Just what, exactly, are you implying?"

"Nothing at all, I am simply asking questions," Vastra said, "Trying to pin down your change of heart."

"Are you going to accuse me of a crime?"

"I highly doubt it. Why? Have you committed one?" Vastra asked, and Maud did not reply. For a submissive housewife, talking to her sure was like trying to get blood out of a stone. "Perhaps this is an act, Mrs Watts. You are to feign becoming disillusioned with the cause of women's rights, if only to strike from within, and rip out the heart of the patriarchy itself."

"I say! To come into my own home and accuse me of such a thing!" she shrieked, getting incredibly agitated now. Her shouting made her husband come back into the room.

"She is a fragile thing, detective," Mr Watts said, "I did say."

"She is not remotely fragile!" Vastra exclaimed, to Clara's surprise, "That woman is a double-agent! One of Mrs Pankhurst's closest brethren, and she had been put here to convince everybody she has abandoned it, if only to do something all the more heinous without suspicion." Maud stared at her, and Vastra, clearly sensing something Clara did not, continued, "For all we know, the girl is an assassin. A sleeper agent. Sent here to, in fact, kill you, my good man. All on the will of Mrs Pankhurst herself! Death to all men, is that not right, Maud, dear? Is that not your philosophy? Have I, the finest detective in London not rattled your cage enough!?" During this last bout of accusations, Mrs Watts had begun yelling over and over again that it was not true at all, none of what she was saying was true.

And then, when Vastra finished, standing up to make her point better, Mrs Watts – who had also stood up – collapsed backwards onto the floor. Completely unconscious. It had all happened very quickly, and Clara was sure she was missing something.

"Maud!" Mr Watts exclaimed, going to see to her, but Vastra made a move to hold him back, and so Clara grabbed his arm. He wasn't particularly strong.

"Now, now, she is simply suffering, I fear, from the female disease. A case of hysteria, that's all. My colleague Clara, she is married to a doctor, she knows a thing or two about this affliction, having recovered from it herself many times. She will be in good hands, but I advise you to let us examine her while she is not awake to protest."

"Maud…" he whispered sadly, but Clara shepherded him out of the room and shut the door.

"What was _that_ all about? Did she short-circuit?" Clara asked quietly.

" _Short-circuit_? She isn't a robot, Clara," Vastra said.

"Are you sure? She definitely looked like she was malfunctioning."

"My sense of smell hasn't let me down yet, and I detect that this woman is entirely human. She is not a robot, nor a clone," Vastra said.

"You made her faint."

"My investigation was concluded, there was nothing more she could tell us, and I wanted to see how she would react. Exactly as I predicted, in fact," Vastra said, going to crouch down next to Mrs Watts, "As soon as I saw _these_ , I knew we wouldn't get anything from her." She pushed back Maud's hair to reveal some marks on the skin just behind her ear.

"They look like burns," Clara said.

"They _are_ burns, there's one on the other side, as well," Vastra explained, "They are exactly like the burns one gets from electroconvulsive therapy, a barbaric practice, though the shape of these electrodes is distinctly not of human design."

"They're in the wrong place, though," Clara pointed out, "Shock therapy attaches the electrodes to each temple. Surely it wouldn't work there?"

"Well, the aim of that kind of treatment is to life low-mood, an alleviant for depression, but I highly doubt that is what happened to Mrs Watts," Vastra said, "I fear she has been re-educated, _brainwashed_. Didn't you see her reaction about the flowers? They must be a gift of goodwill from whatever hypnotist has done this to her, to her and to all the other women in this quarter of Lambeth. Then it will be all of Lambeth, and all of London, until the female population is completely stunted."

"They're electrocuting and brainwashing women _just_ to stop them getting the right to vote?" Clara questioned.

"A fair point, but the real question is who _are_ this 'they'? This is no human technology or methodology. A hypnotist, perhaps, may plant subconscious suggestions, but they would not need to maim in this way to do so," Vastra said, standing back up, "There is yet another layer to this mystery; why target all of the women and not _just_ those troublemakers like Pankhurst? Pankhurst said herself that the most important members of her brood have yet to suffer effects like these. Probably because they live carefully, on the edge – if the police cannot catch them, what hope do these mysterious strangers have? They are taking all the women they can get their hands on and releasing them back into the world like this, docile."

"Then what do the extinct flowers mean?"

"A clue to their origin?"

"But the flowers are from Earth, you said," Clara reminded her.

"Quite so. I admit, I don't have that answer just yet," Vastra said, "But I have found another clue, a final one, don't you see those shoes on her feet? They are awfully small."

"Well, she's a small woman," Clara shrugged, " _My_ feet are small. What's it got to do with anything?"

"Those work-boots over there are the same size," she pointed, "Women's boots."

"Her husband said she used to have a job."

"Yes, and since this change came about her, she hasn't needed to wear them, but this is the most interesting thing," she said, going and picking up one of the shoes very carefully, and turning them over to show their dirty soles to Clara, "This powder on the bottom? I smelt it as soon as we came into the house: gunpowder. Where might we find gunpowder?"

"In the Attaway Arms Company… which is exactly where the Doctor and Jenny have gone!"


	84. Subliminal Messages

_Subliminal Messages_

 _Thirteen_

Whose stupid idea had it been to go right into the factory that was being used by their enemies without doing any reconnaissance, having any weapons, or even so much as a plan if things all went south? _Oh, yeah_ , the Doctor thought to herself, _mine_. Maybe if she hadn't been so stubborn and moody earlier she wouldn't now be strapped to a chair with electrodes on her head watching a very large television screen that was suspended in front of her. It was funny, because she was sure that televisions hadn't been invented at all in 1912. Talking movies hadn't even been invented in 1912. Had ordinary movies been invented in 1912? Did anything of the world even exist until after 1912? Her mind was foggy. It was that damned amnesia that always cropped up because of that pesky brain damage she'd suffered after her traumatic regeneration. Even when she woke up from sleeping she sometimes forgot her wife's name for a few minutes. And thinking of her wife, what _was_ her name…?

"There's no use fighting," said a female voice from somewhere the Doctor could not see, because she was strapped very tightly to that chair with leather restraints and belts pulled across her forehead and her arms and legs. She couldn't look either side of her. "We always succeed. Just let the images sink into your brain." She could not tell what the 'images' she was being made to watch _were_. It was a lot of bright lights that gave her a headache, and she didn't really understand what was happening, or why it was a woman who should be speaking to her.

"Who are you?" she managed to ask. It was perfectly possible that she knew exactly what was going on, and she had just forgotten. There was a laugh.

"Don't you worry about that. Just pay attention to the screen…" said the voice. The Doctor could barely even close her eyes and blink – it was all a lot like _A Clockwork Orange_ , she thought. She hadn't turned into a psychopath, had she?

Because she couldn't very well do anything about the bright lights being shown to her, _or_ escape her chair (which was kind of comfy) she resolved that, to the best of her abilities, she was going to have to think back and figure out what, exactly, had happened…

She and Jenny Flint had split up, she was sure, away from Madame Vastra and her own Nameless Wife. They had most definitely been discussing what to do next with Emmeline Pankhurst, when Vastra had resolved that it would be better to interrogate a disillusioned ex-suffragette before rushing off into danger. And the Doctor had not listened, because she hadn't been keen on being told what to do by Vastra, so she had decided they had better just go off to some allegedly-derelict old munitions factory where Strax had noticed some suspicious activity instead. And _then_ what had happened…?

"When's your birthday?" she remembered asking Jenny Flint as they walked.

"'Scuse me?"

"Your birthday, when is it?"

"Next week," Jenny answered, "Why?"

"Oh, no reason, I just couldn't help but notice the notes you and the wife wrote to each other on your shopping list. Since Strax took us to do the shopping," Thirteen explained, "All that fuss over a bag of sugar."

"I didn't realise Strax had taken you shopping…" she said uneasily. Clearly, she wasn't a fan of the thought the Doctor had been reading over some private notes between a married couple.

"I thought they were sweet," the Doctor said, and Jenny blushed slightly, "The thing about how she worries about you not eating enough fruit, and that Strax had better make sure to buy extra mince because ' _cottage pie is Jenny's favourite_.'" She copied Vastra's English accent when she spoke, which amused Jenny, because it was a pretty accurate impression of Vastra – who, on occasion, was capable of sounding rather posh and haughty.

"That was quite good," she said.

"Ah, thanks, I'm good at accents. Not like my daughter, have you heard her? No matter _what_ accent she tries to do she manages to be racist by accident," Thirteen shook her head, "It's better for all of us if she carries on pretending she's from the fancy bit of London." Jenny had been leading the way to this Attaway Arms Company – the Doctor remembered that now.

"Did she really refuse to use the TARDIS to come and get you?"

"Yeah," said the Doctor, annoyed, "Lucky she did, though. Strax wouldn't've let Pankhurst into the house otherwise, you wouldn't have this case to investigate. Besides… it _has_ been good having a break from… home. You know, teaching, it's… it can be exhausting is all I mean. There's a lot of marking. I don't know anything about marking. I think I give them too high grades, anyway…"

"Look, Doctor," Jenny began, sounding embarrassed, "I'm sorry about all the… noise…"

"Don't mention it. It's penance, I figure – everybody's _always_ complaining about _Nameless Wife_ -" (strain as she might, in the present moment, Thirteen could still not remember the name of the woman who lived in her most positive thoughts and her happiest memories) "-and I making too much noise. It's been that way for, like, half a century. Just desserts, y'know? Plus, all this stuff is _way_ too interesting to stay mad at somebody."

"So do you think it's robots, then?" Jenny asked.

"Whatever it is going on, I doubt it's human engineering at all," Thirteen said, "Any change like that in a person has to have some pretty deep roots. But that makes everything totally weirder, because why would a bunch of aliens care so much about women getting the vote? How would it affect them?"

"Maybe it's an invasion? They… kidnap women, keep them locked up in that factory, and replace them? Sleeper agents. One day they'll have replaced everybody without us noticing," Jenny said.

"Just like in that movie…" the Doctor mused.

"What happens?"

"These aliens come to Earth, and pretend to be pets and people and stuff, in disguise, and nobody even notices. It always freaked me out how much it reminds me of myself, almost like they _knew_ me. What's it called, what's it called…. Oh, _Lilo & Stitch_, that's right. Over ninety years til it hits the screens, though. Don't hold your breath waiting for it. Where's this factory?"

"Just over there," Jenny said, pointing. They were walking down a road, on the left of which were more terraces, and on the right of which was a rather desolate patch of wasteland. No doubt something had been demolished recently, and it was soon going to be replaced with something else. She couldn't remember London geography well enough to try and identify for herself what these streets might be like in a hundred years. And there the factory was, too, with a big painted advertisement for the _Attaway Arms Company_ fading and peeling off the wall facing them.

"I guess Strax is right; for an empty factory it sure does have a lot of carts outside," she noted. It did, as well, large covered cars and dark carriages alike. "A perfect fleet for a discreet kidnapping spree. Now, what's the way to get inside, do you reckon?"

"Probably posing as one of their victims, but it depends how tight their records are," Jenny said, "Course, they can't be nicking people for long, otherwise the papers'd be full've mysterious vanishings."

"In and out in a couple of hours – sounds efficient. They've gotta have a system, a list, or something, we couldn't show up. We'd just be stowaways. We're gonna have to sneak in," the Doctor said, "What's the betting a place like that doesn't produce much sewage?"

" _Sewage_?"

"Marvellous invention, the London sewage system," the Doctor said, leading them away from the factory down the road and into that stretch of wasteland where she had, in fact, spotted a large pipe, "Of course, you wouldn't have been born yet in 1858 when the Great Stink happened, and Vastra didn't come out of hibernation until '63. I was there, you know, the whole thing was, uh… well, people would blame the hot summer weather, but there was a particular incident to do with the incubation of these alien eggs. They all hatched at once and _boy_ do the inside of those eggs stink. Imagine it, the middle of the night and a thousand taklaks were born on planet Earth. It's an unfortunate thing that taklaks only live for half an hour before they die, and then they disintegrate and spread on their air like seeds. Seeds that got washed away with the river growing into more eggs who knows where? Completely harmless, but it _was_ a sight, and it was that which led to the creation of the sewage system. A lesser-known bit of history."

"Taklaks?" Jenny asked, "Never heard of them."

"Nah, they're just insects really. Lucky they hatched at night. Ace liked seeing them, though. Now," she changed the subject, having just trudged through that grim and boggy patch of brownfield to get to the open sewage juncture, which was leaking a few dregs of dark liquid onto the ground, "Just don't touch anything and remember your nose pegs and we'll be fine. Unfortunately, I left all my nose pegs in my other pants… help me with this grate." She took out her sonic screwdriver to open the gate and Jenny pulled the rusty thing open, her palms becoming filthy when she did.

"Eurgh."

"I said not to touch anything."

"But-"

"No time for excuses, c'mon," the Doctor led them into the tunnel, taking her torch out of her bag as she went to light up the way. Not that the way was very pleasant when it was lit up, and a great number of rats fled away from them, but the Doctor wasn't squeamish, and neither was Jenny Flint.

"It doesn't half stink down here," Jenny complained.

"That's the good thing about sewers, never any guards or vagrants. Nobody wants to be down here."

"Including me…"

"I'm sure you've been in worse places before. Now, tell me – how bad _are_ Vastra's baking skills?" the Doctor asked. She was trying to lighten the mood, take their mind of their surroundings. Well, mainly Jenny's mind, she herself wasn't _that_ bothered by the sewers they were paddling in. The good thing was, it worked, it started Jenny off on a whole talk about how terrible Vastra was at cooking. That was one of the main reasons she had originally hired a maid, Jenny explained, just because of that. "I thought it was because you caught her eye?" the Doctor asked wryly.

"Well, I – I couldn't say," Jenny said.

"You and Vastra don't talk about that stuff?"

"You and _I_ don't talk about that stuff," she said.

"Aww, how come? Ask me a question about _Nameless Wife_ if you like," the Doctor shrugged (that name, whatever it was, still escaped her. There she was on the tip of Thirteen's tongue…)

"Private things should stay private."

"Oh yeah?" the Doctor asked, "Is that why I totally heard you yelling about saddles the other night?"

"You-!" she exclaimed, going the same colour as a strawberry.

"I mean I'm not _judging_ ; god knows some of the stuff I've heard about my _own_ Jenny – though, I guess nobody dates Captain Jack without a taste for the risqué…" that didn't even bear thinking about. "I'm just making a point."

"Isn't that a ladder?" Jenny asked quickly, grabbing Thirteen's hand to point the torch at something which had been glinting slightly. It _was_ a ladder, dim shafts of light coming down through the grate above it.

"Ah-ha. Must be maintenance, or some sort of fire exit," Thirteen said. Approaching it, she switched off her flashlight and put it away again, and noises that were signs of inhabitants above reached them. Sounds like electrical generators and footsteps and whispering voices. She swapped the torch for the sonic screwdriver and went to work on the thin manhole above them, listening out all the while for anybody who might notice the odd sound of the device.

It wasn't a fire exit they had just trekked through, though. Nor was it for maintenance. They found themselves crawling up through a drain in a communal shower that didn't look like it had been used for years. There was mould coating the corners and crevices and grime solidifying between dirty tiles, but it was empty, at least. The sounds they'd been hearing from below had been faint because of the walls between their little shower room and the rest of the building. Maybe there wasn't any plumbing getting through? It wouldn't surprise her if that building was meant to be derelict, and if Vastra was right about nobody picking up the lease. Unfortunately, the room being a shower meant the window set into the nearby door was mottled and impossible to see through. Damn privacy making her subterfuge trickier.

"What now?" the Doctor asked Jenny, "You're the best at infiltration. I make a mess everywhere I go."

"You can say that again – dragging us through the bleeding sewers… we need to find a way up, I'd say. Any factory has the foreman's office where they can oversee everything. Whoever's occupying this building will probably still set up camp up there, which makes it harder for us unless we're lucky and they're not looking," she said, going to tentatively turn the handle of the door, which turned out to be unlocked.

She didn't know what she had been expecting to see. Cells, maybe? Full of kidnapped women whose doppelgängers were out there infiltrating society? Be those doppelgängers clones or robots? It was nothing of the sort, though. There were no gooey vats full of artificial cloning gel growing featureless bodies ready to be moulded, and there was no tell-tale production line pumping out skeletal droid after skeletal droid all waiting to have their silicone faces glued on. There were just booths. Booths and booths in lines, booths with large chairs and televisions in them.

"What _is_ this?" Jenny asked.

"Irony, that's what, looks a bit like polling stations. God forbid they let women vote, though," the Doctor whispered. The women in the chairs, though, they were struggling, most of them were gagged and trying but not managing to scream for help. There was a loud noise of a heavy door being opened somewhere, and Jenny and the Doctor ducked behind the back of a large machine that was generating electricity, "This is a wireless generator…" she stared at it as they hid, "This technology doesn't exist yet. Neither do those televisions."

"So, what? They're from the future?"

"I doubt it, everything's a bit wrong to be of human design. I remember the Queen's coronation in 1953," Thirteen began.

"Another queen?" Jenny asked. She was going to continue what she had been saying, when shouting came their way. A fresh batch of women, only four or five, were being dragged into the factory through the door they had just heard being opened. Yet, they were being dragged in by _other women_. "This doesn't make any sense. Maybe everyone doesn't agree with Pankhurst, but women kidnapping other women to stop them from protesting?"

"Stop them from doing more than protesting, I'd wager; this whole place looks like a re-education facility. Brainwashing," Thirteen said.

"You'll never take away my voice!" one woman shrieked.

Another joined her, "To be doing this to your own! How could you turn on your sisters like this?"

And a harsh woman who was not on the side of these new victims, these ones still bearing the green, white and purple sashes of the suffragettes, said coldly, "Soon we will all be united, all of womankind as they were meant to be: silent and submissive."

"Well _she_ isn't being very silent or submissive, bossing everyone around," Jenny muttered, the pair of them still observing.

"No. I think she's one of them too," Thirteen said, "This kind of thing affects everyone differently. There's something else, something or someone we haven't seen yet, pulling all the strings. Someone who probably _isn't_ a woman." While the suffragettes were dragged into the aisles full of booths to be restrained like everyone else, Thirteen carried on what she had been saying about 1953, "There was this guy, Magpie. He was being manipulated by an alien into using TVs to steal peoples' faces. Had technology made from present-day materials to alien design. Earthling but not. That's what this is."

"Could it be the same alien?"

"What, the Wire? Oh, no way, the Wire took the face of the next queen, for crying out loud. How much bigger a symbol of matriarchy can you find than the Queen of England?" Thirteen said, "And all she wanted to do was feed on people. But alien intervention is definitely going on _somewhere_ in this place. Okay, plan time – what was it you were saying about the foreman's office?"

"That's probably their base of operations," Jenny said.

"Right. Let's split up. I'm gonna try and disable these generators to turn off the machines. If we do that, we can rally the suffragettes in here – they're militant enough already, they'll definitely fight back if we free enough of them," Thirteen said, "You go up there and see if you can find anything of value. Assuming I'm successful, join the crowds afterwards."

"Alright," she nodded.

"Oh, and Jenny?" she said, then held up a fist, "Votes for women!" Jenny laughed and nodded.

When Jenny had disappeared into the shadows, as was her custom, Thirteen had then turned all of her attention onto scanning this generator she had been crouching behind with her sonic screwdriver. But what had happened after _that_? Sitting in her chair, she couldn't quite… but then she felt a smarting pain in the back of her head, something not a result of the restraints keeping her tied down. She knew that, if she were now in the same position as those captured women, she must have failed, and then it came to her as suddenly as it had come to her then: that sharp pain on her skull when something hard had hit her around the head. It had rendered her unconscious and now she had become woozy on amnesia.

"Someone hit me…" she croaked, "Knocked me out." But had they knocked out Jenny?

"Yes, it was me," said the harsh voice of a woman. That same woman who had been dragging in more suffragettes to fill up their machines.

"You're brainwashing people," said the Doctor, finally remembering everything. Well, almost everything, what _was_ her spouse's name? "Brainwashing women into being perfect housewives. And not just suffragettes, either – it's all of them, isn't it? But why?"

"Women mustn't be allowed into a position of power. Honestly, it's usually almost finished working by now. You should be a drooling wreck like the rest of them are," she said.

"Are you a human?" Thirteen asked, and the woman stopped speaking.

"Are you _not_?" she said eventually, "That would explain the ineptitude of the machine…"

"You don't seem surprised by the suggestion."

"I was like them, too, but now I have seen the light." So she _was_ a human, just a human being manipulated by something else. "I would tell you everything, if I was sure the re-education programming would take full effect on you. You're not supposed to remember anything."

"Why not tell me everything anyway? It's a fifty-fifty shot. Who are you?" Thirteen asked.

"Gertrude Fisher. A woman of minimal importance, until I became enlightened."

"Take me to your leaders," she said, then added, "I always love saying that."

"And what about you? Did you come here alone?"

"Sure I did," she said quickly. The woman must have turned a dial somewhere, because the images on the television screen suddenly grew a whole lot more intense, "Just tell me what species you're working for. Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want with turning the whole female population into slaves? There's no way you're the top of the hierarchy."

"An American, too…" she mused, ignoring Thirteen's questions. The images turned more and more vivid. She didn't know what they were, but they were definitely impressing _something_ onto her brain, some sort of subconscious reprogramming of the way she thought. Such a thing was simple enough with the right technology and evil motive. "We weren't supposed to have reached America yet."

"Oh, well. I always liked to queue-jump," she said, "But, uh, whenever you get a spare minute – could you totally just pass one word to your evil overlords that the Doctor would like a word with them? That's 'the Doctor.' Can you remember that? Just 'the Doctor.' I'm sure they'll have heard of me."

"Ridiculous. Women can't be-" she was cut off. Thirteen didn't need to have been alive for 1200 years to recognise the sound of a person being choked. It was a hoarse, strangling sound, but the Doctor couldn't look around to see. She couldn't see anything at all except the images on that TV screen in front of her. She didn't even think she was _in_ the main room downstairs; it was too quiet. Then there was a thudding sound as Gertrude Fisher's body collapsed onto the floor, and the TV screen exploded inside. Not enough to shatter it and send deadly bits of glass into Thirteen's head, but it broke completely of its own accord, and she was left with the remnants of its image burned into her eyes.

"You don't mind your conversation being interrupted by a woman, do you?" asked that sarky, witty voice she heard making amusing quips in her most treasured daydreams. She couldn't answer, because she was kissed immediately by this girl who smelt like strawberries and home, and she savoured every minute of it until the girl stopped and the Doctor's eyes adjusted after being bombarded by technicolour for the better part of an hour.

"You have the most _beautiful_ smile," she said.

"And _you_ should have listened to Vastra," said the girl, beginning to unfasten the Doctor's restraints.

"Hey, hey – I gotta ask you something," she said.

"Go on?"

"She hit me on the head pretty hard and has been showing me all that stuff…"

"Yeah, that stuff. I was wondering if you'd gotten any ideas into your head about being an ideal housewife? Because I wouldn't complain if you wanted to hoover the carpets a bit more often. And you never take the bins out."

"No, no – I'm sorry – I don't remember your name."

"This happens every time!" she complained, but she laughed, "Every time you even teleport into the next room you forget my name. Sometimes when you wake up on a morning you forget my name. I feel like you retain your _own_ name better than you do mine sometimes, sweetheart." She continued with the restraints.

"I'm serious."

"And I'm Clara Oswald," she said, "Pleased to meet you. I've been your wife for fifty years, by the way. We live together and we've been sickeningly in love all this time."

"Clara. Weren't you investigating that woman? With Vastra?"

"God, these restraints are… listen, you're gonna freak out, but I'll catch you," Clara didn't answer her question.

"Freak out? Why would I – Clara!" she exclaimed, when Clara touched her hand and phased her through the chair, so that she fell backwards onto the floor. Well, she would have done, but Clara actually _did_ catch her, and drag her away from it. She'd been right about them not being in the main room, this was the high-up foreman's office Jenny had been after. She must have been a special case because she'd broken in and tried to sabotage their equipment; she needed to be personally dealt with by Gertrude Fisher.

"You're such a baby about that."

"I like being solid. How did you get in here?"

"I'm the Phantom, remember? Sneaking into places is kind of my thing," Clara shrugged, "Why? How did _you_ get in?"

"Through the drainage system."

"You're a real tramp, you know."

"Hey!"

"Where's Jenny?"

"I don't know, but I don't think she got caught. Where's Vastra?"

"Acquiring us a carriage to use as a getaway vehicle," Clara said, "We've got to hurry up. Now, do you have a plan?" She did have a plan, as a matter of fact.

"We have to destroy the generators and cut the power to let the women go before the process completes."

"On your feet, then. We've got half of an entire species to save."


	85. A Study in Scarlet

_A Study in Scarlet_

 _Thirteen_

The Doctor's plan left the Attaway Arms Company factory decimated. Jenny Flint had not been idle while Thirteen had been kidnapped and re-educated for the better part of an hour, and it was upon Clara's rescuing the Doctor and the knocking-unconscious of Gertrude Fisher that all of the lights in the complex went out, and every last generator died. The two of them and Jenny had run into each other in the fray of freeing suffragettes and other women, who promptly went on to help them free more and more women, until the women in a position of manipulated command were overcome by sheer amount of bodies trying to force their way out of the room and sabotage the machinery.

This chaos also meant Madame Vastra abandoned her attempt to find them a getaway vehicle and instead came inside to try and find her wife and see that she was okay. Of course, a minor riot like this wasn't going to put Jenny out at all, but the Doctor supposed Vastra did worry in the same way she herself worried about Clara. Would the intangible 'Phantom' be pushed to the ground and trampled on by the crowd of stampeding activists? Most certainly not. But did the Doctor still cling to her hand to keep her close and within reach should she fall and find herself trapped under boots and feet and heels? Most certainly she did.

After silence fell in the facility, it took the Doctor another ten minutes to get the lights and machines back working, just without any victims to impose themselves upon. It was a good thing, really, that when she had been clubbed on the back of the head she had dropped her sonic screwdriver; it had rolled underneath one of those booths nearby, and was spied later on by Jenny, who struggled a while to get it to work for her. The Doctor was quite impressed, though, with the efficiency she had shut down operations using an alien gadget like the sonic. While the Doctor busied herself with that, the quartet exchanged their stories of what they had been doing: the incident crawling through the shower drain, and that of Maud Watts' investigation.

"It is exactly as I suspected," Vastra said, "Mind control. You see, if you had just come with us, you would have seen her curious electrode burns and her subconscious trigger phrases for yourself."

"And if you'd have come with _us_ you would have just seen the machines and figured it all out in a second," the Doctor argued.

"But we would have been putting ourselves in danger," Vastra countered, "We may have all ended up like you."

"Speed is of the essence."

"Hardly! Whatever this subterfuge is, it has been going on for the longest time. There is no reason to rush and draw attention to ourselves, not like this mess here," Vastra said.

"Alright, the two of you used different methods," Clara interrupted loudly, "Each to their own, now can't you behave? Nobody can do anything about it now and everyone is alright." And then both of them demanded of Clara why she was taking the other's side, leaving Jenny Flint to shout at them to just shut up. _Then_ they listened. And the Doctor had got the lights back on.

"What now?" Jenny asked.

"I'm not sure. All of these women working here were just as brainwashed as the others," Vastra said, "Hence the assumption a third party is at work, working through all of them, assuming control of the female population."

"Alright, but if you want control of the populace, why go for the half of it that don't have any rights or power?" Clara asked her.

"That's your mistake. You're assuming they don't have control of the other half already. Of course, these machines are using human materials to an alien design specification," Vastra explained, "I doubt we will find much in this building at all. They have covered their tracks very well, not so much as an incriminating paper trial with half a dozen names of top politicians and misogynists on it. The machines are nothing more than squatters."

"Then how are they stopping any old person wandering in here, or trying to buy the place?" Jenny asked.

"Dirty tactics, I assure you. Buying everybody out, killing them, maybe? This operation will take an awful lot of money and co-operation," Vastra said, "Some sort of group, with respect for each other, operating to keep themselves hidden. Yes, I think everything is coming together now… all we need is a way to reverse this brainwashing, to repair what damage has been done to the women of Lambeth and the rest of London."

"So – this Mrs Watts," Thirteen interrupted, "She fell unconscious when you started questioning her? Because that sounds like a failsafe to me, and you don't need a failsafe if your methods are fool-proof. So there has to be some way to reverse the conditioning, clearly."

"My thoughts exactly."

"It's like hypnosis; a trigger phrase would do it. We just don't know what the trigger phrase is," said the Doctor, "If they're this careful about making sure nobody can find out who's using the building, there's no way they'll pick a simple phrase to just guess, or that they'd leave it lying around. None of the women here would know it or their own conditioning would be broken."

"I fear you are correct," Vastra nodded, "And that there is nothing more to be gained from being here, in this dreadful place. The mould is terrible."

"So, what? We're at a dead end?" Clara asked.

"A dead end? Never. No, I know exactly the place we must go, and I have this mystery almost wrapped up myself, as I'm sure the Doctor does as well," Vastra said, nodding (the Doctor didn't think she quite understood it as well as Vastra, but, after all, Vastra _was_ the world's greatest detective.) "We must go to The Scarlet Door."

"Oh, bleeding hell…" Jenny grumbled. Vastra's smile twitched, but she pretended she didn't hear that.

"Where?" Thirteen asked.

"A place where some valued contacts of mine reside."

"I think you enjoy visiting The Scarlet Door a bit too much, you know," Jenny quipped, "Every other case you have you find an excuse to go there."

"And it always turns out to be useful!" Vastra argued with her.

"That's one word for it."

"I'm confused, where are we going?" the Doctor persisted.

"To a place of negotiable affection," Vastra said cryptically, and Clara seemed to realise what she was talking about.

"It's a brothel, sweetheart," Clara explained.

"Yes, quite," said Vastra, "An upmarket one, a place frequented only by the crème de la crème of society. Strictly _male_ society. And I must talk to the Abbess; if this conspiracy has reached the ears of Pankhurst, I am sure they have reached the ears of Cathy Redbreast. And I daresay she will be of more help, since she has a more economic stake in the personal affairs of men and women alike." Jenny was still not very happy about this, but as usual Vastra's logic was sound. The madam of a well-to-do bordello would undoubtedly have her ear to the ground. And so, The Scarlet Door was where they headed, in a carriage stolen from the outside of the factory.

* * *

Thirteen had thought 'The Scarlet Door' must be a euphemism, and so she was very surprised when they came to a hotel-looking building with dark windows, no signpost and a bright-red wooden door. She supposed that door was the only shred of identifying information on the whole building, and if this was really the kind of place where men of worth frequented, this 'Cathy Redbreast' woman probably didn't have anything to worry about in terms of crossing the law. The Doctor herself had nothing against brothels, and neither did Clara. She also had nothing against Clara visiting such a place at that moment; the more dangerous place for Clara Oswald to go was a dive bar, not a fancy sort of establishment where the women needed to be plied with a hefty amount of cash rather than just a few dregs of whatever was the cheapest and dirtiest alcohol available. Even if Clara's eyes had a certain habit of wandering, on occasion.

Vastra knocked on the door in a very unusual way, and a blot of light became visible as somebody on the other side removed the cover of a peephole within to get a look at who it was. The peephole closed and another compartment slid open, a very narrow one to reveal only a pair of eyes.

"Who is the prime minister?" asked a girl's voice.

"Ah, I have this one," said Vastra, "Emmeline Pankhurst." The Doctor was taken aback, and the girl inside laughed and then slid the hatch shut and unlocked the door from the inside. It took the Doctor just a moment to understand that code, a typical kind of secret password where the password was unspecified: there was merely a question, a certain way of answering, this way being with any word which began with the second-to-last letter of the question itself.

"That'll be the day, won't it, ma'am?" she joked. So, clearly, this woman had not been brainwashed. "Guests with you? Why won't you ever bring guests with you we can serve?"

"Oh, we shan't be a drain on your resources I'm sure, Molly. Now, I must speak with Cathy, is she with a client?"

"Oh, no, ma'am, she is in low spirits recently," the girl, Molly, said, "Business things, I assume, but it's not for me to say. No doubt she will tell you herself, she's no stranger to hospitality."

"I doubt Cathy is a stranger to anything, for the right price," Vastra said, and the girl laughed again. Vastra was having a lot of fun making this random, young escort giggle. Jenny did not look happy to be there. Still, though, the Doctor would swear on her own life that Madame Vastra wold not even _think_ of being unfaithful, and especially not while she had her mind so wrapped up with their case.

Molly then went to take them to Cathy, leading them through what really was a house of wonders. To Clara, of course. Not to the Doctor. The Doctor did not care one jot about the pink silk draped down the walls and over the plush, goose-feather cushions and pillows on all the soft furnishings, or about the girls standing around in some of the finest lingerie that side of the Thames had to offer. Why would the Doctor care at all about any of _that_? And she definitely didn't.

Clara elbowed her.

"Stop staring," she hissed.

"I was not!" Thirteen protested.

"Stare at me, if you have to." So the Doctor did that instead. Not that she had been staring at anybody in the first place, of course.

They found Cathy the mistress in a snug office-like room behind a small bar, and she really did look like she was in a rather dour mood. Molly knocked on the door and opened it to let them in; apparently Vastra was a woman who needed no introduction, nor did she need to cover her face, as she lifted the veil up once they were in this private room of the cathouse, a place which smelt of perfume and sweat.

"A fine day for you to drop by," Cathy said once pleasantries had been exchanged and once Molly had left to go and wait by the door to let clients in, "Mostly because business is terrible. We have only two clients in the building at present, two clients to fill sixteen rooms. It's a hideous thing." Cathy Redbreast – a name the Doctor thought was most definitely fake – was a middle-aged woman who still took a great deal of care with her appearance and looked pretty dapper because of it. Jenny skulked by the door to keep an ear out for anything suspicious, leaving Thirteen and Clara to observe everything side-by-side, since Vastra had stolen the only other chair in the room.

"I suspected as much," Vastra said, "I have a few questions about your girls, though. General ones. Have you noticed any sort of disillusionment lately?"

"Being a prostitute is hardly the same thing as fighting for women's rights," Jenny muttered.

"Is it not a woman's right to do whatever profession she chooses, Jenny?" Cathy asked her, "You know we have had this debate many times. The girls are well cared for and may choose their own destiny. No 'disillusionment' with the girls, per se, but with the men? Well, the business has been going sour for months now."

"Just like the suffragette movement," the Doctor mused, "But this is the reverse."

"It isn't the reverse, it's all the same thing. This is no subjugation of women, and I would say the sexism built into their 're-programming' is merely a way to keep them docile and avoid suspicion. After all, what say a police officer if a man reports his wife is mysteriously doing all of the cleaning, when previously she was out being an anarchist five nights a week? They would tell him to count his blessings," Vastra said, "No, they are following an archetype of society."

"There's that 'they' again," said Clara.

"What clients have you got in at the moment, Cathy dear?" Vastra asked.

"What clients! You have some nerve."

"What if I happened to drop a guinea on my way out of here?"

"Well then I should have to tell you one of them is a rather dull man by name of Hingley who is the layabout grandson of the founder of an iron manufacturer. The ones who built the anchor for that ocean liner which sank just this week," Cathy explained, "Then I'm sure the other is one regular of ours whom Delilah says is very subdued recently, the honourable Earl of Crewe. Or, in fact, is he not the Marquess of Crewe now?"

"He is the Marquess indeed," said Vastra, her eyes lighting up with this news, "I must see him at once."

"See him? Whatever for? Delilah was having a pitiful enough time trying to get him to be excited about anything without somebody else going barging in there," Cathy argued.

"But the Marquess of Crewe is none other than the current Secretary of State for India, previously the Secretary of State for the Colonies. As a matter of urgency, this man may hold the key to cracking the trickiest case I have had recently!" Vastra exclaimed, "A case which puts all of humankind in danger."

"Humankind, Vastra?" Cathy jibed.

"I am empathetic towards humanity, and you must remove this man from the company of your girl Delilah at once, or suffer the consequences," Vastra ordered, "Whatever her fees are, I shall pay them for you to do me this favour, as well as the guinea I may drop from my pocket as I leave."

"Then I suppose that is an offer I can't refuse with business being so bland," Cathy said.

"Your business will likely be restored if I am successful with this endeavour."

"Oh, wonderful," Jenny grumbled sourly. The Doctor and Clara did not say a word, barely needed to say a word. Vastra was doing a good enough job of investigating without their input. Cathy left the office and led them back through the main area of The Scarlet Door, past the girls who were mostly gossiping with each other in the absence of their clients. She took them all the way upstairs to the first floor, balconies overlooking the silky, rosy lobby below. On their way they had passed through another door with notably fake sounds of female pleasure and male grunting emanating from within, but the room they were actually going to merely bore noises of bickering.

Cathy knocked sharply on the door.

"Delilah, you are being recalled," she called through, and promptly the door was opened by Delilah, who was struggling to put her clothes back on and was red-faced and in a foul temper. The Doctor stepped away from her.

"I shouldn't think you'll get much luck with him, expect another request for a refund, just like the last time. I told you it wasn't anything to do with Molly, it's him," she said, "Like playing snooker with a rope in there trying to make it do anything." Clara repressed a laugh and coughed oddly, and got a judgmental look from Delilah. "Who are they? Newbies?" She only recognised Jenny and Vastra.

"Those two? No, darling. The blonde one I hear is an American, and what man is going to pay for an American when they are in London? And the brunette is from the North, so the same rule applies. We have an image of high-class to maintain, we cannot be letting any moor-born 'lass' run around our corridors," Cathy said, managing to greatly offended both the Doctor and Clara.

"I'm not even from the moors!" Clara argued, "I'm from Lancashire."

"Those dirty lakes? Even worse," Cathy said coolly, "On your way, Delilah, your pay won't be docked."

"It better not be," the half-naked Delilah muttered, then she skulked away to go downstairs and return to her fellows, while the four of them entered the room, which was just as grandly-furnished as the rest of the brothel. More silk, more red, a vase of roses – in 1912, it was classy, but in the 21st Century, it would be seedy. Then again, it kind of _was_ seedy already. Best give people what they expected from a brothel, the Doctor thought. There was no point making it seem like something else.

"I pay you for your discretion, woman!" the Marquess of Crewe shouted at Cathy, "This is abominable." He didn't have any pants on.

"I do say, Robert, two years ago when you were only an Earl you didn't act this way," Cathy remarked, "And I note that on the last three visits you have failed to cough up a single shilling. My discretion has to be bought, and you have not been keeping up with your payments."

"Who have you brought? Muscle? You're going to kick me out?"

"Most definitely not," said Vastra herself, "This is not the mild-mannered Marquess I remember hearing nervous speeches from. A manipulation is at play here. I suspect that who we are talking to is barely more Marquess than other, at this point. Now, Cathy, you should leave us. Things may get messy."

"Not if what Delilah says is true, they won't. Don't forget you owe me," Cathy said, and then left the room.

"Who are you?" the man asked, "A woman should know her place, but you are hardly a woman yourself."

"Restrain that man," Vastra ordered nobody in particular, and so it was Jenny who went to grab him, Jenny giving him a swift punch in the gut and holding his arms behind his back tightly. It had to be said, Robert Crewe-Milnes was quite a weedy fellow. But then, what did one expect from a British politician? "Clara, may I have a hairpin?" Clara always got a bit fussy about her hair when they went to a period like this one, and had a rather elaborate hairstyle currently with maybe half a dozen hairpins holding it in place. Regrettably, she parted with one of them and gave it to Vastra, who quickly bent it out of shape until it was just a long piece of metal.

"What are you doing?" the Doctor asked her suspiciously.

"Finding us the real culprit. Clara, help Jenny to keep that man as still as possible. I would hate to kill him by accident when the Marquess himself is, I suspect, innocent of all wrongdoing." Clara used her telekinesis to keep the man, held by Jenny, nothing more than a statue, Jenny holding his mouth shut when he began to shout.

"Whoa, hey!" the Doctor yelled at Vastra when she more or less pounced on that man and seemed to ram the warped hairpin into his ear, and he tried to scream.

"Stay quiet! I said I don't want to kill him," she said. Clara covered her mouth with her hand in horror. Then the Marquess of Crewe went limp all of a sudden and his watering eyes closed, and Vastra drew her hairpin out of his ear (it had gone in much deeper than the Doctor thought remotely safe, and she was quite scared that Robert might be dead) with an air of triumph, and Jenny dropped the body onto the floor. The Doctor immediately went to check for a pulse. "Don't worry, Doctor, he will be fine soon enough. It is _this_ I was looking for." There was a pulse, thankfully, but all thought of the Marquess' wellbeing went out of her head when she stood up and saw what was impaled on the end of Clara's borrowed hairpin.

It was very small, perhaps only a little more than an inch long, and looked to the Doctor like a caterpillar, only it was bright orange and rather than having legs in the usual places it had maybe a hundred legs wrapping all the way around its body – optimised for crawling into ears, she supposed – and it wriggled around angrily on the end of the pin, unable to escape.

"That was in his _ear_?" Jenny exclaimed.

"Never underestimate something based on how small it is," Vastra said, "Of course, it all makes sense now."

"Uh, does it?" Clara asked, unsure.

"Why, yes, indeed," Vastra nodded, "Now, Doctor, did you ever hear of an earthquake in India in 1860?"

"There are a lot of earthquakes in India," said the Doctor.

"Yes, but this one is of particular significance because it happened in Raipur, one of the parts of the country least likely to receive earthquakes, and there were no reliable reports of seismic activity in the entire country at all. Maybe I would have gone to India to investigate myself, had I been freed from my internment beneath the London Underground yet, but I only read about it years later and thought of wasn't of the remotest significance. Merely paranoid humans, or something harmless, as there were reports of bright lights in the sky like a comet that evening, as well. Yet, I would hazard a guess that whatever came down to Earth that night in 1860 was containing these little creatures which make their nest inside human heads.

"Why India, you ask? Well, because of those flowers we found in the window box of Maud Watts, flowers which I did not fail to notice in the other window boxes of all the houses with the curious flower displays. _Crocus asperata_ , a genus which I pointed out to Clara has been extinct until some point in the last century, the mid-1870s, in fact. Yet, here it is, an allegedly extinct flower, sitting around very prettily in the window box of a brainwashed housewife. Yet, these dates are of more significance when one takes into account dates of significance for the British Empire; an earthquake in 1860, two years into the period of British rule of India, which began in 1858. And in the mid-1870s-"

"Victoria became Empress of India," Clara said.

"Well, she did, yes, but two years before that happened the late King Edward VII went on quite a long sabbatical in India. And, clearly, those jungles are home to all kinds of dangerous parasites," Vastra said, nodding at the caterpillar-thing writhing around on the pin. "And here is where it gets interesting – this is, like I said, no attempt to crush women and their right to vote. This is a carefully orchestrated invasion, invasion of the whole planet, seizing the British Empire first of all and then moving on to the rest of the world. Like Gertrude Fisher said to you, Doctor, that they weren't supposed to have reached the Americans yet. Though I doubt she knew hardly anything more than that.

"Of course all the evidence points towards this careful infiltration of British society – namely the occupation of the Attaway Arms Company factory. It would take a lot of money and a lot of important people to keep anyone from trying to rebuild on that large area of Lambeth, and you can be sure people were – and still are – desperate to do such a thing. Along with that the cost of the manufacturing of the brainwashing devices must have been obscene, to say the least. But this was a very last-minute kind of operation, you see, and the brainwashing of the women comes from the rising threat of the suffragette movement, and Emmeline Pankhurst herself. Pankhurst is merely too elusive to be caught, or you could bet she would suffer the same fate."

"I don't get it," said Jenny, "If they can crawl into the ears of men and control their brains, these worm-things, why can't they just do the same to women?"

"The same reason the control does not fully take hold! Poisons in the body, my darling Jenny," Vastra continued, "The poor Marquess was still fulfilling his old habits of visiting prostitutes while being strangled by this mite within his brain, and no doubt that fact is why this invasion has gone ahead so subtly, without anybody noticing. I suspect that Cathy's business taking a hit is to avoid 'fraternising with the enemy' – the female enemy – or something similarly absurd. But, of course, with men in command already, they hardly have to be altered at all. And the reason, you think, why all this now? If, as I say, they have been living in this country since the 1870s at least? Well because, of course, up until 1901, a woman was on the throne of England. And then it was the somewhat useless Edward VII who cannot even stop the rising tide of socialism – a more anti-monarchy movement if there ever was one – in his own kingdom. But now with George V, something is actually being done, and things like these abductions are being sanctioned. But only to stamp out women's voices."

"Poisons like what?" Clara asked.

"I dare say that if one of you two were to spit on this creature, we would see those effects for ourselves," Vastra said, and Clara (who still had something to be gained by way of personal hygiene) licked the end of her finger and touched, flinching a little, the head of the caterpillar-thing. And it made a tiny shrieking noise, like that which comes out of a bottle if you don't quite close it properly as the air gets released, and smoky curled off it: it had literally been burned by Clara's touch. "It has an allergy, I suspect, to oestrogen. They must brainwash the women because they cannot control them like they can the men, and they cannot _completely_ take control because men themselves are not without a sliver of that more feminine hormone. And all that those extinct flowers must be are relics brought from India by the old king himself and his cronies, and now they place them in the windows of those women they take as a way to show which ones have been 'got' already. As though painting a cross on the door of the house of a plague victim, marking it off. They are hard to miss, after all.

"And now, all that is left to do is come up with a plan to thwart this most dastardly and covert invasion and attempt at domination." Vastra looked at the Doctor when she said that, who sighed.

"A plan to do what?"

"Why, to get into Number 10, of course: this is a conspiracy which goes all the way to the top, to Asquith himself, and I will leave its conclusion to you, Doctor."

"Oh," said Thirteen dryly, "Great."


	86. Retro Worm Hole

_Retro Worm Hole_

 _Thirteen_

Herbert Henry Asquith was looking over paperwork in his office in the Prime Minister's residence, that being Number 10, Downing Street. He was about to be very taken by surprise, but he didn't yet know it. Currently, he was most likely wondering what to do about the fact just recently his entire female kitchen staff had been fired and replaced with men who had less of a respect for the rules than the women did. He skimmed over some executive pieces of parliamentary paper he was probably supposed to be signing, bored to tears, when he heard some noises on the windowpane behind him. It sounded like a scurrying of fingertips and nails running across the glass. He assumed it was only a bird getting disoriented by something – a carriage carrying a lantern, perhaps – but he went to have a look anyway. After all, safety and caution didn't cost a penny.

Asquith drew back the curtain and saw outside nothing but the dull navy sky of London, with the smog from the factories floating on the horizon blurred by the raindrops on the glass. And his own pale, nearly unrecognisable reflection looking back at him. Sighing, blaming a bird, he let the curtain drop back down and turned to sit back at his desk. But he was surprised to see a woman sitting there in his place, rifling through his own paperwork.

"I say!" he exclaimed, "What the bloody hell do you think you're-"

"Shh, watch your language," the girl, who looked very young but had something oddly elderly in her mannerisms, told him sternly, "I'm just reading over some of your documents, Herbie, and I'd like it if you take a seat?"

" _Take a seat_? In my own office? I'm the Prime Minister, you can't-"

"Oh, but you see," she turned and smiled coldly at him, "I can." Then she clicked her fingers and he felt his limbs overtaken by some external force, dragging and contorting him until he marched like a clockwork soldier to the chair on the other side of the desk and flung himself down into its plush, leather arms. There he found himself unable to move.

"What the devil have you done to me!?"

"Ooh, I'm not sure. Maybe you're a robot? Maybe I'm using witchcraft? I could have a voodoo doll in my pocket."

"To think, a woman breaking into Downing Street, and woman and an _American_."

"Calm down, Herbie. The Americans are gonna save your butts in France in five years' time," she said absently, skimming his papers while he remained fixed rigidly to his desk, "I've been hearing some very clandestine rumours about a certain amount of social upheaval with your European neighbours – have you been to visit Franz Ferdinand recently?"

"The Archduke?"

"I'd say hop on that train before it leaves the station and gets shot by a Serbian. But I'm not here to talk about the end of British society as we know it, because it's a few years too early for all that jazz," she said, "Now, I'm finding these pieces of paper of yours totally interesting, Herbie. Because here we have a lot of requests for money from random branches of government and a few industrialists – which is funny because a liberal Prime Minister such as yourself shouldn't really, like, be giving money away to industrialists. We have taxes for a reason, they're the ones who should be giving _you_ money. Unless they're, oh, I don't know – funding a secret government project to brainwash the female population?" she said this with a smile on her face, moving all the papers about and leaning towards him with her elbows on the desk.

"Who are you?"

"I'm the Doctor," she said, "In name and nothing else since, y'know-" here she fake-laughed for a moment "-women can't be doctors. Here's the thing, Herbo, did you maybe one night a while back start getting headaches? Maybe your wife and your kids have noticed you've been a bit colder with them, harsh, spending more time at work, and gradually all of your opinions have been changing until you're carrying out some secret Tory missions. This is about the turning point in history where the crown stops having power and the state starts to gain it. Otherwise you can bet your bottom dollar I'd be hanging around the royal suite of Sandringham waiting for His Royal Highness George V to show up so I could bonk him on the head and use a sewing needle to pick a tiny little worm out of his brain. Because you bet your ass I've got a sewing needle all primed and ready to go."

"What are you trying to do, then?" Asquith asked her, but she was sure that she was no longer talking to H. H. Asquith. She'd met him before, anyway, but in a different regeneration, and he was an alright kind of guy back then. She had to hurry it up, though, because Clara was hiding out on the window ledge in the shadows after the pair of them had to climb across and phase in through the wall. She couldn't leave her just floating there to get spotted.

"A parasitic brain-worm invasion of the British Empire – I'll admit you kinda had me stumped for most of it. If it wasn't for a close friend of mine the world's greatest detective, we might not have been put onto this at all. And another… acquaintance we share. I think you know Emmeline Pankhurst, don't you?"

"You're a Pank?"

"That depends on if she ever gives me my spanner back… now, Herbie, I know it's not you I'm talking to. I know it's the worm. I know it's controlling you, making you walk and talk, pulling all the strings like in that episode of _Spongebob_ where Plankton remote-controls Spongebob to try and steal the Krabby Patty formula." He stared at her. "What's the worm called, Herbster? Don't tell me they're shy?"

"We are the Oth," he said.

"Finally! A name! A bright new species I've never heard of – it's always a downer to run into some aliens while they're carrying out their plan of world domination. Though, the excitement's totally still there," she said, then repeated for herself, "The Oth… interesting, interesting. What else is interesting is that you Oth are a hive mind, aren't you? Or you're interconnected. A telepathic field, probably, so that you can communicate with each other in whatever weird, wormy way you like to talk. Since you're finding it so hard to legitimately control Herbie right now.

"Listen," she said softly, "Herb's gonna be fine. But Wormy? Wormy might not make the trip back home."

"You can't hurt us."

"Not yet. But, uh, how many people have you killed? Mostly men, I assume, but plenty of women before you built your machines. It wouldn't surprise me if you had a hand in Victoria's death – because I met her and lemme tell you, the girl was spry even when she was getting on a bit," Thirteen said.

"You don't talk like anyone else on this planet."

"I haven't heard of you, you haven't heard of me, that's fair enough. The name Gallifrey probably doesn't mean a thing," Thirteen said. Going by the flat look on Asquith's face, it didn't. "But you'll remember me after this, when I write my name in your proverbial blood. Anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself, but your occupation of this planet is going to end tonight, Wormy, I can promise you that. I just need the trigger phrase."

"The what?"

"The code-word that unlocks your mental conditioning of the brainwashed women in Lambeth," Thirteen said, "Maybe the population of Lambeth is tiny and inconsequential in the grand scheme of things, taking into account the gigantic population of the globe, but I can't stand to see what you've done to them. So how do you stop the conditioning?"

"You can't."

"You definitely can," she said, "And you've got one more chance to tell me before I stop playing nice. Because it'll be something niche and weird and 'masculine' like some extra-fast explanation of the offside rule or a porn web address. Are you gonna tell me how to reverse the subliminal programming?"

"You cannot reverse it," he lied. She'd been prepared for this, so she cleared her throat and stood up. "Are you leaving?"

"Yeah, I've given up," she said, but then looked around the room and commented, "I see you've got a gramophone?" She walked over to it and lifted the needle, in spite of his protests, and took the record off it, "What's this, Bach? I'm gonna keep this as covering my expenses – you, Herbie, have no idea what a Bach vinyl like this would be worth in 2024." So she did take it and stowed it in her bag, "But don't worry man, I've got a replacement right here." And she drew another 12" record out of her bag, this one in a battered cardboard sleeve. "Y'know I'm not the biggest fan of Cyndi Lauper, and I can't for the life of me remember _why_ I carry this damn thing around but, uh, I've got a feeling you won't be too keen on it."

"Don't try and stop us, woman, you won't succeed," he said, but she had a feeling that _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun_ might change his mind. Not just the song, the song was a coincidence, but she'd added a few… extra grooves. Of her own design.

"Okay, so, time for a little bit of a history lesson, what do you know about the year 1988?"

"You're talking about the future. You can't know the future."

"I'm from the future. Now, anyway, consumerism makes people cynical. In 1988, there was this movie came out called _They Live_ where this guy, Roddy Piper, he discovers that all the bourgeoisie are actually aliens brainwashing people into buying and procreating while _they_ reap the rewards," she explained, "It's a cult hit, I make my wife watch it on bank holidays and she asks me if that's what _I'm_ doing on Earth – and I say don't be crazy, what kind of aliens would do something like that? Well, the Oth, I guess.

"Anyway, that's 1988. Same decade there was also a case of a teenage suicide after he listened to a Black Sabbath song and shot himself – subliminal messages were blamed there; they said if you played it backwards you could hear a secret message. Then, of course, _The Simpsons_ did it. But they've done everything. And then _South Park_ did _that_ , but… I digress. I'm trying to educate you on the finer points of poppy, feminist anthems here." And she let the needle drop on the gramophone onto her original pressing of _Girls Just Wanna Have Fun_ , and let Cyndi Lauper take it away. It took just until she started singing " _I come home in the morning light_ ," (with the Doctor humming along), for Herbie to scream. Then she lifted the needle immediately.

"What did you do? That music-"

"Yeah, the older generation are never a fan of the music of tomorrow. Just wait until your granddaughters start dancing to Elvis, man – he's gonna get banned from TV for his pelvic thrusts. And after that The Beatles, and then in the next twenty years you'll have to make way for Ella Fitzgerald. Basically, at this level, all Cyndi Lauper's gonna do is cause you unimaginable pain, because it's set to play an extra note over the top which is well out of the range of human hearing. But not Wormy's hearing. Wormy will go boom if you don't tell me the code, and I don't think Wormy wants to go boom." Then she let the needle drop again. The worm wasn't going to explode yet, it would only do that if she sonicked the gramophone. Which she was planning on doing, as soon as she got the code from Asquith.

"Stop! STOP! I'm begging you!" Asquith shouted, still held tightly in the chair by Clara, who was probably watching from outside through a crack in the curtain. She could probably hear everything that was going on.

"Why? I don't think it's that bad, really, maybe a little crackly in parts…"

" _Oh daddy dear you know you're still number one, but girls they wanna have fun_ ," Cyndi Lauper, who hadn't even been born in 1912, crooned.

"Honestly, Herb, I'll just put it on loop if you don't tell me," she said, turning the volume up on the gramophone so that people couldn't hear his screaming. Not that it mattered, the doors were all locked, and his whole house staff were male. Soon they would be liberated from control of the Oth as well. "I can listen to Cyndi Lauper for hours, but I don't know about the rest of the building. This song is a classic." He did last for one full round of the song, one and a half full rounds in fact, until the pain of the worm writhing around in his brain just got too much and Asquith shouted for her to stop, the code was in his drawer. She turned off the gramophone. "Y'know if you're lying to me I'll just turn it back on?"

"I'm not lying – it's written down, it's long, too long to remember, it's in the locked desk, you need the key."

"Key? I doubt it," she said, taking out her sonic screwdriver and crouching down behind the desk to get to the locked drawer, the latch of which switched open quickly and revealed a whole lot of useless paper. She sighed and took it out and put it on a heap on the desk, "It's not written in invisible ink or something, is it? And when I say 'invisible ink' I mean semen, which works in the same way. Although this screwdriver doubles as a UV light now I made it purple. Pretty cool, huh?"

"I don't understand half the things you're saying."

"I'd be worried if you did, Herb. What is it about Herberts in government? There's you and then you've got Hoover and the collapse of the American and global economy still to come… although his wife did bake some good cookies once, I took some in a tin, but my daughter prefers her cookies with more… seafood. Ah-ha. Is this it?" She found a piece of card while she had been rambling on about this and that. She skimmed it. "Are you kidding me? This is the most ironic thing I've ever seen – your damn worms picked a tongue-twister?"

"It's nothing to do with me," Asquith said.

"She sells she shells on the sell… wait, hang on, I can… damn, that's wily of you, pick something people can hardly say…" she muttered, then told him, "I'm gonna have to check this. Where's your fancy red Prime Minister phone?" He didn't answer, but she looked around the room and spotted a telephone, going and using the circular mechanism to dial Vastra's house, for that was where Madame Vastra was; all of them, including Pankhurst, were still at Paternoster Row. And Maud Watts, whom they had maybe… kidnapped. A little bit.

" _Hello_?" Vastra asked.

"I got the password," said the Doctor, "You're not gonna believe this – it's a tongue twister." Then she took a deep breath to try and repeat it, slowly, without slipping up (and she managed it, too): " _She sells seashells on the seashore, the shells she sells are surely seashells. So if she sells seashells on the seashore, I'm sure she sells seashore shells_. The entire thing." It took a few minutes for her to make sure Vastra had got it, and then she hung around on the phone for a while longer.

"What are you doing?" Asquith asked her.

"Testing your little code. I can't just let you go without testing the code," she said, "What if it was wrong? I'd have to grab you and play more music."

"Hardly music."

"Count yourself lucky it's not something by the Spice Girls," she quipped, waiting for an update down the phone.

" _I think it worked, Doctor!_ " Vastra proclaimed.

"Did it? Awesome. Tell Pankhurst to mobilise her suffragettes to get that code to every woman with a _crocus asperata_ in her window in London, then put Strax on the phone, I need him to do something, get ready to move." There was a fumbling noise after Vastra related the Doctor's orders back to Pankhurst, then Strax spoke.

" _Yes, sir?_ " he asked.

"Strax, listen, I need you to do me a big favour. I need you to get your grenades and blow up the Attaway Arms Company building," she said.

" _Grenades! Of course I will, Doctor, I'll eradicate all of London on your orders_."

"N-no! Don't do that, _just_ the factory. Don't start a fire or anything, _just_ destroy all the machines without a trace. You know what, take Jenny with you, okay? Tell her to make sure you don't kill anyone. We're trying to _stop_ the city from getting destroyed, remember?" No answer. "Strax?"

" _Yes, yes. Alright. But I will still take a very plentiful amount of grenades, just in case_."

"Just make sure Jenny goes with you and Vastra goes with Pankhurst, don't worry about Clara and I," and she hung up.

"Well? What now?" Asquith asked her, "You found the machines, you've freed the women. We can just build more machines."

"Yeah. About that." She held out her screwdriver and aimed it at the gramophone, which again began to blast out the 1983 tune, but this time much faster and much higher and louder, and Asquith screamed more, and within ten seconds she heard a pop and he slumped in his chair. A trickle of orange goo dripped out of one of his ears, but the worm had died because she had severed the telepathic connection, and if there was one break in the chain then the whole chain was useless. She took the record off the machine and then Clara fell through the glass of the window into the office, shivering.

"It's bloody cold out there, you know. Is he dead?"

"No he's not dead. The worm's dead, he'll be washing goo out of his ears for two weeks at least," Thirteen said, stashing the vinyl back in its sleeve.

"I can't believe a good thing actually came of you carrying that stupid thing around with you in your bag."

"Hey!"

"That song gives me a headache."

"That's because your music taste is awful, if more than ten people have ever heard a song you say it's 'too mainstream.' And then you delete it off your iPhone, which is identical to the iPhone of everybody else aged ten-to-seventy in your century," Thirteen quipped.

"I think you did it, anyway," Clara said, "I don't know what was worse, Cyndi Lauper or the sound of the men up and down the street screaming every time you played it."

"Yeah, yeah, give me your cigarette lighter, he has machine schematics in here we need to get rid of before he wakes up. That technology would be devastating in the wrong hands, which is anybody's hands, to be honest. Then we can go home."

"Well, we can't really… we can go back to Paternoster Row. We can't go home."

"…I forgot about that…"

"It'll be fine. I've got a keen plan for you and I tonight," Clara tapped the side of her nose, "Just you wait and see. I've nearly got frostbite trying to write more stanzas out there on that ledge." Thirteen smiled. "And we do need to celebrate you saving the human race from a life of worm-controlled servitude, after all."

The Doctor smiled, "I can't wait."


	87. Neutron Star Collision

_Neutron Star Collison_

 _Thirteen_

"I gotta say, Coo, this is a real stroke of genius," Thirteen said. Clara smiled and sipped some of her wine. They were having dinner together, a real dinner, a dinner cooked by Strax as part of his gratitude to the Doctor for letting him actually blow something up for once. And then Clara had convinced Jenny Flint and Madame Vastra to actually go out to dinner somewhere, to whatever sort of place people like them _could_ go out for dinner. With the case now solved, the throes of Silurian mating season were making a slow but sure return, and it hadn't taken much to convince them that they most definitely needed some alone time in the VIP lounge of whatever up-market London club Vastra had contacts in. And then the Doctor had told Strax to go and find someone selling tartan paint. Finding someone who sold _any_ paint would be tricky enough at that time of night, let alone tartan paint, which did not exist.

"It just struck me earlier that we have some stuff to celebrate," Clara said. It wasn't a very complicated dinner, it was just roast beef, but Thirteen was always grateful for not having to cook. Considering she _always_ had to cook _everything_ because Clara was useless. "Like, Moore making me the head of English! Because we kept saying we'd go out somewhere but I kept putting it off because I was busy with all this extra marking. And, also, the celebration of us not having any work to do at the moment. And of me finishing my poem." She had been obsessing over that poem non-stop in any shred of downtime she got, either writing or smoking or doing both at the same time. "And you saving the world, again."

"Sure," said the Doctor softly, "I'll do a toast then? To us: for being so damn amazing." She lifted her own glass of wine, which she only had to be symbolic because she really did think wine was disgusting and came from the rear-end of Satan himself (and she had met Satan himself). She was more interested in her cup of tea she had on the other side of her plate than the white wine. Still, though, the glasses chinked, and Clara laughed and had another sip. "Don't get too drunk now."

"No promises," said Clara. "I still can't believe you defeated an alien invasion with Cyndi Lauper."

"I'm in my element doing all that stuff. I kind of miss it."

"I know you do," Clara sighed, acknowledging this difference between them, something which always had to be validated now in their marriage. The happiness of the other was the ultimate priority, and even if she did miss the TARDIS and the adventure, she still had it sometimes. Like now, for instance. But if she didn't have Clara she wouldn't _ever_ have Clara, and she would miss her wife a whole lot more than her spaceship. And besides, having possession of the TARDIS was good for her daughter; Jenny was enjoying herself, coming into her own. "Oh, we still haven't talked about the tampon thing."

"I feel a world away from that freaking tampon thing," Thirteen grumbled, "And didn't you renege your offer of helping me?"

"That was a metaphorical reneging," Clara said, "I didn't mean it. Anyway, I reckon you ought to make them clean the canteen after lunch every day for a week, during tutor time. If they were throwing tampons about and making a mess it's only right they should see what it's like from the other side, cleaning it up. I'd say make them do the toilets, but that would require trusting Rita with bottles of bleach and a dirty toilet brush."

"Y'know, Coo," the Doctor said, taking her hand and smiling sweetly, sitting next to her at Vastra's circular dining table, "This is why they all say you're too strict."

"Yeah, and then we get home and it switches, and you're all – 'Can you please not stick knives in the toaster, Clara?' and, 'Stop dropping toast in the bath, Clara,' and, 'Why do the bedsheets smell like mayonnaise, Clara?'"

"Okay, well clearly you've had too much wine already."

"Have not," Clara said, drinking more of it and flinching when she did because she had a bit too much in the one mouthful.

"They're cleaning the canteen, then?"

"Yeah."

"And you'll supervise?"

"Oh, no way. You'll do it. Do you want any of them to ever respect your authority? Because you can't always be the good guy in that case," Clara said, "I'll back you up but it's your incident, okay? Plus, you already said _I'd_ be the one to call their parents. I'm not having you talk to anyone's parents; you just start going on about how proud you are of Jenny for whatever it is she's done that week."

"I'm just very proud of my daughter!" the Doctor protested. Clara laughed, but didn't say anything else. Clara was just teasing her, she knew that, there was no need to go getting so defensive. "If we had a kid what do you think they'd be like? I never thought about it much, but hanging around a high school all day makes you wonder, you know? Like, the pair of us, if we had offspring together somehow."

"We don't have the time or the money for any offspring, not since you're being so insistent about the garden furniture," Clara said, because the Doctor was constantly going on that they needed a hammock and one of those large swings you could lounge around in. Even though Clara pointed out that it would have to be covered or moved every time it rained, and since they lived in England, that was all the time. "Plus, we need to think about the car. We're going to have to buy a new one."

" _Buy_ a new one? Do we have the money?"

"I don't think us having the money is important, we need one, and I'm not having you steal one and I'll feel guilty trying to get a new one off Adam. You know how he gets about his cars."

"Oh, Coo, pretty please can't we get the Batmobile? Or that DeLorean – you know I love that DeLorean. How about we take the TARDIS and go get a real DeLorean back when they were still being made?"

"No, it'll be expensive. You either get it before _Back to the Future_ when it's new, or after _Back to the Future_ when it's popular, or _way_ after _Back to the Future_ when it's rare and a collectible," Clara said, "Look, don't worry about that, I'll… I don't know. We must have savings, right? Do we? We don't buy much."

"You buy a lot of books, Clara."

"My books don't add up to the cost of a car," Clara said, "We'll just get some used three-door Fiat or something. Although I've always wanted a Mini Cooper, Esther's was always so cute when she still had that before it crapped out."

"Live your dreams, darling," the Doctor said a little absently. She prodded her broccoli, vacant, while Clara cut up her piece of completely gravy-drowned beef and chewed it.

She frowned at the Doctor, chewed, then asked with a full mouth, "What's up?"

"No, I'm just… still kind of thinking about our imaginary kid. Is that a sensitive topic or something, though?" she asked. Clara laughed slightly and shook her head, still eating. She was a very big fan of anything if it had been roasted and covered in gravy. The Doctor thought her wife might eat a poo if it had been roasted and covered in gravy and she wouldn't even know the difference, apart from it being a bit whiffy. "Humour me. What d'you think they'd be like?"

"I dunno – bookish? A nerd? Or they'd rebel against that and be like me when I was a teenager and they'd smoke and drink and sleep around," Clara shrugged, "Really, it could go either way – but I turned out alright. I think. I hope… I did, didn't I?"

"Of course, you're the head of the English department at a moderately-levelled kind-of-middle-class secondary school," the Doctor said, and Clara frowned, "Okay, first of all, that's still a good thing, but I was joking if you're that worried. You definitely 'turned out alright' – why would I disagree? I married you, I'm not going to tell you I think you're a mess."

"You tell me you think I'm a mess all the time!"

"I do think you're a mess, but that's not what I'm saying-"

"That's literally what you _just_ said-"

"Shh! Talking. Anyway. You're also a renowned poet and you have three degrees and you keep talking about how you want to do a PhD-"

"I can't do a PhD though, can I? Because then we'd _both_ be 'Dr Oswald.' Even if I _would_ love to be able to say I'm a doctor, because I'd be a real doctor, not like you. Doctor."

"Alright, I don't think having a PhD in _niche literature_ counts as being a 'real doctor.'"

"I would be a doctor! You haven't got any PhDs."

"I have an honorary PhD!"

"Since when?"

"Pfft, since before I threw my whole life away marrying a human. My career prospects, and stuff." Clara snort-laughed.

"Since when did you have career prospects!?"

"I did! You ruined all of them. I could have had a glowing career, in… the radio, or something."

"And you need a PhD for that, do you?"

" _Yeah_ , a doctorate in… idle chitchat. Like we're doing now. You can't prove that I don't have an honorary degree in chitchat and small-talk," the Doctor said.

"Degrees in small-talk don't exist."

"Not in your backwards century, maybe…"

"Oi," Clara said, though she was laughing. The Doctor was trying not to laugh and pretend she was actually offended by the route the conversation had taken, but she was not. Not remotely. Besides, Clara was right, she didn't have a degree in small-talk. Though she was sure she had an honorary PhD in _something_ … "I think we would have a nice kid. I think we _do_ , you've got Jenny, she's wonderful. And Oswin's… Oswin." The Doctor looked at her. "You know what I mean. She's my whole world, but she's a bit… shouldn't let her talk to children or pensioners. Or people with nervous dispositions. Or bowel problems, after that incident with the…"

"Well we don't talk about that, Clara."

"No…"

"I still see the mess sometimes in my nightmares." Clara ate another piece of broccoli, but pulled a face when she did, remembering the same spine-chilling thing that the Doctor was. When she finally swallowed it along with some more wine, the pair of them still utterly alone in 13, Paternoster Row in the dark dining room with its dim candles and gas lamps, she changed the subject.

"Anyway. Don't you want to know what I've been toiling over for the last few days?"

"Hmm? Oh, your poem?"

"It's not just 'my poem' – it's that _one poem_. I finally wrote it. You know?"

"You mean 'Super-Nova'? You wrote it?" Thirteen asked it. They knew this poem by name alone, because it was one of the most famous 'C.O. Smith' poems, and it had really been a chore sometimes getting Clara to avoid it so that she could someday write it unaided.

"Well this is the best time to write it, it's not going to be published anywhere until the 1960s, and I've got no phone so I can't give in and google it," Clara shrugged, "But it's not very long, I thought it would end up being some sort of epic – like 'The Waste Land.'"

"Oh, god, that's the last thing we need. Two versions of 'The Waste Land.' What's this poem about then, anyway?"

"You, obviously. I'll do it, hold on… haven't memorised it…" Clara said, getting out of her chair to go into the living room and get her notebook from wherever she had stashed it. While she was gone the Doctor stole two of her roast potatoes and shoved them into her mouth; they practically dissolved on her tongue they were that soaked with gravy. Clara came back into the room with her notebook and opened her mouth to speak, but then looked at her plate. "Didn't I have more potatoes?" Thirteen coughed.

Garbled, she managed a meek, "No."

"You little… you know I value roast potatoes more than my marriage," Clara told her sharply.

"I'll make it up to you," she said sweetly, a little sultrily, and Clara paused and knew exactly what that meant, so she did not press it. "Poem?"

"Oh, right," Clara cleared her throat, then added, "Don't laugh."

"I never laugh at your poems."

"Well… okay:

" _The twinkle in your eyes burns with the ghostly starlight of dead worlds,  
_ _Reanimated in a smile etched from the flotsam of cataclysms and miracles  
_ _Blasted through space by blinding  
_ _Rapturous chaos;  
_ _Into our old cotton sheets sprinkled with coffee stains and crumbs._

 _"_ _The void underneath your skin flows with celestial oceans and depths,  
_ _Whispers on the misty rime evaporating into the phosphorescent aether,  
_ _Transient, dispersed and floating  
_ _Cloud-like;  
_ _Into the steam of the shower cubicle while you shampoo your hair._

 _"_ _A pulsation of brightness in the way you speak is a ripple of beautiful catastrophe,  
_ _Tearing through lightyears and eons to embellish the darkness with your touch,  
_ _Iridescent handprints dancing  
_ _In moonlight;  
_ _While you tap your fingers idly on the soft leather of our armchair._

 _"_ _Light is coupled with explosions, the heat of a million suns on the fringe of reality,  
_ _Deafening orchestral screeching in the noiseless empty of colourful space,  
_ _Debris chased by sonic booms in  
_ _Cacophonous vacuums;  
_ _And you hum to yourself while looking for your pair of broken glasses._

 _"_ _Fluorescent streams of glowing, spectral viscera bleed from its fractures,  
_ _Broken planetoids boiling in the wake of this spectacular monstrosity,  
_ _Orbital obliteration heralds a new age  
_ _Of nebulas;  
_ _And again you trip over the same patch of torn carpet on the stairs._

 _"_ _Daydreaming will make photographs from blank constellations,  
_ _Paintings in the births and deaths of galactic paradises unseen,  
_ _Still unchronicled and invisible,  
_ _Polar opposites;  
_ _Today you are wearing odd socks because you know it bothers me._

 _"_ _The zenith in the stratosphere high above is aflame and beating,  
_ _Great gaseous cosmonaut lumps burst apart at their hazy intangible seams,  
_ _Their dissolution swims into focus,  
_ _Planetary imprints;  
_ _You keep a yellowing, old polaroid of us smiling together under your pillow._

 _"_ _New life is formed by implosions and old life rots inside bright cores,  
_ _A bubble of invention, a crucible, nuclear physics for catalysts,  
_ _Runaway destructions and  
_ _Stardust, spilling  
_ _Like waterfalls out of time and rising from the lachrymose ashes are  
_ _Children of the stars, grown from the shreds of this atomic residue,  
_ _The essence of these distant cosmic exits catapulting creation  
_ _And you-_

 _"_ _You are in my thoughts and my arms and you smell like the night sky,  
_ _Laughing and searching and fumbling and forgetting do laundry  
_ _And sleeping and singing  
_ _We spiral;  
_ _Flung out of space together and your eyes are each a supernova of their own._ "

During the course of this reading Clara, because she always got nervous and blushed a _lot_ when she showcased these fresh, new-born poems, still covered in blood and guts and unwashed and ready to be cleaned up and dressed, had sat back down in her chair. Thirteen had taken her hand maybe halfway through because she stammered more than once ( _adorable_ ) and as soon as the Doctor was _sure_ it was finished she leant in to kiss her, with her hand on Clara's cheek.

"How could anyone ever ask for a better wife than you?" she said.

"You're too nice. Honestly, you're meant to tell me which bits are bad."

"Aw, I don't think any of it's bad, wifey." Clara was bright red, and she closed her little notebook now and left it on the table. "You're too hard on yourself, _C.O. Smith_ – I loved every word, just like I love everything about you and I wish _I_ could write a poem for you that would actually be impressive."

"Too kind."

"No such thing! Now. I'm thinking there's still a while before Jenny and Vastra get back, and now that we've got some time to kill before _my_ Jenny comes to pick us up, we might maybe…?" she began her suggestive sentence, not really needing to finish it.

"Doctor, you read my mind."

And it was _just_ at the moment that their lips were going to touch again that they both froze at the dinner table, because they heard the whirring, thrumming sound of the TARDIS outside and were drawn out of their hazy, love-induced stupor by cold, hard reality. The reality that they were about to return to their domestic life of marking exams and going to staff meetings and taking the bins out and making sure the milk was in date and telling off teenage girls for throwing tampons around the dining hall, a life where there was no room for subliminally encoded Cyndi Lauper vinyls or _Stepford Wives_ suffragettes or female reptilian private detectives or the thieving feminist scoundrel Emmeline Pankhurst.

Thirteen sighed, "I guess all good things must come to an end."

"Oh, don't think that," Clara whispered, "We've still got a good five seconds before anyone knocks on the door." And Clara Oswald kissed her Doctor.

 **AN: And yes I did have to write that whole bloody poem and it was not that great because I am not a poet to be completely honest.**


	88. Time Warp I

**DAY 148**

 _Time Warp I_

 _Rose_

"Go faster!" the Doctor shouted at her.

"I can't go any faster!"

"FASTER!"

"We're on _sand_! There's no traction!"

"What do you mean there's 'no traction'!? We're in a monster truck!"

"Yes, I know we're in a bloody monster truck and I'm telling you sand doesn't have a lot of bloody traction!" Rose continued to shout back at him. It would help if _he_ would take the wheel, maybe, instead of just leaning out of the window with a harpoon gun nestled on his shoulder. She pressed her foot down even harder, but anymore and the accelerator would be slammed straight through the floor and into the desert below. Rose wasn't a very good driver to begin with, let alone in a monster truck – one of which she had never driven before – and across a few hundred miles of sand dunes with an earthquake rippling beneath them.

"It's going to get away, Rose!"

"I don't understand why we have to chase it anyway, why can't we just wait for it to show up in the valley again?"

"So it can eat more people!? No! We have to catch it!" he continued, then he slid his narrow frame back into the bumping monster truck again – which was bright green and had some weird-looking naked alien women on it who were bright green with bulbous heads and even more bulbous _extremities_ – and took his sonic screwdriver out of his jacket pocket. This he then pointed at the dashboard.

"What are you doing _now_?"

"Turbocharge," he answered, and Rose didn't even have time to brace herself before they blasted off at nearly one-hundred miles an hour across the dunes. The sky was dark blue with stars glowing high above and the temperature was dropping as they pursued the ripples in the ground marking the trail of what the locals called 'the Worm.' Every fifty yards, sand shot upwards like a geyser, and this they followed, going miles and miles away from the tiny village and civilisation.

"We're gonna crash!"

"Just keep following it!" he said, returning to his previous position of hanging out of the window halfway with the harpoon, Rose ready to grab him and pull him back in if it looked like he was going to fall.

And then it appeared, the great monster they were hunting, bursting out from below. It knew they were chasing it as it rose out of the ground, enormous, burrowing deep into the dunes without any difficulty whatsoever. It was armoured across its whole body, big, grey organic plates of bone, and it burrowed through the dirt with its own thorny face, teeth working like a drill. It came up in front of them and Rose slammed on the brakes. The Worm was gigantic in front of them, the biggest creature she ever saw, and it shrieked and wailed and angled its mouth, with a dozen rows of razor blade teeth straight towards them. The truck nearly crashed into it – and that beast could digest anything – and the force of Rose stopping flung Ten forwards.

"DOCTOR!" she shouted, and lunged, grabbing his spindly ankle. There he hung, upside-down, out of the window of the lime-coloured, rusty monster truck, Rose keeping him aloft, angling his harpoon gun towards the gullet of the Death Worm that threatened them.

"KEEP STEADY!" he ordered her, like she was going to let him go, and he pulled the trigger. The Worm's head was blasted apart by the souped-up harpoon, which had a bunch of extra nails soldered onto it, and the Doctor must have got it right in the sweet spot. The whole ground began to tremble underneath them, and the giant Worm with the harpoon stuck in its face started to pitch and lurch to either side. "Don't keep me steady, pull me up, PULL ME UP!" So Rose did, she dragged him all the way back through the open window and started the truck again. "Reverse!"

"I'm trying! The gearstick is stiff!"

"REVERSE!"

And the stick snapped right off the gearbox in her hand and they were propelled backwards, stuck in reverse permanently, trying to escape the Worm as it writhed around. She was sure it was dying, but it was huge and it grew higher and covered them with its shadow. Then it began to fall properly, the Doctor was shouting at her, she was shouting at him and at herself and at no-one all at once as they went backwards. They were no longer turbocharged and the colossal Worm was falling straight towards them.

It slammed onto the sand dunes with an almighty thump, kicking up enough dust to cause a miniature sandstorm around them and their commandeered monster truck for a few brief seconds. Rose brought the truck to a stop as the dust began to clear, the rumbling from the Worm now ceased. The Doctor had found himself practically upside down with his head in the foot-well of the passenger seat. While he struggled very awkwardly to right himself, harpoon gun now dropped out of the window nearby when he had used up his one projectile, Rose just stared with her hands frozen on the steering wheel.

"Do you think it's dead?" he asked, running a hand through his hair.

"I bloody well hope so after all that." Ten turned to look at her, and she looked at him, both breathing deeply. Then he cracked a smile, looking into her eyes, as the dust cleared to allow them to see the enormous dead Worm in front of them.

"We did it," he said, grinning. And then she began to laugh.

* * *

"And his face!" Ten exclaimed as they stumbled back onto the TARDIS later, shutting the door. The pair of them were both in a fit of giggles, "When we said the Worm was dead! And he says – he says 'we'd better get the forklift to bring that back here.'"

"Forklift!" Rose guffawed like she had not just been there ten minutes ago when this conversation had happened with the sheriff of the only town in the valley, "And you said-"

"I said-"

" _Better make it a crane!_ " they said together, holding onto one another to stop from falling over they were laughing so much. And then somebody in the console room cleared their throat, and it appeared they had interrupted some sort of little gathering there and the two of them had not even noticed.

"Are you drunk?" Nios asked them coldly. But everything Nios did she did coldly. Rose was trying not to smile and wiping a tear from her eye with her hand still on the Tenth Doctor's arm.

"No, no," she said, him shaking his head, "Just this thing, with this worm, it was…" and they began to laugh again. Mickey Smith sighed.

"They've always been like this," he said, leaning with one hand on the console just behind Martha. River Song was there as well, ignoring all this, doing something with the computer. "I could tell you a nasty story about these worms inside of toilets, they were-"

"Don't tell _that_ , nobody wants to hear _that_ story," Martha said.

"But I like that story," he complained to her, doing a little pout, "That's the story of how we got together."

"Not really," she said. He raised his eyebrows and she sighed and relented. "Well, alright, a _bit_ , but you can tell that story very easily and leave out all the stuff with the worms and the toilets. Besides, they look like they've seen a bit too much worm for one day."

"A bit too much worm!" Rose exclaimed again, finding this incredibly funny for some reason, and collapsing into Ten again. They probably really did look like they were drunk, it wouldn't surprise her. "Do you know, he shot it with a harpoon gun."

"Where'd you get a harpoon gun from?" Martha asked.

" _Well_ , you know. Here and there," he shrugged.

"So you murdered an innocent worm?" Nios questioned. River laughed a little absently, and it was unclear whether she was laughing at that comment from Nios. River seemed to be one of the few people the synth actually got along with well enough.

"No, it was killing and eating people," Rose said, and then the room fell a little flat when she began to feel like an imposter. She cleared her throat and aimed to restore some of their respect for her, "What are you four doing, then?" She let go of Ten and he scratched the back of his head.

"Following a hunch," Mickey answered. Things were beginning to grow a little awkward now that Ten and Rose had stopped laughing.

"Have either of you seen Jack recently?" River asked, looking up from the monitor finally. Ten and Rose both frowned.

"No," they said together, then again, "Why?"

"Because nobody's seen him, not for nearly five days, and he isn't answering his phone," River said, "I'm sorting through the TARDIS logs."

"Oh right, well… as long as you're on the case," Ten said, " _Child of the TARDIS_ ; she won't hide anything from you, I'm sure. Best woman for the job, really." River made a distracted noise of agreement with him. Rose thought River Song probably thought she was the best woman for every job, though.

"Ugh, I'm tired," Martha said, breaking a silence previously only being permeated by the hum of the engines and by Nios's judgmental stare, her still apparently annoyed about them 'murdering an innocent worm.' It must be an act though. Well, Rose hoped it was an act, she wouldn't put it past Nios to try and kill her in her sleep as vicarious vengeance for their slaughter of an invertibrate.

"You slept for ages, though," Mickey said, "You didn't get up until eleven."

"I know that, and I'm tired," she said, "And lightheaded. I need a nap."

"A _nap_? At this time?" Mickey questioned her, and she began to walk off.

"Yes, Mickey, a nap," she said, heading for the doors. Mickey followed her closely and continued his argument, questioning a lot of her recent behaviour, it sounded like. Rose, admittedly, was not really up to date on the happenings of Martha Jones' life, though. Perhaps she and Martha ought to have a catch up? A girls' day? But then Mickey and Martha were gone, and River was still engrossed in her search through the databanks of the TARDIS and the flight log.

"What gives you the right to play god?" Nios asked them.

There were a few moments where Ten looked like he was mulling this over, like he may actually give her a genuine answer, or like he was about to try and explain something slightly complex to a young child but he was searching for the right words. Rose saved him the trouble, though.

"Superpowers," she said, making her eyes glow vividly gold on purpose, opening her palm to reveal a cluster of bright atoms dancing on her fingertips. But Rose's showing off had an unexpected consequence, when she felt a stabbing pain in her head and gasped. The gold died away and she found that she had collapsed in the brief interval where she had slipped away, into the side of the console with the Doctor coming to steady her.

"What was that?" he asked seriously. Even River had now looked up from what she was doing.

"Is she okay?" River asked.

"Maybe she's got what Martha's got," Nios said. River gave Nios a look.

"I very much doubt that what Martha's got is contagious," she said flatly.

"What? What do you mean?" Nios asked.

"I think I saw something," Rose said.

"Anything helpful?" River inquired sarcastically, Nios rendered very confused now and Ten looking over her in a very worried way. He was much too overprotective, Rose thought; funny when _she_ was the one who could rip open the hull of a battleship if it suited her. Rose didn't know what she had seen, though. Something, she was sure, because there was a dip in her memory for a split-second and half a dozen blurry pictures, but she could not fathom what they had been.

"C'mon, let's go back to our room," Ten said quietly. Rose let him lead her because she was trying to decipher what had just happened. As far as the time vortex and the Bad Wolf went, she really did feel like she was more of an expert in it than the Doctor was, despite what he may think. So if _she_ didn't know what had happened to her, she highly doubted that _he_ did.

"Let me know if you have any visions about Jack," River called after them.

"Yep," Rose called back, though she mumbled it a little, Ten taking them the other way through the TARDIS to get back to the Bedroom Circle. The route that did not require traipsing through Nerve Centre and being forced to talk to whoever was lurking in there.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"I'm fine, really," she said, "It was just… the time vortex, or something."

"'Or something'? I keep telling you, Rose, the Bad Wolf is _dangerous_ ," he told her, lecturing her again.

"Yes," she said through gritted teeth, "I know it is. But I didn't do anything. I only made my eyes glow! That's not even the time vortex, that's the mutation. Sort of. Remember? Eyes change colour constantly?" He sighed. "I don't know what happened. I got shown something."

"Something?"

"I don't know what. Maybe there's something I need to see. Maybe it _is_ to do with Jack, who knows?" Rose said, moving away from him as he tried to lead her like a lost sheep back to their room. He put his hands in his trouser pockets and walked alongside her. He was worried about her, like always, but she didn't think there was anything _to_ be worried about. And he couldn't even do anything anyway, no matter how much he might complain about Bad Wolf being a fully integrated part of Rose Tyler now. There was no way to reverse their mutated strain of the 'superpower syndrome'; that had been made perfectly clear a week ago.

Whatever it was, though, was not as short-lived as Ten and Rose may have hoped. And this time it wasn't triggered by her being liberal with her abilities, it hit her out of nowhere, more vividly, and she could very nearly make sense of the things she saw. It was as though she was having an out-of-body experience. She did not know where she was, she wasn't even sure she was _anywhere_ , as she was pulled out of herself and thrown somewhere else entirely. Everything was hazy and warped as though through a broken lens, crystallised and multiplied. Rose realised – not on her own, but with a nudge from whatever higher power was tapped into her to begin with – that this was time. The time vortex. She saw very little, a few faces and bits of machinery and slivers of things she could just about identify as famous events, but she knew that everything was falling apart.

And then she was breathing and she was in Ten's arms again, having fallen completely, and he had pulled her into their room. The door was closed and she sat on the floor next to it, propped up against the wall, the Doctor crouching down and touching her face.

"Rose!?"

"We have to – have to _go_ ," she stammered, woozy, her head swimming.

"Go? You can't go anywhere," Ten said, "I'll go get Martha to-"

"No, no," Rose said, getting to her feet, fighting against him when he tried to make her sit back down, "It's the time vortex – it's more than that. It's just… time itself, it's being destroyed."

" _Destroyed_? You can't _destroy_ time," he said.

"Well someone's doing a very bloody good job of trying," she said, feeling the stabbing return to her head. She did not leave herself this time, but she saw her hands light up gold, her whole body began to glow and judging by the fear in his face her eyes must be glowing, too. She probably looked just like Bad Wolf, but she was fully aware of herself, even if she was not quite in control. Sometimes it was as though she had another personality hiding in the recesses of her head.

"Rose? What are you doing?" he asked her seriously.

" _I_ am the time vortex," she said, or rather, the Bad Wolf said through her mouth, "I am reality." And she grabbed his arms and the world began to move. They were stationary, the Doctor frozen in fear for her safety, and the entire universe twisted. But it was jerky, like a stuttering film, and sometimes the inside of her brain stung as they shifted – until they dropped just like that out of time and space and into a dim room, the only light coming through a narrow window set into the door. It was a bright light, white and blinding, and Rose touched her temples with her fingers.

"That wasn't you," Ten told her, and she met his eyes, his cold eyes.

"God, you look at me like I'm a monster!" she shouted at him, "I'm getting sick of it! This isn't _my_ fault!"

"I'm just scared of what she'll use you for."

" _She_ is exactly what she said she is – the _time vortex_. But breathing through me. It's not like I'm possessed by a demon, Doctor," Rose snapped, "It doesn't want to hurt me." But then he shushed her because they heard noise in the corridor next to their very cramped storeroom. A dozen or so people came running through, all of them dressed in black outfits like a SWAT team and carrying automatic weapons. " _See_?" Rose hissed, "I told you something's going on." The Doctor didn't say anything.

"Hold on – what do you mean, 'time' is being 'destroyed'?" he asked. But she didn't really know what she meant. Not until they felt what could only be described as a ripple, a ripple with penetrated all the walls and blasted through the air until sounds became muffled. It was like listening underwater, or trying to hear when your ears were popped, and she thought their surroundings – poorly lit as they were – now bore some sort of dull hue imposed atop them. Rose opened the door, forcing the lock easily, and they stepped out into the brightly lit, all-white corridor.

"I think _that's_ what I meant," she said, shocked, indicating the soldiers who had just run past. There they all were, with their guns in their hands, but they were not moving at all. They were completely frozen. Around the Doctor and Rose Tyler, time had stopped.

 **AN: Full disclosure, this is derivative of the game** ** _Quantum Break_** **that came out last year. But in a pastiche kind of way.**


	89. Time Warp II

_Time Warp II_

 _Rose_

Apart from the Doctor and Rose, nothing moved. They had all been moving a few moments ago, they had been marching past the cleaning cupboard the interlopers had found themselves in, but now the heavily armed patrol had come to a complete halt. Some of them didn't even have either of their feet on the ground, they were floating in this blurry and spectral space-between-spaces. It was hard for Rose to tell who were the unnatural ones there. Had the entire universe just frozen at that moment? The Doctor walked up to the guards, moved in and out from between them, lifted a visor and peered into the eyes.

"Nothing," he said. He noticed the gun of the one in front of him was aimed, by accident, right at his gut, and he pushed down the muzzle to be pointing at the floor instead. "Shouldn't be able to move them. If we were in between time we wouldn't be able to interact at all. This is some sort of… collision." A collision of what, he didn't say. She didn't think he knew.

"Their guns look weird," Rose said. She was not going near them, in case they unstuck all of a sudden and began firing on the pair of them. The Doctor was not so cautious. He glanced down at the firearm he had just pushed out of the way, then crouched in between the men of the platoon to get a better look at it. He now seemed less inclined to touch them.

"Sonic weaponry," he said, standing back up and shifting out of the way of them, "That puts us in the future, closer to Jack's century than I'd like. But clunky… so we must be earlier than him. What _is_ this place? Any ideas?" Rose just shrugged. She didn't know. She knew there was some sort of crazy temporal disturbance, which was easy enough to figure out even if you _weren't_ connected to the time vortex on a molecular level, but nothing more than that. The issue was a bit too urgent to be fully briefed, clearly.

"I don't know, but shouldn't we leave? Before they, you know, unfreeze?" she said, indicating the soldiers. She did not think they would take too kindly to Ten and Rose just showing up out of nowhere, flitting around the place and not having a clue where they were or what they were doing. They would most likely be shot on sight. When she pointed this out, Ten seemed to agree, and motioned his head to indicate that she should follow him down the hallway in the opposite direction to those soldiers. "Shouldn't we see what they're running towards?"

"Not yet, I don't think. And if we walk past them they'll catch up to us as soon as they get themselves unstuck," he said, "Best to go the other way. I don't think the soldiers will be the only thing we have to worry about if there's some sort of rupture in time. C'mon." She followed him, glancing back at them again for only a moment until they went around a corner. Then they felt that pulsation again in the atoms of the air itself, a ripple which reverted the world's suddenly-bland colours back to regular vibrancy, and which heralded the noises of the soldiers running again. "Just in the nick of time," Ten whispered to her wryly. She crossed her arms uneasily as she walked, feeling unusually vulnerable.

"What are we looking for?" she asked quietly.

"Uh… you know. Clues."

"Clues? Clues like what those soldiers were running towards?" she pressed.

"Do you want us to get shot?" he turned to ask her, and she stopped.

"Well, I… _no_."

"Then we're going this way, end of," he said simply, and she grimaced when she followed him again. She supposed she should have trusted him in the end, because they did actually find a clue by going the other direction, a very big clue in the form of a window. She didn't know why she had assumed they would be on Earth somewhere – her Earthling roots, presumably, she did sometimes enjoy stepping out into the familiarity of a _non_ -alien world – but she was immediately proven wrong.

It was a very pretty view, though; space never ceased to amaze Rose Tyler, ever since the moment when she had stepped out of the TARDIS after her very first jaunt through time and space to get to that spacestation and watch the end of the world from high above and eons away from anything ordinary. Then again, ordinary was relative, and for years now this had all become Rose's new normal. She didn't know if she recognised this area of the universe, she didn't have much of a retention for astronomy, but the star at the centre of the system cast everything outside into vivid shades of indigo with a streak of red from some sort of space-cloud probably thousands of lightyears away. She was transfixed by this sun and by the space rocks orbiting it, and by once seeing what could be a shuttle or a comet fly past in the distance with a blurry streak of cosmic light trailing away after it.

"This isn't right," Ten said, frowning. There were many things that were 'not right' at the current moment, she thought, but he said it with rather a lacking conviction. Rather than something being completely off, it appeared that the Doctor was merely confused. They stood side-by-side in front of the window, and she was wondering whether she might take his hand, but he had both of them in his pockets so she remained observing.

"What's not?" she said. He frowned and scratched the back of his head.

"Hrmph," he muttered to himself, messing his hair, "The century, and this place – this is Moso, that's the name of the solar system we're in, but it's uninhabited. Some backwater of the Milky Way no-one can be bothered to terraform, there's no life. So why is there a big human base out here?"

"We were at a base in this century the other week, weren't we?"

"I don't know about that. Same millennia, but not the same century," he said, "We're a bit later than that. Makes me think that this place probably isn't so legal. Shadowy."

"Don't say 'shadow', you'll make him show up," Rose said, then she actually did glance around a little to see if the Shadow appeared anyway. But the corridor was so brightly lit there was nowhere for him to hide, though she had most certainly just given him an opening to dramatically reveal himself. The Shadow _was_ quite the showman. "So they're doing something illegal… and they've accidentally, what? Destroyed the universe?"

The Doctor shrugged, "Getting there. Not quite destroyed yet. How does it feel?" he asked.

"A bit like when you need to be sick but you can't manage it," she answered him. It really was a very nauseating feeling, being connecting to the very reality that was currently trying to tear itself apart. "When time stopped, why were you not affected?" Rose asked him.

"What? You don't ask why _you_ weren't affected?" he remarked jovially, and she smiled a little, him putting his hands in his pockets again and meandering off to investigate elsewhere.

"I think it's a bit obvious why _I_ wasn't affected," Rose said, and he laughed.

"Well, we're both creatures of the time vortex. Time Lords are created by prolonged exposure to it – you know that. That's how River became one, because she was conceived on the TARDIS. Time Lords and Gallifreyans aren't mutually exclusive, my kind were just always a bit selfish when it came to basking in the never-ending joys of the untempered schism," he said bitterly, moseying along, "I doubt anybody on here is a Time Lord. Probably best that we don't keep getting stuck anyway." When he said this, it happened again. The sensation of time stopping around you was very jolting, it completely knocked Rose out of kilter and made her head hurt. Like when you were a child and you tried to watch TV upside down and the blood rushed to your head – and she happened to have a lot of idle memories of those sorts when she was bored and young and Jackie wouldn't let her go out onto the rest of the estate, because the Powell Estate has always been rough. But that sensation of the blood clotting up around your brain was akin to what it was like now, to be stuck so thoroughly with unusual pressure pressing in on her bones. Suffocating.

Ten didn't pay much note to it a second time. Not until he was proven wrong, however. Time was stuck alright, they could tell that when they saw a shuttle outside completely halted in the air, and by the odd discolouration making the world itself have a touch of film grain, but they heard voices. Or one voice, rather, muttering to itself, in a room on its own nearby.

"What do we have _here_ , then?" Ten said curiously, more to himself than to Rose, going up to the closest door. It was in there where the talking of one singular and panicked voice was coming from, and the Doctor tried to force it. It didn't open and silence fell within, then he glanced back at her and bit his lip in a caricature way meant to convey worry. Then he got out his psychic paper and held it against the door scanner and barged his way in anyway.

"Stop right there," someone ordered them.

"Whoa, whoa!" the Doctor protested, raising his hands instantly. They had a gun drawn on them, a sonic blaster like Captain Jack's only bulkier and less efficient-looking. Rose copied the Doctor and raised her hands in surrender as well, "We're only looking around."

"Looking around – _looking around_? Who the hell are you to be 'looking around'? We're in the middle of a freeze, how the hell are the two of you moving?" a young man talking frantically stammered. He was sweating a lot and trembling with the gun in his hand. He must be around thirty, Rose thought, and she couldn't very well understand why he could move.

"Could ask you the same question, mate," Rose said calmly, her hands behind her head, "Put the gun down, alright?"

"How could I do that? You might be trying to stop me. I've never seen either of you around here, though – and you don't look like personnel. How did you get here?" he demanded.

"Put the gun down," said the Doctor, "What's your name?"

"My _name_? Don't talk to me like you're negotiating a hostage situation – this is more important than you can understand. I don't know who you are but you need to leave and let me carry on my work before they figure out where I am," he said. 'They.' The soldiers? She didn't know who the soldiers were, but unless they were UNIT they were probably on the opposite side to Ten and Rose. And even then, sometimes UNIT were a bit too ruthless for Ten's tastes. What was the adage? The enemy of my enemy is my friend? If the soldiers were after him, maybe he was useful. Not to mention his ability to remain unaffected by these 'freezes.'

"Just put the gun down and we can talk," said Rose.

"Talk? There's no time to talk, blondie," he said, "Reality is collapsing around us, okay?"

"Yeah, I kind of heard about that," she said, and then she sighed, and was not a big fan of some frantic borderline-lunatic pointing a loaded gun at her and her fiancé. In an instant, half a second only, he was disarmed. He was disarmed because Rose simply teleported and grabbed it from him, relieved that her powers still worked adequately enough when 'reality' was 'collapsing' and they were stuck in the static space between moments. He screamed.

"How did you do that?" he demanded, scrambling to get away from Rose, who held the gun like it was filthy with the tips of her fingers and set it down carefully on the desk next to her. The Doctor came to move it further out of anybody's reach.

"We're not stowaways, we're time travellers," Rose said.

"Time travellers!" he exclaimed, "Time travel is what got everyone into this mess in the first place."

"Hold on, what do you mean? I'm the Doctor, this is Rose," Ten began, "I'm a Time Lord, she's… a sort of… intertemporal being. A little bit omnipotent."

"You can't be a 'little bit' omnipotent, that defeats the purpose of omnipotence to begin with."

"What does 'omnipotent' mean?" Rose asked.

"All-powerful," Ten said.

"Oh. Eurgh. Don't say that, makes me sound like a god, or something," she shook her head, "What's your name, who are you?"

"Charlie. I'm a scientist," he said, "I tried to warn them against doing this, but they didn't listen."

"And it's, what? A time machine?" Ten asked, then realised something, " _Oh_ , of course. Sonic weapons, just before Jack's time? Mid-fourth-millennia? It's got to be the Time Agency. Or whatever preceded the Time Agency. Experimental time travel technology never works. You might end up stuck in a pocket universe, or something, stuck there for who knows how long? And then it's very hard to get people back from pocket universes."

"What's a pocket universe?" Rose asked.

"Sort of a remnant of a place, they don't last very long. Minutes, usually, they always collapse in on themselves, a black hole of metaphysical energy. Very hard to enter those sorts of places," he said, "But that's not what this is. These scientists must have disrupted the time vortex quite a lot to call you out here. What were you trying to do?"

"Lock the soldiers into one area, the docking bay," answered Charlie the scientist, "So they won't bother me. I don't know how to fight. But they've been ignoring my relayed orders, and I can't hack into their comm channel to hear what's been going on with them."

"Hacking? Simple enough, let me try," the Doctor said, "We're here to help. We don't really want the fabric of reality to crumble, either, Charlie-boy."

"I don't understand how you got here," Charlie persisted, "You just show up out of nowhere. And a 'Time Lord'? What is that?"

"An alien," Rose answered on his behalf as Ten pushed Charlie out of the way to get at the computer. So, they were in a big secret base owned by whatever company had existed before the Time Agency, and whoever was operating it was an idiot who had tried to use very experimental time travel technology. Didn't seem too tricky, but then, figuring that out was only the beginning. Time was destroying itself. How, exactly, did one stop time from destroying itself? The Doctor took out his screwdriver.

"Is that sonic?" Charlie asked.

"Yep," he said, distracted, pointing it at the keyboard and glancing between the keyboard and the computer screen.

"People have been trying for years to get sonic technology that compact."

"It's from the future," he answered, "Time travellers, like Rose said, that's how we got here. Rose can time travel without a capsule, without anything, at will. Comes from extreme exposure to the time vortex, the thing _your_ people are so intent on controlling. Easy enough to use as a weapon, I suppose, like that 'reality gun' Davros built. You remember, Rose."

"Mmm."

"He probably got the idea from what you did on Satellite 5 to begin with." She didn't say anything else.

A shudder in the molecules of the air around them signified that the freeze had just undone itself around them. When they were stuck, she had a headache, but when they were unstuck, she felt sick. It was just a lose-lose situation all round, and in the moment she didn't like either sensation at all.

"How come you don't get stuck?" Rose asked Charlie.

"I have a device, it protects me," he said.

"I'll have a look at that in a bit, if you don't mind," Ten said, "Some sort of pocket of energy strapped onto you, I imagine? Hmm… here we go." He stepped back from the computer as radio chatter came out of the speakers. Well, she did wonder if they still used radios to communicate in that century, but she figured they were reliable, so possibly. What they heard was not good, though. Rose had thought this temporal collapse wouldn't have been so bad for the people who were affected by the freezes, because no doubt they would not notice the freezes around them at all, they would just continue on their merry way to whatever horrid crucible was the cause of all this dismay. But that wasn't what it sounded like on the comms.

" _It's coming, it's – oh god, there's two of them!_ "

" _Come in, X-Ray, come in_ ," said an authoritative voice to a screaming soldier. " _X-Ray, do you copy?_ "

" _It's eating him, it's eating him! We're all going to die!_ " Then a roar which was all the more spine-chilling for Rose because she recognised it. She recognised that sound vividly and would do until the day she died, even if that day turned out to be thousands of years away. The soldier screamed and then the comm link died, leaving just the desperate commander trying to gain contact with his team again. Ten pushed a button on the keyboard and the line went dead for the three of them, too. Good, Rose thought. If they re-established a connection, she did not want to listen to soldiers being slaughtered by an invincible enemy.

"What was that!?" Charlie exclaimed.

"Something nobody here will be prepared for," Ten said darkly, "Messing with the time vortex causes repercussions. Rose isn't the only line of defence."

"But what was it? _Eating_ them?"

Rose answered hollowly, feeling like something had been sucked out of her, like the world had been pulled from underneath her feet and left her floundering: "Reapers."

 **AN: Author's note completely unrelated to what's actually going on in fic (by the way what'd you guys think of the Suffragette storyline?) but I associate a lot of songs with this fic, and I hardly ever mention music apart from jazz (and Cyndi Lauper just recently) because it always annoys me when other writers do it – but if you guys ever get the chance to listen to** ** _Last of the American Girls_** **by Green Day that is like Thirteen's anthem, that whole song just sums her up and I thought I'd give you guys some greater character context for her. ALSO would any of you be opposed to MORE lesbians? Cos I wanna give Nios a girlfriend. The** ** _Humans_** **character she's based off, Niska, is also gay, which wasn't even canon when I originally wrote her in, so now I'm like, gotta do the canon justice.**


	90. Time Warp III

_Time Warp III_

 _Rose_

"I'm just worried you won't be able to understand-"

" _Understand_? Shut it, mate," Rose ordered, "I'll understand your time-stuff just fine, thanks very much." Charlie the scientist did not look convinced. Probably because she called it 'time-stuff.' She had asked him for an explanation to attempt to fill the time while the Doctor had a little Reaper-induced meltdown next to her. She kept looking at him worriedly.

"Okay, I was the lead scientist," said Charlie, "The project was thought of by this guy, Todd Myers, some egotist who wants to 'make his mark' on history. He's got real money smarts you know? I met him when we were at school together, I thought he was a genius. He thought the same about me, but I spent all my time in labs doing quantum engineering – it's nothing too astonishing, my old research, just to do with a particle-suspension based levitation system. He thought he saw potential in it, tried to monetise it, we were business partners. That was ten years ago. The industry is under his name, Myers is a corporate beast – he can get any funding he wants from anywhere, nobody ever says no to him. It was just in the last few weeks I found out the truth about him, he's been blackmailing people for years to get money for these projects of his. But I didn't know any of that, I swear it."

"Yeah, alright," Rose said, "Enough about how you fancy this bloke and he betrayed you." Charlie seemed outrage by that comment. "But I'm asking about this, _this_ , specifically, the universe-ending thing. Not your particle-thingy."

"Sorry. I get side-tracked," he said darkly. He was running about the room, too. Locking the doors. Doors wouldn't really help them, not against Reapers. The Doctor was still thinking. "It's called Project Negation. That was how he swung it to the people working on it, and kept it a secret to anyone not in the need-to-know; I sometimes think that was nearly everyone except for me and Nadine. It was called 'Negation' to assure me that it had noble reasons behind it, I never had any reason to expect otherwise, until… that's not important."

"Negation?" she asked.

"As in, _negating_ the effects of the past. Of history. Of going and saving the people in Pompeii, or killing Hitler; rescuing Franz Ferdinand or JFK," he said, "Negating the… negatives."

"They're fixed points in time, though," said Rose after a brief pause to see if Ten wanted to give his own input and say the exact same thing. That was right, though; his little talent for telling which points were fixed and which were fluctuating had been inherited through her, via the Bad Wolf. That and she more or less just assumed that any major historical event was fixed, or if it wasn't fixed then nobody had done anything about it for good reason. Maybe killing JFK stopped something even worse happening further down the line? His assassin might have ultimately averted causing a nuclear war, or something. She didn't know the facts, though she rested easy with the knowledge she could find out in a heartbeat. If she wanted to.

"They're what?" Charlie asked.

"Time – it's not…" she frowned and tried to remember how it was the Doctor, completely zoning out, explained time, "It's not a straight line, okay? It's like… a ball of wool. Or something. Or a rubber-band ball, I don't… it's lots and lots of different threads, alright? Interweaving. Just looking at it you can't tell which events connect to each other because it's all knotted up. No, wait, I know – it's like Jenga. Do you have Jenga in the future?"

"Uh… with the wooden blocks and the tower…?"

"Yeah! Well, some of the little wooden blocks you can pull out easily. That's a point in flux. But some of them, if you pull them out, the whole thing will crash down. That's a fixed point; can't move it or the effects are devastating. That'll be what your mate Myers has done, he'll be messing with fixed points in time, that's why the Reapers have shown up," she said. She reminded herself of when she had been travelling between dimensions to help Donna when she had been in her alternate timeline, the one where the Doctor had died and the _Titanic_ had crashed into Buckingham Palace.

"Reapers?"

"What you heard on the comms. Big sort of, dragon-things. Eat people with their stomachs, they have wings," she said, "They come out like the immune system of the time vortex, they'll devour everything here to disinfect the, y'know, 'wound.'"

"And you can't stop them," Ten said finally.

"But we don't know that they'll come after _us_ ," Rose said to him, "We haven't done anything."

"Just by being here we're changing things from whatever it was they were meant to be originally. If his time machine didn't do anything, we wouldn't be here. But we _are_ here," the Doctor said, "They'll hunt us down. Maybe not now, but soon. We won't be able to get away. They'll be able to mitigate you."

"Mitigate me? Is that possible?" she frowned. He sighed, ran a hand through his hair. He was stressed, understandably. Then he looked back at Charlie, who had been listening and possibly not comprehending Rose's string of weird, mixed metaphors. But she thought the Jenga one made perfect sense.

"Sorry, did you say you were…? Using particles to levitate things?"

"It's a suspended particle, keeps things… it stops them from falling," he said. Ten crossed his arms and looked at Charlie.

"What else were you talking about?"

"Project Negation, Doctor," Rose said.

"Right. Stopping bad things from happening. It _is_ a noble goal, for anyone who doesn't know how timelines work… but the Time Agency do. Then again, this isn't the Time Agency. I suppose somebody shows the Time Agency the right way to do things, though they're always very reckless," Ten mused. He was talking a lot just to fill the air, that was the feeling she got.

"Well he doesn't really want to use it for that," Charlie said, "He wants to use it as a weapon, threaten to erase people if they don't do what he wants."

" _Erase people_? That's not how it works," Ten scoffed, "If you went back in time and erased somebody for not agreeing with you, there would be somebody else there right away to not-agree with you. Besides, the logistics of erasing somebody from existence… what does that involve? Stopping conception? That's not the sort of job I'd want."

"Sounds grim," Rose cringed, "Stopping people from copping off."

"I think he was just planning on killing their parents before they're born," Charlie muttered.

"Oh yeah that'd probably be a bit easier…"

"So, he's been building a time machine? To get power?" Ten asked, "And lying about it to the people working for him, like you? A bunch of mugs not asking questions?"

"I was kept in the dark!" Charlie argued, "And what was I meant to do? He's a lunatic, he's got a hitman working for him, I'd've been killed."

"And now the universe is going to be killed!"

"But we can stop it," Rose said assuredly, then glanced at the Doctor, "We _can_ stop it, can't we?"

"I… by my best guess, your man's machine has gone kaboom," he said to Charlie, "Or it's gone into meltdown and will, very soon, go kaboom. And it's affecting everything around it, time itself, not just in the freezes. Just wait until we start seeing future echoes. Or past echoes, more likely, since I doubt there's going to be all that much of a future. What made you have your change of heart about Project Negation, then?"

"It was Nadine," said Charlie, "The other lead scientist. She vanished, months ago. Without a trace. I started asking questions… I guess that was Myers' best attempt at erasing somebody from existence without literally doing it. That was when he got too excited about the machine, he started saying how it would definitely work, and I said there hadn't been any tests run. But there was something about the way he said that… and I couldn't find anything about Nadine. She'd been wiped, from everywhere, nobody spoke about her – I thought, maybe, maybe I was losing my mind. You know? But then I saw her, she showed up."

" _Showed up_?" Ten and Rose both asked.

"Walked into my office, looking way older than she did the last time I saw her – his machine didn't work as well as he thought. He tried to send her to the future, in it, the distant future, but she didn't go far enough. Three months after vanishing, two weeks ago, and she warned me about it."

"Wait, time ends, but she's still…? And how did she get back?"

"Rifts? Portals? If the time vortex fractured that much there could be any number of cracks and leaks in it for people to just slip through. A whole lot of them probably leading right back to here, when it happened – haven't we heard something about this before? From the Ponds?"

"Yeah, because the TARDIS blew up and destroyed everything," Rose said.

"It was erasing things, though. Something must have happened to her in the machine, to make her like Rose – like me, even. Able to walk through the freezes. I suppose that's what it must have been, one last freeze, right? This 'end of time'? Probably full of Reapers, trying to devour everything… they'd have to devour the whole universe to get rid of something like that, and themselves," he mused, "This is different to that. The TARDIS _is_ the time vortex, whatever's been built here isn't. It isn't organic. It won't work properly. The principles will all be wrong."

"What do you mean? Time's just going to… stop?" Rose asked, perplexed. He nodded. "How does that work? Time isn't even real."

" _Well_ it's not so much time as rather a linear progression of our reality that will cease, a pure stagnation. Of course for anyone inside the freeze, the notion of time will still 'exist' in the sense of their own memories and the chronology of their existence leading up to their present moment, but the 'present moment' will stretch on forever. There won't be any more births, any more deaths, probably for only a handful. A handful that won't include either of us," Ten said, "Not you and not I, not if the time vortex collapses. The alterations to your genetic structure would be too severe for you to survive detached from it, and mine too."

"Whatever way you look at it it's the end of all things, alright?" Charlie interrupted, "This debating is useless. We've got to shut down the machine, that's what. And you two are just standing around! Every second is precious. By my count there can't even be more than half an hour before everything is over, that's what Nadine said. We could at least do some damage control."

"Damage control!?" Ten exclaimed. Now Charlie opened a drawer and pulled out his gun again, which he fumbled with a bit, not being used to the weight. For half a moment Rose thought she might ask him if he actually knew how to shoot so that she could show him – but she didn't think the Doctor would take very kindly to her displaying her knowledge of firearms. "There isn't any 'damage control', it's all or nothing, you can't destroy time 'only a little bit.' I'm sorry. It's started. In a way, since Nadine saw it, it's already over."

"What? What about your points in time? The Jenga?" he asked, "Which is this?"

"This is, erm…" Ten paused. He furrowed his brow. Rose, next to him, did a similar thing. Was this fixed or in flux? For the life of her, she could not tell. But that, most likely, hailed the end of her connection to the time vortex which was looming steadily towards them. What need she be more frightened of? The collapse of reality? The lunatic Todd Myers? The well-armed soldiers on their way to die? The Reapers? "Tricky to… see."

"It doesn't matter, what can we do?" Rose asked him.

"Do?"

"Yes! To stop this!"

"Well, I'd…" he trailed off. Then he cleared his throat. "Maybe Charlie's idea is best. About stopping the machine."

"But you just said there was no point trying to stop the machine."

"No point trying to stop the machine! Me?"

"You said 'It's started, it's already over,'" Rose repeated back to him. It had been not thirty seconds ago that he had said that, those exact words. And now he was lying. And she thought she knew why, especially when he did not defend himself, "But you're the Doctor."

"Yes. I am."

"And?"

"And what?"

"And you've just given up, haven't you! Just like that! Oh my god!"

"I haven't!" he protested, "There's… always a way. Time vortex can't be destroyed. Don't be ridiculous. Couple of Reapers, what's the worry? We'll just fight our way through; Charlie's got a gun. Pull out the plug. Fix the universe. Simple enough. Don't even need Mickey and his technopathy here to help us. Don't you think? It's open and shut," he said. He was lying. She could tell. He knew she could tell. It didn't make a difference. Was he really so hopeless? The Doctor – _the_ Doctor?

She knew what this was like. This was like when he had regenerated, when he had been building his machine to beat the Daleks, building it all on his own in Satellite 5 even though he knew it could never be finished on time; when Jack died and he sent Rose away. And he had been right, there had not been any way for him, the Doctor, to save them that day. She had done it. The Bad Wolf had done it. And by god, she would do it again if she had to.

Somehow…


	91. Time Warp IV

_Time Warp IV_

 _Rose_

She didn't know how to fight Reapers; if she had to, she would hazard a guess that the Doctor was right about them being invincible. How was it they had stopped them before? Hiding in an old church? Even that precaution had only worked temporarily. Now what was the oldest thing they had? The Doctor himself, of course; the big space base in the isolated pocket of the Milky Way was most definitely not something ancient and defensible. Probably the best place would be making some sort of queer igloo out of bits of Stonehenge, or going into the catacombs beneath the Roman Colosseum. Or a crawlspace where they couldn't get in, considering they were rather large.

"Hey, what if we found a crawlspace?" Rose touched the Doctor's arm to get his attention. Currently, they were walking – or more creeping very steadily and on tiptoes – through the corridors of the facility that was home to Project Negation. She wondered if this Myers character had any other shady interests and inventions under development. He could have some amazing super-weapon that could easily defeat the Reapers. Unless they were just… completely invulnerable. Which wouldn't surprise her. They weren't exactly the offspring of a reality with 'normal' parameters. Would they survive a nuclear bomb? They could kill _anything_.

"A crawlspace?" he asked. He was becoming jaded, more and more hopeless, and trying not to be. She didn't let it get to her, how could she? It seemed like he had every reason to be hopeless, but she was sure she would be able to do something. She, unlike him, would not relinquish her hope so easily. Charlie the scientist walked ahead of them with his gun out, pointing it around corners. Rose got the sneaking suspicion, however, that most of the soldiers they had seen earlier had already been devoured. Or not far off it.

"Well the Reapers are quite big," she said, "So if you hid in… a safe, you'd be alright, wouldn't you?"

"You'd run out of air."

"What about a maintenance shaft?"

"You'd starve to death eventually. Or they'd rip the walls apart. They can devour more than just organic life, it's anything, any matter that's… _tainted_ ," he said sourly. Sighing, she took hold of his arm. Charlie was not particularly listening to them. He was closer to the Doctor's mind-set about the situation than Rose's. Rose felt that she was unusually optimistic about this, and she had a new kind of faith in herself where normally she would just shovel all her faith into her image of the Doctor. But she knew more than anyone that the Doctor was flawed, and couldn't always save the day.

"What about a nuclear bomb?"

"And where are you going to find a nuclear bomb?"

"You can't blow us up," Charlie interrupted. So he _was_ listening. Ten shifted uneasily within Rose's grasp, but she did not let him go. She was worried about him. Possibly more worried than she should be, given their… circumstances.

"I'm just, you know, spit-balling ideas," she said. "Brainstorming." Charlie glanced back at them, narrowed his eyes, lowered his gun a little.

"Are you two a couple?"

"Oh, yeah. We're engaged," Rose said proudly, "D'you wanna see my ring?" Asking people if they wanted to see her ring was a reflex. She had actually been to visit Jackie recently to show it off. Had it gone well? Not particularly. Jackie and Pete Tyler were… displeased with her conduct. Still. It had been months, she had said, why couldn't they get over her decision to leave Tentoo? Tentoo whose name was barely even spoken anymore. He was hardly even mentioned at all, by anyone. She didn't even know where he was, _what_ he was doing, because he wasn't home with them anymore. Was it bad she barely thought of him?

"Your _ring_? The world is ending and you're showing off your _ring_?"

"The world's always ending," she shrugged.

"Yeah, so's your engagement if half the stuff your _fiancé_ says is true," Charlie jibed, "How can you be so calm at a time like this?"

"What would be the point of worrying?"

"It's the natural reaction."

"Maybe for someone like _you_ ," she asked, failing somewhat at pretending she wasn't disappointed he did not want to see her engagement ring. She loved her engagement ring, and Ten normally seemed quite happy when she showed it to people. Well, he was on the one hand, on the other hand he waited with baited breath in case whoever-it-was told him he had made a terrible choice. But if they did say that, Rose would punch them. She'd already shown the ring to Amy Pond at least four times in the twelve days since he had proposed. Amy was doing a marvellous job at pretending like she was still genuinely interested.

"Someone like me? What's that mean?" he questioned.

"Someone who leads a normal life."

"A _normal life_? You call this a normal life? I haven't seen my family for years! I've been dragged out here to work on this doomsday device," he argued.

"And let's just say this isn't the first doomsday I've been a part of," she said. The Doctor slipped out of her arms to walk somewhere else, but she was busy talking to Charlie.

"You're pretty high and mighty, you know," he snapped.

"I'm not, I'm just the only one here who hasn't lost all hope just because some idiot's tried to build a time machine. Loads of people try to build time machines; lots of people _succeed_ in building time machines. This is only the middle of the fourth millennia, there's loads of stuff yet to happen in the future," Rose said, "Like Jack!" she was addressing the Doctor now, "Jack's a fixed point in time, I made him that way, but how can he be a fixed point in time when he won't even be born until the Fifty-First Century if all _this_ has gone on? And I know what you'll say, you'll-"

"Rose."

"-you'll say 'the time vortex is being destroyed, don't you get it? There aren't any fixed or fluctuating points anymore. I'm the Doctor, I know everything, it's my right to wander around being broody all the time.'"

" _Rose_."

"Well you know something, I'm getting sick of it. We've barely even been here and you're acting like we've lost already, this is nothing. We were just picked up from the ship and dropped here, the end of the world doesn't come about as suddenly as that, alright? If-"

"Rose!" he shouted, cutting her off. Charlie had been observing, not daring to interrupt once Rose turned her anguish and annoyance against the Doctor rather than against him.

" _What_!?"

"Look out there," he said. She hadn't even noticed they were passing a window. Not the same window as before, but the outside space was so vast (of course it was) that the view barely changed. There were just some different outcroppings of the spacestation they were on visible, that was all. "Look at the star," he said. She did look at the star. Earlier it had been bathing them in its soft, purplish light, when they had first arrived. How long ago had that been? It couldn't even be more than twenty minutes, could it?

But he was right about the star. It was different. Like it was pulsing, a heart going too fast out there in the middle of the universe, and its light was definitely brighter and closer to pink than it was to blue.

"That star's expanding," Charlie said, "It's going to supernova. How is that possible?"

"It's whatever's happening with the machine," said Ten hollowly, staring at it, slack-jawed, "That star is going to explode and take out this entire solar system, maybe more."

"Well isn't that just us?" Rose asked, "We can leave, we'll-"

"No," he said, "No, Rose. There isn't anything."

"There must be something."

"There isn't, alright? I'm telling you. The universe is destabilising around us, that's proof. You can't reverse a supernova."

"Oh, but you can trigger one by using an experimental time machine a thousand lightyears away?" she questioned him coldly. Now she was fiddling with the engagement ring, twisting it around her finger. She missed the sandworm. How long ago had that been? An hour, two? Then their harpoon gun versus a big worm seemed like impossible odds. The biggest challenge she faced was trying to accurately change gears in a ten-foot-high monster truck. And now _this_? Had the worm just been too easy?

"I've never seen a star do that before. It's going to explode."

"…Right. Well. Come on, then. We've still got to go and see this machine," Rose said.

The Doctor rounded on her, "Aren't you listening to-"

"I think you're the one who isn't listening to me! You stay here and star at the bloody thing if you want, but Charlie is going to take _me_ to the machine. You can stay here and hope the Reapers get you before the supernova, if that's what you want," she said decisively, putting her hands on her hips. Obviously, she didn't want him to get killed by Reapers. In fact, she was going to work her hardest to _stop_ him getting killed by Reapers. But that didn't mean she was going to stand for this sort of attitude.

"Rose…" he began softly, changing tone.

"Don't 'Rose' me," she said coldly, "I'm not in the mood. Now I'm going to save the universe, you do what you like. Come on, Charlie." She turned on her heels and began to walk away, and Charlie followed her. He probably supposed that he was going to die either way, and maybe she frightened him a bit too much to argue. Very quickly, the Doctor relented and came to join them. "Oh, so you haven't completely given up all hope?"

"I don't think you're looking at the facts properly."

"And I think _you're_ ignoring some of the facts on purpose," she said. He grimaced. She did not know if he knew to what she was referring, and she didn't really care. No doubt he would carry on pretending, because she was 'his' Rose and she needed to be taken care of and kept snuggled up warmly in a billion layers of bubble-wrap, sealed for eternity in the TARDIS so that no harm would come to her. It would be like _Beauty and the Beast_ , with her in a jar to keep her from her ultimate fate of decay and extinguishment.

…Perhaps that was an exaggeration.

"How close is this lab?" she changed the subject. Well, began a subject, to take her mind of her own idle thoughts. She did think that Ten wouldn't complain if she offered to live in a bell-jar for the rest of her natural life, though; him some sick, voyeuristic guardian.

"Not far," Charlie answered, "Around the corner… is that where those things will be? Reapers?"

"…Yeah," Ten said, "Staying near the epicentre of all this. Trying to stop that before they turn their attention to anything else. Might not have sensed us here yet…" He sounded like he was halfway towards suggesting they leave. If only they were able to do so, but if Rose's connection to the time vortex was really disintegrating as much as she sensed it was, she doubted she would be able to take them anywhere. Or that the TARDIS would work. Or that anything would work. If a nearby star was being ruptured to the point of annihilation, what chance did _she_ stand? Not much of one, and not for long. So he didn't suggest leaving. He wasn't as cruel as that.

She took another step and while her foot was suspended the floor rattled. She would say the earth shook if they were on a solid planet surface. The three of them paused in this minute moment and the ripple of a freeze washed jarringly over them again; jumping into a swimming pool when the water was too cold, taking a while to adjust to this new state of perpetual uncomfortableness. That was how it felt being submerged within these static loci, drowning in motionless temporality.

"We'd better hurry up. We should get there before the freeze ends, shouldn't we?" Charlie said. He was fishing to find something that might help; Rose didn't think it mattered if the freeze was on or not, because if it didn't affect her then it certainly wouldn't affect the Reapers, meaning the Reapers will have slaughtered all the soldiers very easily while they were stuck. She would be terribly surprised to find anybody still alive in this laboratory.

They didn't have to wait long to find out.

"It's here," Charlie said, going up to a set of double doors, pulling out an ID card. There was no way to see into the room before entering, but the walls had an unusual quality. Like they were cracked, or more like existence was cracked. A crack in time – she'd heard that before. Ten had mentioned it, in relation to Amy and Rory, and cracks erasing people from existence… how had they fixed it then? These temporal fissures were seeping out of the very fabric of the universe surrounding them; Charlie's ID card would not work. "Shit – _shit_! We can't get it."

"Let me do it," Rose said, walking past him.

"Let you do what? You haven't got clearance."

"No, I don't need clearance. I've got a foot." And then she kicked the doors down, hitting the sweet spot right in the middle with her boot that dented both of the incredibly heavy metal doors and sent them flying back on their hinges.

"Those doors are made of tungsten! How did you do that?" Charlie demanded.

"Superstrength," she shrugged, and made to go into the room. Keeping an eye out for Reapers. If only Reapers didn't have a nasty habit of materialising out of nowhere.

Within it was an awesome sight, a very blatant catastrophe of somebody with delusions of grandeur – i.e. Myers. For want of a better word, there was an explosion in the centre of the room. This explosion was stopped just like everything else, and was more of those brilliant white cracks. A colour so vivid it could only be nothing made corporeal, a blinding void in the middle of this large lab. It was impossible to tell what the time machine had looked like before. There were some dead in the room, but very few; they must have died before the arrival of the Reapers, possibly in the explosion they were witnessing.

"So it's not finished…" Rose mused.

"What?" Ten asked her vacantly. He had only half-heard, with the rest of his attention he was focusing on the same point of obliteration she was.

"The explosion of the machine," she said, "If it's an explosion of… _time_ , who knows how long it will take to finish exploding?"

"It'll be burning away, like when a nuclear reactor melts down," the Doctor explained.

"But it's not finished burning yet."

"What do you mean 'finished'? When it 'finishes' we die, Rose," he said. She stepped towards it.

"Where's the controls?" she turned to ask Charlie.

But it was at this point that the freeze reversed. She could practically see the energy pulse that vibrated the molecules of the air, returning everything to its natural colour. Only then did they hear the noise. Instantly when time was briefly restored Rose clapped her hands over her ears – it was like standing next to a jet engine it was so loud, a jet engine which would soon hit the point of sonic boom.

That was when the Reapers appeared.

"That's Myers!" Charlie exclaimed. Had he not seen the monsters in the air? There were half a dozen at least that came shimmering with their ethereal, crimson hue into the room, brandishing their dragon wings and their scythe tails. Their roaring was only slightly heard over the ripping sound of the explosion. How long was it going to take for the supernova?

Charlie was pointing out a dead body.

"Reapers!" Ten shouted. Charlie glanced around and screamed when he saw one, the biggest one. Yet, they were not approaching Rose and the Doctor. They had not found them during the freeze, only now.

"We're like them," she realised, "Or, I am. A creature of the time vortex." They were training their beady eyes only on Ten and Charlie, but not on her.

"You're not a creature of the time vortex!" Ten argued, "You're from East London!"

"Shut up! That doesn't mean anything here, I'm _like them_ , they're not going to attack me. They must have stayed away before because you were _with_ me!"

"And what's so special about _you_?" the Doctor demanded. They were both shouting, but there was too much chaos for either of them to quite achieve the level of anger at one another they might do in a less-turbulent environment. The force of the explosion was creating an air tunnel around them too, like being in a tornado. Every few seconds she felt she was in danger of being swept up off her feet, and swept into that belly of impending nothingness that approached. It was growing now, and when she turned to look out of the large window running along half of the right-hand, circular wall, she could see the star. The star on the right, the exploding machine dead-ahead, the Reapers clustering on the left.

She turned to glare at the Tenth Doctor and felt the wrath of the time vortex, the dying time vortex, rise up inside her. She didn't know if her ideas were her own or external, but she had one finally. One that had been on the tip of her tongue for a while now.

" _I'm_ reality," she said. She had said this before, or Bad Wolf had. In that moment, it was impossible for the girl, the entity, to tell where Rose Tyler ended and the Bad Wolf began. She suspected the divide between the personas was not as cut and dry as _some_ might like it to be, but hardly cared in that moment.

"Rose…" he stammered, and she knew that her eyes were gold and furious. She knew that her whole body had conjured up a glow. She knew that she was visually as imposing as anything else threatening them in that room, that terrible crucible of quantum paradoxes and other such jargon. She saw in his face that he thought he had lost her forever.

"Where are the controls?" she asked Charlie, somebody asked Charlie. Was it her? She barely knew herself.

"What are you!?" Charlie yelled.

"The controls," she said. She felt calm, but the voice that slipped out of her was booming and dulled everything else floating around them. No other soundwaves were quite as important as when this concoction of energy in the body of woman was talking. Charlie pointed to the same place as he had pointed earlier, when he showed them the body of Todd Myers, the now-deceased mastermind behind the entire thing.

She was unsure of if she walked or ran or flew or floated towards those controls, nor was she sure of what she was doing when she arrived. Did she even move at all or did the world move around her? The supernova was growing exponentially behind her, but not exponentially enough. That star was being fed by temporal energy, that star was providing all the solar power of the machine. It had a symbiotic link to the thing, and _she_ was going to exploit it.

It was exactly as Amy and Rory and River and Eleven had done. The TARDIS had exploded, had knocked out reality when it did. And how had they fixed it, she thought to herself, as she pushed the power of the machine to maximum in order to detonate it? They had blown up the TARDIS again in its place. The Reapers screeched the same time the death of the star outside was triggered, the same time the broken explosion in the very room burst at its deadly seams, and the last thing she heard was the Doctor screaming at her to stop.


	92. Time Warp V

_Time Warp V_

 _Rose_

She woke up. She came gasping back to life, and thought that this was how Jack must feel whenever he dragged himself away from unreality. He was right when he said there was nothing, because she had certainly seen nothing. Her memory was a jarring connection straight from watching a sun supernova with the roar of the exploding machine behind her to now, waking up to humming machinery, rolling up off the floor.

"This doesn't make any sense, it doesn't make any sense…" she heard the Tenth Doctor rambling. She was woozy, and when she rubbed her hand on her face the back of it came back red; her nose was bleeding slightly. She almost yawned. "Rose, Rose?" he came panicking over to her side along the floor, like they were in the aftermath of a cataclysm. But as far as she could see, it was no cataclysm or scene of destruction. She could even see the time machine in the middle of the room, a very large device with a myriad of metallic pistons and gizmos pumping around it in a cylindrical fashion, a pod in the centre only slightly bigger than the exterior of the TARDIS. All of it was in shades of gold.

"I'm fine," she said stiffly. He was fussing over her.

"Your nose is bleeding."

"So what? I just saved us all, I think I can cope with a nosebleed," she muttered, not in the mood for his overprotectiveness. He had to learn, and she staggered to her feet, more tired than she thought she was. That was when she realised there were half a dozen soldiers with sonic guns trained on the pair of them and Charlie, who was still present, and that Charlie was looking elsewhere. No longer was Rose by the controls but a little distance from them.

"What's all this, Charlie?" a new voice asked. When she followed the sound of it she recognised the all-singing all-dancing reanimated corpse of one Todd Myers, who had cheated death thanks to Rose's charitability. She stood woozily in the centre of the trio.

"Rose, I don't think you're-"

"Don't think I'm what? _Safe_? I'm a lot bloody safer than you, alright? You could get shot as well, what happens if someone shoots me? It'd just bounce off," she hissed at him. And it would, too. She knew that from experience – the experience of Jack dropping his blaster a once a few months ago and accidentally blasting her in the abdomen. She'd been fine, if a little singed, and Ten hadn't heard a thing about it. Or had it been Tentoo at that point…? She was ashamed of how much they sometimes blurred in her memory…

"You need to stop what you're doing," Charlie said to Myers. Myers had his hand hovering dangerously over the controls to the machine.

Rose's hunch had been right – she had been able to cancel out time by forcing the star to supernova at the right moment. If she hadn't forced the machine onto full power, it would have disintegrated away before the star had a chance, but she had intervened.

"This again," Myers sighed, "I don't even know how you got in here."

"We were here in the future," Rose said, "And now we came back to the past. That machine is going to kill you and everyone."

"Who are _you_?"

"A time traveller sent to stop you from destroying everything, and guess what, I did," she said, weary and battered and exhausted, ignoring Ten's attempts to hold her up. He had given up faith completely because he hadn't even wanted to _think_ about what she could do, and currently she was not inclined to speak to him. Besides, this mess still needed sorting out, and being as they had a whole platoon pointing guns at them she didn't think it was the best time to have a spat.

"If you're a time traveller then my machine works," Myers shrugged.

"Your machine doesn't work at all, not for what you want it for," Rose said, "Maybe it worked once, with Nadine, but that was a fluke. What I can do is nothing to do with that machine. It's going to rupture everything – I had to make that star supernova to sort it out." She pointed out of the window at the star, which was back and burning along nicely in its purple colour. The interior of the room was tinged slightly pink from the light of the star outside, contrasting with the yellowish lighting within their bright space.

"We don't know that this didn't happen before," Ten whispered to her.

"What?"

"We don't know that our intervention here didn't _cause_ him to trip the machine, we don't know that we're not going to be stuck in a loop from now on of dying and reappearing and trying to stop it again," he said.

"You know what, I'm getting bloody sick of your pessimism," she said, "And of you not having faith in my abilities. Now shut up and let me sort this out since you're so incapable, _Doctor_."

"You cannot talk to me like-"

"We'll discuss this later, alright!? And you'd better shut up now so that I can make sure there actually _is_ a later. It would be a shame to die when we've fallen out," she said coldly. That hurt him. Maybe he hadn't considered them having fallen out until that moment, but she most definitely did, she thought as she twisted her engagement ring restlessly around on her finger.

"You need to get away from those controls, Myers," Charlie warned him, "You don't know what you're doing – I ran the calculations, I tried to tell you before-"

"And I had all your security clearance revoked," he shrugged, "You're not stopping me from doing this. Project Negation will work; it needs to so that I can right the wrongs of the universe."

"You don't understand the way the universe works," Rose told him angrily, "You haven't got a clue, not any idea at all. If you trigger that machine, you'll be harvesting bits of the time vortex, too much of it at once. You shouldn't harvest any of it at all, it shouldn't be collected, it needs to move _through_ people, like it moves through me. You don't have a clue what you're doing."

"The 'having a clue' part was Charlie's job."

"And I was wrong!" Charlie protested, "She's right, I had no idea! None of us did. This was stupid, and you don't have noble aims, you want to erase people from existence!"

"It's a really inefficient way to erase things from existence, too," Rose said, " _I_ could do it by clicking my fingers." And then she _did_ click her fingers, which was only for dramatic effect really, and watched the ten or so guns surrounding them in a circle disintegrate into golden atomic dust. It floated away as if carried on a sunbeam, the soldiers jumping as this happened, dispersing and scared. It only took a few seconds for the weapons to disappear out of the room completely. Now the only person in the room with a gun was Charlie, and he pointed this at Myers. Rose suspected they were too far away to get a good shot, though. Not that she approved of shooting anybody to begin with. "I don't want to do the same thing to you that I did to those guns, but if it's a choice between you and reality I pick reality."

"Rose…" Ten said uselessly.

"What _are_ you?"

"A creature of the time vortex," she answered for herself, "I was created by trying to abuse the same power you are now, and I did it all with the noble aim of saving someone's life. And I caused chaos, but I'd do it again, because I'd have to. It nearly killed me and it _did_ kill the man I love. I extinguished the lives of millions of lifeforms, do you really think _you_ will make me bat an eyelash?" At present, Rose was doing something people often liked to call 'acting,' or 'bluffing.' Myers didn't know that, but she was also quite sure Ten didn't know it, either. That he thought she actually _was_ remorseless and had turned into a cold-blooded killer going around and _extinguishing_ people on a whim.

"Step back from the machine," Charlie said again, "Or I'll shoot you."

"I'd be able to activate it before you fire a round that actually hits me. We both know you've always been a shit marksman, Charlie," Myers said coolly. The soldiers were uninvolving themselves. Three of them scattered and ran out of the room, probably because they were scared of Rose.

"I could make the whole building disappear beneath our feet," she said, "And I could easily escape unharmed and just leave you here in a vacuum. Or you can just not press that button, and we could all stay alive. You clearly fancy yourself a bit, I can't believe that you'd really want to end it all like that. Because you were dead in the future we saw, dead right there where you're standing. I guess the initial explosion took you out, you probably didn't even get to see the machine kick in."

"Dead?" he asked, "That can't be possible."

"It's possible, it's the truth," said Charlie, "I saw it, she's saved me. She's given me a second chance – you don't know what else she can do. Travelling through time at will? Kicking down the doors to get in here?" They were talking about her as if she was a god. _Was_ she a god? What exactly was it that made someone into a god?

Was this divine intervention? _She_ was the divine intervention? _Rose Tyler_ was the deus ex machina come to reverse everything and save the day and the heroes? Who was the hero in that scenario – _Charlie_? It certainly wasn't Ten. It struck her that she would rather he didn't know anything about these thoughts she was having…

But if she was really all-powerful, if she really commanded reality at her fingertips, then there were all sorts of things she must be able to do. Abilities she hadn't even tapped into yet, and the presence of that supernova and that mixture of the time vortex and its energy feeding out of the gaps in space and into _her_ … She raised her hand, and the universe bent to her will.

When time froze now, it washed over her warmly. Stopping everything around her was the most natural thing in the world, and instead of everything turning sharper and hard to look out, bright and friendly colours radiated out of the surface of the air and welcomed her into the embrace of this further extension of her powers. And now it was only her. The Doctor didn't get a free pass, and neither did Charlie and his device. Everything else was motionless. She didn't need to negotiate with Myers at all, and so she did not. She just walked leisurely towards him and the control panel and lifted him up. She carried him as easily and as carefully as though she was carrying an egg liable to break – after all, could she hold him to account for his destruction of the universe? When he had destroyed it, he had died. And now he had not, and he did not intend to, and regardless of the true goal behind his Project Negation, having intentions was not a crime.

In this stutter of her own creation, Rose took Charlie's gun as well, took it and disintegrated it like she had all the others. He didn't need the upper-hand anymore, because _she_ had the upper-hand, and what a calm upper-hand it was. In the blink of an eye all this was happening, but the rules of time did not apply to her. As long as she didn't abuse this power, the time vortex would let her channel it through her and out of her fingertips. And so Rose used her calm upper-hand to destroy the controls for Project Negation, she smashed them into pieces with her fist and her superstrength, she tore down the large pistons and ripped the wires inside the central pod to shreds. Did she spend five minutes, ten, twenty, or more, in that freeze-frame existence? The machine had to be destroyed irreparably, had to be sabotaged, and she would put her trust in Charlie to erase all the plans for it.

When the machine lay in pieces in front of Rose, and only then, did she deem that her work was done. The warm colours sank away and she heard the shouts of terror from the soldiers and the scientists. Again she heard her name slip out of Ten's mouth in a pitiful whisper, turning around from where she had been standing to admire her saboteur's handiwork.

"What did you do, Rose…"

"I fixed it," she said, "It's my job to fix it."

"No it isn't," he told her.

"Yes, it is," she said, "And I'm getting really sick of this 'poor little Rose needs to be protected' act. Your precious Rose knows exactly how to take care of herself, and I sorted this out when _you_ couldn't even dream of being able to."

"You're not meant to have that kind of power! No one is!" he argued.

"You destroyed it!" Charlie exclaimed joyfully.

"You destroyed it!" Myers exclaimed furiously.

Rose and the Doctor ignored them both.

"I don't approve of this," Ten said, "You're going to hurt yourself."

"I'm going to be fine, _you_ just don't understand me, just like you don't understand Jack. And that's not even your problem, because you don't even want to _try_ ," she said, "I never thought that I'd be accusing the Doctor, of all people, of being closed-minded. There's all sorts of things you don't know, and I'm not some sort of pet that needs to be supervised all the time! I stay on the TARDIS because I want to be with _you_ , not because I want to travel the stars. I don't need the TARDIS to travel the stars, and I have every shred of knowledge in the entire universe waiting for me to reach out and touch."

"It isn't your power to wield! And I do understand, I understand that this is dangerous-"

"Of course it's dangerous if it gets misused! But I'm not going to misuse it! Why do you have such little faith in me!? You think I'm going to get into a bad mood and make everyone around me vanish like _that_? Or blow up a planet because I feel like it? There is such a thing as using power for good! The TARDIS gives _you_ power and you would never abuse it!" she argued with him, furious.

"Rose, you're not-"

"NO! _You're_ the one who's 'not'! Charlie, make sure he can never build another machine, and try and make sure he gets arrested for something," Rose ordered Charlie, "The Doctor and I are leaving now. I don't think you'll see us again." She grabbed hold of Ten's arm and shifted them away from that godforsaken star system.


	93. LA Devotee

_LA Devotee_

 _Rose_

If Rose Tyler and Clara Oswald were anything, they were two sides of the same coin. And really, Rose had either not noticed it or merely strived not to think about it until the events of that night transpired, when she had returned from her outing with the Tenth Doctor in a blind rage. To think, things had been all well and good that day up until the episode with the sandworm was over, then they'd all gone down the drain. He hadn't been happy with her at all for immediately storming off upon their return to the TARDIS, but she thought that was far better than the alternative of her biting his head off. Perhaps literally.

All she wanted was a friend, was some advice, and usually her first port of call would be Captain Jack. But Captain Jack was, of course, vanished. Gone elsewhere, MIA, it didn't matter. All that mattered was he was not present. And Donna, the second person she would go to for some sort of comfort, had chosen that night to pay a visit to Shaun, she got on the good authority of Jenny. Martha was having a nap; she didn't fancy talking to Amy. So who did that leave? It left who was, she realised in retrospect, possibly the best woman for the job: it was, of course, Clara. Because what was Clara aside from the only person who matched her in supernatural power, in significance to the Doctor, and in her choice of spouse exactly?

So she braced herself and knocked on Clara's door, through which she could hear the Spice Girls' _Wannabe_ emanating quite abrasively. She really hoped that Clara and Eleven weren't doing it to that song. It was a terrible song choice for that kind of business. Then again, nobody ever usually heard music coming from their room. When the door was opened, it was only Clara there, in pyjamas; looked as though she had spent the day lounging around in bed. Probably had. There was a lollipop in her mouth, which she removed and held in her hand upon seeing Rose; it was strawberry-flavour. Clara was speechless.

"Why are you listening to the Spice Girls?" she asked.

"I'm very under the weather," Clara answered mechanically, "I might be coming down with summat." Rose frowned.

"Where's the Doctor?"

"Gone to dinner with his mates."

" _Oh_."

"'Oh' what?"

"You're skiving, aren't you?"

"I'll have you know I'm incredibly ill."

"Because you definitely look ill – I bet you were dancing to it before I opened the door."

"Do you imagine me dancing a lot?" Clara asked in a sultry tone of voice Rose did not at all appreciate. It wasn't really so loud, she supposed, it just sounded that way from outside. Echoed unusually. Regardless, Clara waved a hand to telekinetically switch it off, then crossed her arms. "Are you gonna dob me in? Craig and Sophie don't like me. I'm doing everyone a favour by hanging out here on my own." Rose wouldn't argue with that.

"Can I talk to you?" Rose asked, then added, "It's personal." Clara was so confused she just let Rose right in, though Rose had been about to walk in anyway. Clara offered her a lollipop from a large plastic tub of them which sat on the coffee table. The room was untidy but not grossly so, just a few stray shreds of clothing and dirty mugs in unusually places. Half a dozen books lying around. "Why have you got all these?"

"Doctor give us'm," she shrugged, "He reckons they'll help me quit smoking."

"You're trying to quit?"

"No, not really. What's the matter?" Clara said, Rose taking a lollipop, an orange one.

"…I had a fight. With the Doctor."

"Oh. Can't you talk to Jack?"

"He's missing."

"Donna?"

"She's visiting her husband."

"…Martha?"

"Having a nap."

"Amy?"

"I'd rather talk to you."

" _That's_ a surprise."

"It's about being married to him."

"Then River Song?"

"I wouldn't come and talk to you if I didn't think it was something you're the best person to help with it. And I know there's not really any reason you _should_ help me, being as I… we… you know. That stuff. But I… I'm really at a loss, alright, Clara? I just think he's… too overprotective, and he thinks all these things about my powers, and the time vortex, and it's like he thinks I belong to him now just because of this ring," she brandished her finger, pacing up and down in Clara's room, at a real loss as to why Clara – who now crossed her arms and seemed to be genuinely listening – didn't just kick her out, "I don't know how to make him listen! I don't know how to be married to him if he's like this, or what to expect, but you've already done it all, haven't you? And Thirteen's proof that whatever you do _works_ , so-"

"Stop right there," said Clara, getting a mischievous look about her Rose was entirely suspicious of, "When was the last time you got drunk? As in, properly drunk?" Rose strained to remember.

"I don't know. Suppose it was when we all got stuck in the haunted lodge," she said.

"Well that was nearing on two months ago. _You_ need a drink, a _lot_ to drink."

"What? You have alcohol in here?"

"Not here. I mean, yes I _do_ have alcohol hidden here, but I've got a way better idea. All it requires is my vintage cigarette holder and two cocktail dresses. Just you wait. I know _just_ the time and place…."

* * *

And as it turned out, Clara Oswald most certainly _did_ know the time and the place. It was 1955 when they, teleported by Rose rather than risking getting caught by taking the TARDIS itself, emerged into a hailstorm out in Beverley Hills. Clara gave Rose a brief account of a mysterious and cryptic phone call Eleven had received that morning; when questioned about it, he said it was nothing more than an invite to a 'silly party' where they would find nothing more than 'heartbreak, drugs and the dark-side of Hollywood.' That was all it took to convince Clara that it was an event not to be missed-

"And at _Dean Martin's_ house! I didn't know he knew Dean Martin," she was saying, "There might be so many socialites and famous people there! Real celebrities, from the beginning of celebrity culture. Rudolph Valentino used to live round here." Rose did not know who that was. She barely knew who Dean Martin was. But she _did_ know that she was beginning to have a lot of faith in Clara's plan for them to go out and drink their troubles away. Well, Rose's troubles away. Rose didn't know if Clara had any troubles, apart from her troubling infatuation with alcohol and cigarettes. She was smoking already, _with_ this 'vintage cigarette holder' of hers.

"Do you know where the house is?"

"Nah, we'll just follow the limos, see?" Clara pointed one out. It was true, three limousines had snaked past them through the hailstorm already. They were having to talk loudly to be heard over the racket of the foul weather, but Rose, after spending the day first in the desert and then in space, had genuinely _missed_ the inconvenience of bad weather. Clara kept the worst of it at bay telekinetically, though.

"Is all this just an excuse because you wanna get drunk? You don't even _like_ me," Rose said as they went after the limos and the taxi-cabs hoping to reach their promised destination of a big melting pot of 1950s film stars and liquor.

" _You're_ the one who doesn't like _me_ ," Clara said. She seemed very dead-set on her goal of getting shitfaced. "And if you didn't want to get drunk you wouldn't have come out. I don't think we've entirely been taking advantage of the ability to time travel."

"Taking advantage of it is exactly what the Doctor doesn't want."

"Stop thinking about what he wants," Clara said as they wended over the shiny sidewalk, the limousines drifting forwards slowly into the haze of the rainstorm, "C'mon, Rose, haven't you ever heard of feminism?" Rose scowled. "I think it's this one." She pointed out a house on their left, though 'house' was hardly a proper word. The limos were queueing outside, people getting out of them in tuxedos and evening gowns with umbrellas and bottles of fancy drink and going through the open gates of the mansion driveway to approach. "Even if it isn't, there's still a party."

"So we're gate-crashing."

"You grew up in a London council flat and you've never gate-crashed a party?" Clara toyed.

"Not since I was nineteen."

"Come on," Clara said, taking Rose's hand and phasing them through the large black fence that surrounded the enormous estate, so as to avoid the scrutiny of the other guests. In the centre of the drive there was a fountain. Once a pipe had burst in the downstairs lobby of their block of the Powell Estate, and Jackie had called _that_ a fountain. It was a borderline insulting comparison – insulting to who, she did not know.

"God, I'm nearly convinced that you actually know what you're doing," Rose remarked, removing her hand from Clara's as soon as she didn't have her foot sticking through a big metal fence.

"We'll sneak in the back."

"Snuck into a lot of parties, have you?"

"You have to sneak into them when everyone stops inviting you."

"You'd think you'd get the hint and just not show up."

"Not show up somewhere with free booze? Seventeen-year-old me wouldn't hear of it," Clara said, "Everybody hated me by the time I went to university, all my friends."

"Did they?" Rose asked as they crept across the muddy front lawn, hidden by the shadows of the night-sky and the large trees, feeling a twinge of guilt. Did Clara really not have that many friends? The only people she spent much time with were her sister and her husband. "Why?"

"Oh, I… slept with… most of them… your friends aren't generally keen when you do stuff like that," she said, "At least, mine weren't. But I don't sleep around any _more_. Check out the swimming pool! Isn't this a dream?"

"We've got a swimming pool on the TARDIS," Rose pointed out. They were half-hidden in the green undergrowth of the bushes now at the back of the large mansion, out of view of the guests who were lounging around by the pool and already getting rowdy. Clara's eyes lit up at the sight of all these tipsy, golden socialites. Rain bounced off the surface of the pool, most of the people gathered underneath the awning and the back-porch. As they walked out of the thicket, they went more or less completely unnoticed. They slipped right in through the back door, into the warm arms of Dean Martin's luxurious hospitality.

It took Clara all of fifteen seconds to locate the bar – what kind of guy had a bar in his house? – and procure for them on the sly two glasses of tequila. The last time Rose and Clara had both been drinking tequila, they'd had a fight. Clara pushed the glass into her hand and ordered her to down the whole thing on the count of three. She was right about one thing, Rose had gate-crashed a _lot_ of working class flat-parties, where they had vodka that might as well have been petrol. She could match Clara step-for-step when it came to drinking to deadly excess. And suddenly, within five minutes, she didn't care anymore about the fact they hadn't been invited, or about the recklessness of their behaviour.

"It looks almost as tasty as _you_ do," Clara said smoothly to the barman, who was flipping cocktail shakers around and wearing an all-white tuxedo.

"Alright, one glass," he said. Rose had been distracted for just long enough to be out of it while Clara flirted with the barman to get them free drinks.

"What kinda bloke with this sort of cash doesn't put on a free bar?" Rose joined Clara, leaning on the bar. Everything she could see was glittering; the house of Dean Martin was living and breathing.

"The man of the house's closest friends can usually afford it," said the barman, flashing them both a smile and sliding two martinis towards them. Clara eyed him while she sucked the olive off the end of the cocktail stick, and then Rose elbowed her a little too hard and sent her sprawling onto the floor. Then she burst out laughing while chewing on her own olive.

"The closest I've been to coming to a party this fancy was in the parallel world, for my parallel mother's fortieth," Rose said when she helped Clara – who laughed as well, despite her now-spilled martini – back to her feet, "And then he made us pretend to be hired staff. I had to give out whores… ors… durve…"

" _Hors d'oeuvres_ ," Clara said, grinning. Rose sipped her martini and decided it wasn't very nice, so Clara gladly took it off her while Rose went and distracted the older man at the side of her by smiling at him very sweetly and taking his glass of scotch on the rocks out from under his nose. She blew him a kiss as she turned back to Clara. Maybe she had under-estimated the strength of the tequila they had begun with… "I _told_ you this was a good idea!"

"I'm just so sick of him," Rose complained, gulping too much of the scotch at once and cringing.

"Where'd my glass go?" the man behind her grunted, and Clara grabbed her by the elbow and pulled them away through the crowds.

"Who needs money," she muttered, picking up a full champagne flute from a table right as a woman put it down to check the time on a wristwatch. She downed it in one and returned the glass to where it had been; the woman picked it up and grew very confused about where the champers had gone, and Clara and Rose guffawed as they slid out of that room and into another. "Sick've 'im 'ow?" Clara asked.

"He thinks he owns me! Like I'm… cos of this ring," she waved her hand in Clara's face to show the engagement ring, "And he thinks I'm in _danger_."

"Tha's men for you. I'll tell you, if all've you straight girls understood what it's like on the other end, you wouldn't be half so insecure," she said, "He's jus' worried about you."

"He can stop."

"You've got to be untamed, til he stops," Clara advised her, showing Rose her left arm with its enormous burn from Esther Drummond's electricity on it, "I've got me own stuff, y'know? Echoes and tha'. Oh _wow_ , what're you drinking?" she grew side-tracked and addressed some random woman. The woman told Clara exactly what she was drinking and Clara smiled and nodded, but Rose didn't hear a word. Then, sultrily, she asked if she could have a taste. Remarkably the woman allowed this. "God, that's _strong_ – isn't this strong, Rose?" Clara passed the glass of dark liquid to Rose, who tried it and agreed that it was most certainly strong. She did not know what it was.

As they slid away Clara lit another cigarette, the house full of tobacco and smoke. Rose rather fancied asking if she could have one, but thought she could get enough of it second-hand on the air. God, she was drunk already.

"I can't go back like this," Rose said.

"Yes, yes, yes – you've got to be properly wankered," Clara told her, "Pass-out-drunk. That's the tactic. Otherwise you're just gonna scream at'm. Let's go find the wine cellar."

"Aren't you gonna look for the host-guy?"

"I'm gonna look for the wine cellar. What's a locked door to _us_?" she jibed, and Rose thought that was hilarious and very much agreed with this plan to find the wine cellar and the basement. They drifted through the huge house and the throngs of people, going unnoticed and ignored, and the rain outside persisted. It left them in the sticky warmth with dampness on the air along with the smells of people and liquor, and Rose wondered if this was what it was like for people inside snow-globes.

"How'd you do it?" Rose asked.

"Do what?"

"Y'know – _domesticate_ him. And there's not just him, there's Thirteen! She's devoted to you!"

"Is, um, equi-devotion," Clara said, "You've gotta exercise your power as _woman_. If I wa' with a girl she can't really do owt to make me think less've her, she might's well be made a moonlight and sparkles."

"You're drunk."

" _Shht_ , which door d'you think it is?" she asked, and Rose didn't reply. They were wandering through all the rooms of the downstairs and trying all the doors, but they just led into more hallways and parlours and dining rooms and circled them back to the bar; all around them people were laughing and drinking and dancing and amusing themselves to the caramel-voice crooning across the gramophone or the radio or even, possibly, reality, and Rose swiped a ten-dollar bill from somebody's pocket and procured for them from behind the bar an entire bottle of whiskey to go with the glasses and flutes they kept taking from as they went. Clara ran her hands along the walls as though looking for secret passageways.

"He doesn't trust me to be sensible with my powers," Rose said.

"Wha'?" Clara asked, "You're slurring."

"Since when!?" Rose exclaimed. Clara shrugged. She didn't feel like she as slurring. "I'm sensible."

"Of course! We're very sen-ible," Clara nodded knowingly, swigging some whiskey out of a stolen glass. They were stealing a lot. The Doctor's influence, presumably. Stealing was a victimless crime, she suddenly found herself thinking. Who cared? "I hav'n had hardly nuthin to drunk."

"Who are you two girls? You're causing a stir," somebody interjected. Rose thought they were being very subtle. One of Clara's hands she was using to pull books out of a shelf while she searched for the secret cellar door, the other had a glass with shreds of whiskey and some other beverage milling about in the base of it. Rose clung to the whole bottle.

"We're invited," Rose said, "Who's you?"

" _Me_?" the man she was speaking to asked. She could not focus on his face. Was he pretty and handsome? She couldn't tell.

"Has anyone ever said how nice your teeth are?" she asked him.

"This is my party," he said.

"You're friends with my husband!" Clara exclaimed. This must be Dean Martin himself. He was dressed very sharply. Rose giggled and drank more of the warming whiskey. "You rung him up special, he didn't wanna come. I'm his wife."

"His wife," Rose repeated, nodding, trying to be professional. She wobbled in the air and fell right into Dean Martin.

"Whose wife…?" he asked suspiciously, having to support Rose, "How did you get in? My guy at the gate hasn't seen you."

"The Doctor," Clara said.

"The Doctor," Rose repeated again, "I know 'im too. Good mates, we are."

"Then where is he?" Dean Martin asked.

"Issat you singing on the box?" Rose asked, pointing at a phonograph.

"He dunt like drinking," Clara said, "We came instead – don't wanna insult your 'ospi'ali'y."

"You're northern," Rose told her. She fake-gasped and nearly fell over. "Careful've…" she waved a hand at Clara's glass, which was actually empty. Spotting this, Clara held the glass out to Rose, who went to pour a glass.

"Let me do that," Dean Martin said, taking the bottle off Rose – who was still leaning on him – and pouring the glass himself. Clara winked. "The Doctor's wife?"

"Shh, though, doesn't know am out," Clara tried to whisper. "Am not that gone really, though. Been looking for your wine. How long've we been here?"

"I've been hearing complaints for at least an hour," he said, though he seemed good-humoured about it, and jovial, "Two English broads wandering around swiping everybody's liquor. 'Friends of the Doctor' without invitations."

"We're just as good's t'Doctor!" Clara protested, "Anything he can so's can we."

"Yeah," Rose said, then she hiccupped.

"Someone said you stole ten dollars from them," he pointed out.

"I wouldn't never!" Clara exclaimed. Rose shook her head very vigorously, and then still couldn't stand up, "Look, look, mate – am not as think as you drunk I am, right? I'm so… so- _ber_ I can play t'piano! See!" Clara pushed her glass into Rose's hand and dropped right onto the bench of a very large, white grand piano sitting right there, "Looks, it's one've yours…." Rose was stunned by what she saw next, mainly because whatever Clara was playing, she actually seemed to manage it.

"You girls are too drunk, I'm glad you've had a good time, but I'm gonna have to ask you to leave," Dean Martin said while Clara trilled on the piano quite expertly. Was it _Blue Moon_? At that sentence, and Rose pushing Dean Martin away from her aggressively (he fell into his bouncer), Clara slammed her forearms down onto the keys of the piano.

"I aren't drunk!" she shouted.

"Nah, I'm fine," Rose said, swaying, trying to pull the bottle of whiskey towards her lips again and missing.

"Give me that," Dean Martin tried to take it. She pulled it out of his grasp and accidentally shattered the whole neck. He gawked.

"Look what you've done!" Rose exclaimed. They were making a scene. They had probably been making a scene for quite some time.

"Oi, oi, oi," Clara called over. "Rose'll know it – this's one I-" burp "-learn from Mercury hissen." When she played it and began to sing (very poorly), Rose immediately knew it.

"Oh my _goshhh_ I _love_ thisong!" she slurred.

" _Tonight I'm gonna have myself, a real good time_ -"

Rose joined with, " _I feel ali-hi-hi-hive_."

Together, " _And the wooorld is turning inside out, yeah, I'm floating around in ecstasyyy so don't. Stop. Me. Now… Cause I'm havin' a good time, havin' a good time, I'm a shooting star_ -"

"I'm calling the police!" Dean Martin shouted. Clara stopped immediately.

"Not the cops," Rose said.

"The feds," Clara added. They exchanged a look with each other and bit their lips. "Let's skedaddle."

"Who ses skeddale?"

"You're gonna have to stay here," Dean Martin said, "I don't take drunk, disorderly behaviour lightly, especially not when you're stealing from my guests."

"I'll tell you for fucking what, mate," Clara began, causing gasps around the room. She could barely stand up. She downed the last of the whiskey in her glass and returned to Rose's side, "Frank Sinatra would never turn us out for nicking cash from his bourgeois bloody mates."

"He'd let us stay, innit," Rose agreed.

"Somebody get the phone and call the cops," Dean Martin called through the room, then to his bouncer, "Stop these two."

"Shit! Run!" Clara shouted, and run they did, Rose pushing the bouncer over with brute force. Then people were on them as the bouncer-guy and Dean Martin told them they definitely had to stop running around through his house; in Rose's head all she could hear was the guitar solo from _Don't Stop Me Now_ playing on a loop, with people yelling at them from all angles. She ran into a wall and broke off a bit of the doorframe with the palm of her hand.

"Get them!" someone yelled.

"This way," Clara said, grabbing Rose's arm. They ran down a corridor and into a room and Clara veered to a sudden halt, face to face with a very pretty girl who was laughing and spectating. " _Hey_ ," Clara said smoothly, pausing briefly to lean on the wall by her side, "Are you here all alone? What's your name?" she asked with a toothy grin.

"I'm Betty," answered the girl, smiling right back at Clara, "What about you?"

"I'm-"

"She's married," Rose cut in.

"Married? That's a boring name. Fancy changing it?" she smirked. Rose rolled her eyes.

Clara opened her mouth to speak but the pursuit was back on, men rushing around the corner at the far end of the richly decorated hallway. Rose grabbed Clara and forced her away.

"Gotta go!" Clara shouted. The girl mouthed something and made a mime with her hands like a telephone, indicating that Clara should call her, and Clara gave a thumbs-up in return. Rose wrenched her through the backdoor they had originally come through.

"We've gotta leave," she hissed.

"Look out!"

Rose did not look out. In the rainstorm, they went crashing into the icy swimming pool in the back garden. Rose teleported them away in the blink of an eye, kind of amazed at her ability to do so when she was, quite clearly, a right mess. They fell out of the water and into a street elsewhere; Hollywood Boulevard, she realised upon seeing the stars in the concrete underneath their feet. They were both soaking wet and could not stop laughing.

"Good start," Clara said.

"Start!" Rose exclaimed.

"Start, aye," she nodded, "C'mon, you've gotta get properly wasted, can't stand up. And you've gotta forgive'm for worrying. Talk to him. Men hafta learn, and that."

"M'sorry about hating you, Clara."

"Everyone does," she shrugged, then frowned, "I think I'm alright sometimes though."

"Alright sometimes," Rose nodded. "Jenny ses you have layers of annoyance."

"A round on Jenny, then. C'mon. Let's find us a nightclub, one've them'uns with the girls all dancing."

"Oh, bloody christ."

* * *

The Eleventh Doctor had returned much later from Craig and Sophie's, and had been startled to find the bedroom empty without so much as a note, Clara's phone left behind, and nobody able to tell him of her whereabouts. Understandably, it threw him into quite a state.

The Tenth Doctor had, upon arrival from the space station with the time machine, stormed off to go 'for a walk.' He had expected to find Rose waiting for him in their room, waiting to yell at him for his behaviour, but found no such thing.

So now, both of them were hanging about in moody, brooding silence in the console room. When the two women they individually sought returned, together, arm-in-arm and laughing and stinking of spirits and tobacco, they were surprised. To say the least. And not just because Rose Tyler and Clara Oswald had an infamous feud and a very impassioned dislike of one another. Rose was brandishing some anonymous bottle of _yuck_ in a brown paper bag, and they were both wearing frankly ridiculous hats and feather-boas to match their rather fancy cocktail dresses.

" _Where_ have you been!?" Eleven exclaimed.

"Swee'ar'!" Clara yelled, and went to throw her arms around him. She tripped and he had to catch you, "Wev 'ad such _fun_." Rose was in a fit of laughter on her own.

"Have you two been drinking!?" Ten demanded.

"I was jus' upset," Rose said, then yawned, "But now I'm jus' tired."

"We went to a cabaret," Clara said, then hummed some music she must have heard while they were out, "And a store and all over t'place."

"…Yes… well…" Eleven cleared his throat, "Do you think it's time for bed now?"

"Bye, Rose!" Clara waved while her husband led her away. Then she slur-whispered, "Are us gonna do it?"

"No, darling. If it wasn't for the plain fact that that would be illegal, well, I don't even think you'll manage to get your clothes off."

"I'll show yous what a quickie is…" the door closed behind them, and left Ten and Rose alone.

"…I'm sorry."

Rose smiled, "Is alright. She ses if I dint get so drunk I'd've screamed at you, so is good really." She yawned, very much dead on her feet. "Good night. Met whatshisface, Dean Martin, innit. Kick us out've his house…"

"You can tell me all about it in the morning."

"I still love you."

"And I've never stopped loving you. Now, why don't we just… follow their lead and go to bed, maybe?"

 **AN: Originally this chapter was literally just going to be a heart-to-heart between Rose and Donna, and then Rose and Clara, and then it turned into them getting incredibly drunk together. And I had her go to Clara because I did, once, have an entire bonding storyline planned for those two where they could settle their differences. But the other way for people to bond, apart from experiencing a traumatic event together, is (of course) getting completely pissed. Plus, I wanted to go out with a bang, since I've got to go on my usual exam hiatus from now until May 20** **th** **. BUT I'm gonna try my darndest to write at least one chapter of** ** _Jenny Who?_** **, so don't think of me as having completely vanished for the next 28 days.**


	94. Another Fine Mess

**AN: I am returned now from my exam hell! I am now almost free of assessment-based responsibilities until October, isn't that swell? Although I do have 2 group presentations on June 6th. Currently just getting back into the swing of things, but this storyline should be a good one, I'm gonna work hard on it. Well, this chapter is a bit meh, but it is what it is.**

 **DAY 149**

 _Another Fine Mess_

 _Jenny_

For about an hour so far that morning she had been walking back and forth on a balance beam, which was less of a beam and more of a long metal pipe that was very thin and handily sturdy. She had gotten bored of the slackline, and the tightrope was old news, about a hundred and eighty years out of date. It was tricky retraining her busted hand to hold her weight and balance again, but she was still grateful for the new addition of a fancy, state-of-the-art gym on the TARDIS. It even had a boxing ring that projected fightable holograms, though she wasn't _too_ keen on them because they didn't pack much of a punch. Or any punch. It was good to practice dodging, but that was all.

"Would Martha be happy to see you doing that with _your_ hand?" Jenny was interrupted. "And what would your girlfriend say if she saw you so high in the air?" She wasn't facing the door, and was presently standing upside-down balanced on one hand on the pipe. Her bad hand. She loosened her grip and let herself fall, swinging around until she was hanging off it and could see who had come to intrude. It was River Song.

"My girlfriend can fly, she's no stranger to heights," Jenny said, "And I'm only twenty feet up, that's nothing. I could do a highwire act at more than triple this without breaking a sweat."

"Oh, I'd pay to see that."

"People did," Jenny said, switching hands, "The circus was an easy life, for a while. Did you want something?" She pulled herself back up again so that she could stand on the pipe, glancing at her thumb as she did. It was very sore. She needed to get her brace on to keep the crooked appendage hidden from Martha.

"A word with you," River said, "Preferably on level footing."

"Oh, there's enough room on the beam here for a whole troupe," Jenny said, walking up and down along it. She didn't even need to use her arms to balance. She would never understand why humans were so clumsy all the time, especially Clara, who had tripped on nothing and fallen up the stairs at least three times during Jenny's last visit. It was a lucky thing vampires couldn't get grazed knees.

"I think I'll stay down here."

"Are you sure? There's a ladder. It's trickily narrow, of course, but doable," Jenny shrugged, pointing at one end of one of the vertical poles holding up the _other_ pole she was standing on. It had little metal twigs sticking out of it at awkward angles; she loved a challenge. River Song looked at it disdainfully, then looked at Jenny more disdainfully, who sighed. " _Fine_ , I guess I'll come down, if you're not metal enough."

"Because there's nothing more 'metal' than gymnastics."

" _I'll_ show you what's 'metal,'" Jenny persisted, then she proceeded to do a double-somersault off the beam, grabbing a trapeze from where it hung in the air, which began to slowly descend and return her to solid ground. When she was a few feet away, she dropped down lightly and mockingly bowed to River, now in front of her. The trapeze rose back up and away now that it didn't have her weight to pull on it. River slow-clapped a few times, and Jenny smiled.

"Impressive."

"Thank you, never had one lesson," she said.

"God, are you sweating at all?"

"From _that_? No, I'd have to be on the weights for a good few hours to sweat," Jenny said, "That's nothing. Like walking to the shops. Should've seen me when I did four-hundred push-ups with Clara sitting on my back."

"What was she doing on your back?"

"Reading poetry."

"Sounds like her. You're wearing a scarf, too; why in the world?"

"Clara knitted it for me," Jenny said, touching the scarf defensively. Had she taken that scarf off at all for five days? No. Except when she showered. And when she didn't need to be reminded of Clara, because Clara was present. Very _sensually_ present.

"What are the tiny blobs supposed to be? Stars?"

"No! They're bats. It's the cutest thing I've ever seen, alright?" Jenny grew angry.

"Well. The pair of you do seem very… attached."

"What do you want then, River?" Jenny changed the subject, going to retrieve her bottle of water where it was on the floor next to the cross-trainer she would be damned if she ever used. She hated cross-trainers, and most of those machines. They were no appropriate surrogate for real-world experience, or the kinds of gruelling challenges she often faced just because that was what happened when you lived in a time machine and made it your mission to help everybody you came across. And it was exactly this penchant for helping people that was about to get her into another scrape.

"I think Jack's got himself into trouble," River said. Jenny went cold. Metaphorically cold, that was; she was still wearing a woolly scarf, after all.

"Oh? And that's _my_ business?"

"Don't pull that face, Jenny," River said sternly, in a maternal way, but it happened to be a maternal way that Jenny wholly resented. She didn't even like her _actual_ mother speaking down to her, let alone her dad's ex-wife. By the way she backtracked, it was clear that River Song sensed she had made a grave mistake. "What I mean is, I thought you reconciled with him."

"I keep trying, but he's not buying it. Why should I have to go rescue him? Can't you help him out on your own?" Jenny questioned her, crossing her arms. Her bad thumb was swelling up.

"Your arm's bleeding."

"What? Oh," Jenny glanced down at her left arm, which she'd been shot in during her car chase in New Orleans five days earlier. "That's nothing, just a bullet wound." River didn't ask about it, just cast a disapproving look over the red splotch growing on the bandage. Maybe she _should_ have sewn it up? She'd sewn herself back together before; she could easily withstand the pain. "Why do you need _my_ help? Get someone Jack actually likes, like Mickey or Martha. Martha's got those agility skills now, she can do Kung Fu, and all sorts," Jenny said, briefly doing a mime of punching thin-air as she spoke. She may have made some theatrical noises to go along with it.

"I'd rather have you."

"You don't fancy me, do you?"

"You have a very particular skillset, Jenny. You think I'd have come to you first if there was anyone else? The only other person I would bring on this sort of thing is Jack, and obviously, he isn't here. I wouldn't have chosen to have put up with you being so stubborn," River said.

"Stubborn!?" Jenny exclaimed. She wasn't stubborn! Was she? She was flung into a crisis, one which induced her to find her phone as soon as possible and immediately ask Clara if she was what River accused her of being. Thinking of this, she saw her phone nearby, but did not go to get it. Merely made a mental note. " _I'm_ not the one who's stubborn, he's still been making digs at me."

"Yes, but not for the last five days he hasn't while he's been missing," River said.

"Jack can get himself out of trouble. Since when does he need rescuing? He's the one you send in to _do_ the rescuing. That's like… that's like _me_ needing to be rescued, and when was the last time that happened?" Jenny questioned, crossing her arms.

"What have I got to do? Pay you?" River questioned.

" _Pay_ me?"

"A fancy gun."

"I have plenty of guns."

"Then won't you just come because I'm asking for your help?" River wouldn't drop it. Jenny didn't think for a second that Jack was in all that much danger at all, considering he couldn't actually die and he had as much of a knack as any of them did for figuring ingenious ways out of sticky situations, but she was being asked personally to help someone. And maybe that someone was her dad's ex-wife, and maybe the other someone was her kind-of-ex-husband whose name she had now dropped in favour of her ancient 'Young' moniker, but… well, she was bored, and running out of activities to do to stop herself from going to impose her company onto Clara's evening.

"What's your lead then, hmm? What have you got?" she asked.

"He went to a museum."

"A museum? Jack? What's he want in a museum? Not reminiscing about the war again?" she asked, being cynical. But she was intrigued. What _was_ Jack doing hanging around in a museum? They had a time machine, they didn't need museums. If he was dying to go back to World War Two, he could just go back and pay a visit to a dance hall. For weeks, Jenny had been working out a way to get Clara to come with her to a dance hall, but Clara did not seem too keen on the idea.

"Well it isn't technically a museum, it's a private collection," River said, "The TARDIS helped me out while I was searching – he arrived there on the wrong day, undershot, was aiming for a Friday evening the week after when a black market auction was happening. I think he got caught without the cover of the auction, and he hasn't been back to the TARDIS since."

"Right. Black market auction. You want us to go there a week later to find out what he was looking for?" Jenny asked. River nodded. "You know, I've got a friend who can turn into a bat and doesn't show up on cameras-"

"Your girlfriend can't come."

"…I have another friend who can walk through walls they've started calling 'the Phantom.'"

"Nobody who looks like Clara Oswald can come. Nobody else can come. How would it look with half a dozen people all sneaking into an elite criminal auction?" River asked her.

" _Honestly_ , I just think she's _cute_ it's not _against the law_ …"

"But this auction is. You don't mind about dragging her into your criminal business anymore?"

Jenny paused, and eventually gave up. "…Fine. Me and you. Black market auction. Don't see why we're going afterwards, surely it would be easier to go on the same night and drag him out of there."

"Time lines are complicated," River said, "This way will be easier. We'll just schmooze whoever's in charge and they might tell us all about a break-in the week before."

"We'll 'schmooze'?" Jenny asked, doing inverted commas with her fingers. If they were having to schmooze people, her attractive undead girlfriend was probably the best person for the job. She would suggest herself, but she'd really lost her edge in the flirting department since regenerating.

" _I'll_ schmooze. You can stand guard, or something. I'll be easy. Just like doing an elaborate trapeze performance sixty feet in the air."

"Alright, alright. Where is this auction, then? When?"

"My century, Jack and I. 5091. New Earth."

"'New Earth'? You're going to have to do better than that, there are at least a thousand 'New Earths.'"

"Earth 3-B."

" _B_? I wouldn't trust a B planet as far as I can throw it; the only people who live on those are rich criminals," Jenny said very quickly when she heard the name 'Earth 3-B', "All crooks, the lot of them."

"Crooks?"

"Yep. I won't go. I won't associate with them. People who have no respect for the law are really the lowest of the low, don't you think? You'd best look for Jack on your own," she said, going to walk past River. River stepped out of her way as she tried to get out of the room very quickly.

"Crooks like Zero?" she said. Jenny Young stopped dead in the middle of the room and turned around on her heel.

"You could get Jack just fine on your own, couldn't you? You don't need me."

"It took a lot of digging the last few days to put the pieces together, Jenny," River said smugly. Yes, yes. So she could use a highly advanced space-machine to hack a few computers and come up with some rogue ideas about Jenny. Why was everyone so interested in her past all of a sudden? It had all started when she had gone with them to Korix and retrieved Emmett the month before, she was sure. Then it had all kicked off, and she couldn't get away from herself, like being chased by a ghost. "Why is it the Blacklight Society call you Zero?"

"What's a 'blacklight society'?" she feigned ignorance.

"Oh, you know exactly what it is, and maybe there aren't any photos of you hanging around with them in that century, but there are eye witnesses and colleagues of yours who spoke to me. It's actually been a mystery that's intrigued me for a while, I have to admit – who _is_ the star member of the Fifty-First Century's most prestigious and secretive thieves' guild? In the end, I wasn't very surprised to work out it was you. You really are so much like him," she said, "Remarkable when he didn't even raise you."

"Telling Jenny how much like her father she is seems to be everybody's favourite hobby at the moment," she grumbled. She didn't go a day without someone commenting about how she was 'just like the Doctor.' "So this is a Blacklight Society auction, then?"

"No," said River, "I assume there will be some members there, though. How kind of them to donate the things they steal to rich people to sell off to each other."

"Listen, I was in it for the adrenaline, just like the rest of them. That's the entire reason people join the Blacklight Society and why it's so esteemed, because the people involved don't have any greedy motivations. Most of the time. Well, I… it's a very splintered and loose organisation, lots of separate cells. If you think dragging me there will get some pull, you're wrong. I doubt they'd like their old _wunderkind_ hanging around in their heavily-guarded auction. No honour among thieves, and all that," Jenny said.

"Yes, but in case we _do_ have to steal something, I'd quite like to have you around to help. And it isn't hosted by the Blacklight Society, I just presume some of the items there were stolen by them," River said.

"Oh, brilliant," Jenny muttered. "Let's just go to a highly clandestine black market auction and sneak around looking for Jack, shall we? As if this is the kind of place he goes, this is just like him. What was he after? This was all because Liam Kent said something weird about Esther, you know, then he ran off. What's Liam Kent got to do with a black market in the Fifty-First Century?"

"We'll have to go and find out, won't we? Now. First things first. Do you own a sexy evening gown?"


	95. Society Girl

_Society Girl_

 _Jenny_

Jenny Young had good reasons not to trust B-Earths. There were no A-Earths, but out of the existence of any one society a bleak underbelly was destined to grow. A B-Earth was like the multimillion dollar estate of a mobster drunk on the riches of racketeering, and Jenny would know. It was luxurious, exclusive, had only a handful of the most affluent criminals as vast landowners, and drifting into its atmosphere without permission and forewarning was a death sentence. It was lawless in that it was thoroughly in the jurisdiction of the Alliance, but that the Alliance were paid off handsomely to stay away. Jenny had never been to Earth 3-B before, 'New Earth.' It was a gated community, just on a much larger scale, and she was normally sensible enough to stay away.

They took Jenny's spaceship, because of its lack of infamy and very superior cloaking technology designed by Oswin, and landed it as close to the venue as they could without being too conspicuous. Jenny was still largely in the dark about a lot of River's plan, unless River was employing that method borrowed from the Doctor of saying very little to convince people you knew what you were doing and then playing it off casually after a daring display of improvisation. She herself was guilty of the same thing oftentimes.

As soon as she descended the stairs onto the planet's surface, she was struck by an unfathomable cold. It looked like they were in the middle of Antarctica, or its space-age equivalent, and she didn't even have a coat on because River had made them both wear evening gowns so they fitted in with the black-tie occasion. She even had some random bits of jewellery on, necklaces and bracelets and diamond earrings, all scavenged from within the TARDIS wardrobe. Real or not, she didn't know. Tokens of the affections of random women for her father? Possibly. Maybe she was wearing Marilyn Monroe's old charm bracelet.

"You didn't say anything about this mansion being in the middle of an ice field," Jenny complained immediately, River already leaving before her. Jenny stashed the keys for her spaceship in a clutch bag she didn't like to carry because it left one of her hands not free, but then, that hand wasn't doing an awful lot anyway. She glanced down at it, hidden underneath an elbow-length white silk glove. She could not wear her support splint with those gloves, and so she could see her thumb twitching. It made her wince. The cold wasn't helping, either, nor was the fact she was going to have to walk across a plane of ice in five-inch heels.

"I didn't say anything about it _not_ being in the middle of an ice field, either," River argued. They were on a very expansive sheet of ice, and all around in a crescent shape were distant mountains. It would be impossible for anyone to show up there without being spotted first, a very good place for the leader of some criminal empire to set up house. She did not know who owned the estate, nor did she want to find out.

"I hate formal occasions," she grumbled as they made their way out from underneath the flying saucer, revealing themselves as they stepped through the threshold of the cloaking barrier. It was like a spaceport, all manner of starships and vehicles gathering for the prestigious auction. "It's hard to be discreet wearing clothes like this."

"You'd look less discreet in your military fatigues."

"I don't even wear fatigues," Jenny said, "You're making it sound like I wear camouflage cargo shorts, or something. I have dress sense."

"Fighting someone in a dress can't be any harder than fighting someone in those leather trousers you usually wear."

"They're not actually leather, they're PVC," Jenny said.

"Yes, and I'm surprised you can bend your legs at all when you're wearing them."

"I have an image to maintain."

"Have you ever sat down and spoken to Christina de Souza? You should share fashion tips," River said, "Which of you looks best in all-black tight leather. Oh, sorry, _PVC_. I think Jack has a type." Jenny shut up. She didn't want to talk about Christina de Souza _or_ Jack, particularly, and bringing up that woman just made her more likely to turn her back on the whole thing and let River go off on her own to find him. So she made the sensible, executive decision to end the conversation right there. It was a good thing, anyway, because the two of them were nearly at the door.

"How do you plan to get us in, then? Aren't we going to sneak around the back?" Jenny whispered. River shushed her abruptly and they joined a line of equally well-dressed and suspicious people, all of them producing fancy, holographic invitations as they passed through the enormous doors into the mansion. It was one of the most ostentatious things she had ever seen; it looked like an aristocratic 17th Century French manor combined with a cake decoration, plucked out of whatever non-time it was meant to be from and dumped there in the middle of an artificial ice age. Only, it was a lot bigger than a manor, and Jenny now saw why River Song had initially described it as a 'museum.' It was gargantuan, and she didn't know how they were going to find any clues to Jack's whereabouts in there. Maybe Jack hadn't even left, he'd just gotten lost.

"Easy," River said, pulling something out of her own clutch, inside which Jenny also spied a gun and at least two knives and a stick of some sort of explosive. "I've been invited."

" _Invited_? What do you mean you've been-"

"Hello, darling," River interrupted Jenny to address the man with the list of names. As soon as they stepped underneath the large, ornate awning of the front porch and steps, a heat field washed over them. A synthetic atmosphere; climate control. Jenny was relieved. The man she spoke to had two enormous, alien bouncers on either side of him, a species Jenny did not recognise but also did not want to mess with. River held out her device, the size of a peanut, and out of it projected the invitation. And there it was, _Professor River Song, Plus One_.

"Ah, Professor Song, so nice of you to finally accept the master of the house's invitation," said the man with the list, "He doesn't normally keep issuing them to guests who repeatedly fail to turn up to his salons. Who is the girl?"

"My plus one," said River.

"Very pretty."

"Isn't she?" River agreed. Jenny grew uncomfortable, but knew better than to argue. No doubt everyone around them was armed to the teeth. Everyone on the planet, even, was probably armed to the teeth. She smiled as they were allowed inside.

"And _how_ did you wrangle an invitation to this place?"

"This is my century, I'm an archaeologist," River answered quietly, "I've done a few odd jobs in this line of work."

"This 'line of work' being?"

"The same as yours, really. With more of an emphasis on investigation and adventuring, rather than plain daylight robbery," River said, "I have contacts as well, you know."

"Treasure hunting, then?" Jenny inquired. River smiled, and the two of them followed the queue of well-to-do bidders into an enormous ballroom; the site of the auction itself. They oughtn't stick around, though. They needed to get in and out of that place as quickly as possible, without staying to chitchat with people who may be at risk of recognising either one of them. They would _not_ take kindly to 'Zero' being at their auction. Jenny didn't like these sorts of people, anyway, the kind who paid others to do their dirty work while they got to sit cosy in their arctic estates pretending like they weren't corrupt. The fancier the room, the more she hated whoever was in charge, and this was a _very_ fancy room, the floor made of glass that gave view to the ocean below. They must have had to cut an enormous chunk out of the ice for this, and shadows moved beneath them.

"Isn't it funny how your father could have the TARDIS look as grand as this, and he chooses such tiny rooms?" River mused under her breath as they drifted through small clusters of people discussing 'business' and 'jobs' and other nefarious things. Jenny took a handful of hors d'oeuvres from a passing waiter and stood with them in her palm, picking them out to eat. She didn't know what they were, just some kind of seafood. "Your gloves are going to smell like shrimp."

"I couldn't care less," Jenny muttered. She really couldn't. And they tasted nice, anyway. "Now, what's the quickest and cleanest way out of this room?"

"The staff all have microchips in them," River said, "Inserted secretly, I assume. Doors detect the microchips and open accordingly; if they get itchy fingers and run away with something valuable, they can be tracked down."

" _Hunted_ down, more like," Jenny said, "Well where does that leave us?"

"Do you have a pen to fill out a job application?" River asked jokingly, but Jenny was unamused. River sighed. "Fine, fine," she touched her elbow lightly to steer them both to the other side of the room, smiling and nodding at the people they passed. _Please no one recognise me, please no one recognise me_ , Jenny thought to herself over and over. You could never be too careful in a place like this. "It's a lucky thing that this is the era of sonic technology, is it not?"

"I didn't see anything sonic in your bag."

"I don't keep my screwdriver in my bag," River said, then whispered, "Cover me." Jenny didn't know how, exactly, she was meant to do that, but they found themselves in front of an ornate door, with River Song fumbling around with her dress. Then she pulled her sonic screwdriver – the Tenth Doctor's old and battered one with a multitude of modifications so that it actually worked – out of her garter where it must have been stashed. She sonicked the lock on the door and, hey presto, they slipped out of the ballroom and into the rest of the mansion.

Whoever owned the place was so sure of their microchip security they didn't bother to have any guards crawling about the rest of the hallways. There would be cameras or traps, she was sure – trillionaire criminals loved excessive traps – but hopefully they would get out unscathed, if they were quick and clever. It really was like a museum down there, though. It was full of devices and taxidermy creatures, the likes of which Jenny had never seen before. Some of them were extinct, she assumed.

"It's creepy in here," she said, glancing around. It was cold, too; she saw her breath in front of her eyes. It was a good thing she was so warm-blooded, like a polar bear. The noises from the ballroom were completely numb now. They might as well be in the entire mansion on their own it was so silent. "What are we looking for?"

"Clues to Jack's whereabouts," said River.

"You're sure you don't have an ulterior motive?" Jenny questioned carefully. River stopped and looked down at her.

"How do I know _you_ don't have an ulterior motive?"

"Uh… I promise."

"Then I promise as well."

"I'm not sure your promises mean a lot," Jenny said.

"What would an old fogey like me want with all this? Half of it's useless and the other half's grotesque." Jenny made up her mind to keep an eye on River Song, though. Until her eyes spotted something else, that was; a tiara no less, kept in a glass case on a pedestal and an ornate, marble dummy head. She walked towards it as close as she dared, wary of possible tripwires. She laughed when she saw it.

"That crown is the Queen of Hurk's," she said, "She was crazy. The Hurk crown jewels were meant to be kept locked up, but she kept them under her pillow. I always hated jobs where I had to seduce people to steal from them."

"I didn't realise anyone stole the Hurk crown."

"No, I left a duplicate," Jenny said.

"Must have been some duplicate."

"Nah. Cheap piece of plastic. The Queen of Hurk is practically blind. As long as it weighs the same, she'll not know the difference. Maybe they'll work it out eventually. Funny how it's ended up here," Jenny said, "I stole it a long time ago."

"Isn't the Queen of Hurk… old?" River asked.

"Erm, you and I have both been alive for multiple centuries," Jenny pointed out.

"But… she's old?"

"…Fine, yes, okay? Kind of old. I didn't… nothing… I was only there to get the crown," Jenny said.

"Which she kept in her bed."

"Just don't mention this to my girlfriend, please…"

"My lips are sealed," River smirked. Jenny doubted that she was telling the truth, but didn't know River to talk to Clara ever, so she figured that little anecdote was safe from Clara's scrutiny and judgement. "Well, you showed me yours, so I'll show you mine…" Jenny didn't even _want_ to know what _that_ meant, but she didn't appear to have a choice in the matter as River indicated something in a different display further down the room they were in.

Jenny followed her, and when she saw what River was pointing at her jaw dropped. A big, golden box with handles and adorned with angel wings was residing their peacefully.

"Holy…"

"Very."

"That's the Ark of the Covenant!" Jenny exclaimed.

"Yes," said River, "I found it."

"You-? When, where?"

"Oh, I don't know when. In the Dumghe Mountains in Zimbabwe," River explained, "A long story for another time."

"And you came and sold it to the highest bidder? You can't do that."

"I didn't, there was a… falling out. I'll tell you the whole thing once we're out of here," she promised. Jenny thought little of this next promise, too, _and_ of River's attested lack of guilt in how the Ark of the Covenant had ended up millions of lightyears from home and why it hadn't been returned to whatever religion had a claim on it. Jenny did not get the opportunity to press River for more information, though. They were interrupted.

"Are you being modest, Professor? I didn't know you had it in you."

Jenny turned around, ready to throw some punches and break some bones if need be, and found herself face to face with a scrawny human and two enormous alien bodyguards cracking their knuckles. It was a lot of knuckles, too; they had four arms each. No longer did she think it wise to try and fight them off. For Clara's sake, if nothing else (she felt a twinge in her bullet wound when she thought this, and became aware again of the ache in her broken thumb.)

"Pasznoxo," River said, smiling. Then she spoke to Jenny, "This is Pasznoxo, sweetie. The man of the house, so to speak."

"And who might you be? Her new arm candy?" Pasznoxo commented. They seemed like friends, though, and like he might not kill them for sneaking out of his lavish ballroom.

"Oh, no, don't be appalling," River said, "Much too young. This is Jenny, but you've probably heard her called Zero. The toast of the Blacklight Society."

"River!" Jenny hissed.

"The Blacklight Society?" Pasznoxo asked. She clenched her jaw. "Planning on stealing anything?"

"Not if I don't have to," Jenny said, "Besides, you've already got stuff stolen by me in here. Like-"

"The Queen of Hurk's crown, yes," he said, nodding. He might be weedy, but he was very sharply dressed and well-groomed. She could smell his hair product from where she was standing, a good few metres away. "I'm familiar with your work. Nice to put a face to the name, and such a pretty face, too."

"Mmm," she murmured.

"Sorry to crash the party, I just couldn't let the esteemed Professor Song, the only woman who almost always declines my invitations and whom I keep inviting, get away without mingling," he said, smiling, "But I should have known you wouldn't just come here to socialise."

"We're looking for something," River said, "Or, someone. This is your house, you might know something. We were trying to find your security room anyway."

"And what's his name?" Pasznoxo asked. Jenny frowned.

"We didn't mention that we're looking for a man," she said.

"I think you can help us, can't you, Pasz?" River said. Pasznoxo shrugged.

"Possibly. What's in it for me?"

"One of the lost Fabergé Eggs," Jenny said quickly, before River could offer anything else. River glanced at her, perplexed, "I know where to get one of them."

"Really?" Pasznoxo's eyes lit up with greed, "Imagine that, the best thief of the century, working for me." Was it wrong she felt a little proud at being called the 'best thief of the century'? Especially with River Song right there. She was a better thief than River, what a feat.

"Yep. Thief's honour," Jenny said, "You'll have your egg soon enough."

"The man you're looking for, he broke in," said Pasznoxo, "We had a very major security breach last week. I've been away, you see, in a different continent, doing some business. Your handsome friend broke in the same time a group of extremists calling themselves 'Kasterborous' broke in, and it appears they were looking for the same thing."

"Which was?" River asked.

"A broken map. Well, alleged map, nobody's ever gotten it to work. It was supposed to be auctioned tonight, but unfortunately their little 'heist' was successful," Pasznoxo said, then narrowed his eyes, "This is all confidential, by the way."

"Of course," they both nodded. Jenny didn't care one bit about Pasznoxo's security problems, though she could think of half a dozen ways off the top of her head to make a good sum of money selling his secrets to the highest bidders. No doubt River had the same ideas, and significantly less integrity.

"It was about the point where they shot him and he woke up again that they became interested," said Pasznoxo, "That was how it looked in the footage. They killed my guards and took him with them, after he kept claiming the map was a family heirloom. I think their leader calls himself 'the Conqueror.'"

"Right. A map?" Jenny asked, "But what's it a map too?"

"That's beyond me, I'm a middle man."

"You mean a fence," she quipped.

"If you like. If I knew how to make it work I wouldn't be selling it."

"And where did they take our friend and the map?" River asked.

"Lucky for you the security leak was one of my own men," said Pasznoxo, "He has a microchip. The same ones that activate the door system you tricked to get back here. I would have followed, but they've gone towards the Yellow Cluster, and-"

"The only habitable planet in the Yellow Cluster is Rospaonus," Jenny finished his sentence for him.

"And I would hardly call Rospaonus habitable as it is," River added. Rospaonus was an infamously hostile planet, mainly for its wildlife and its weather. The entire planet was, to her understanding, a rainforest, but an alien rainforest subjected to incredibly frequent hurricanes up to fifty times more powerful than even the biggest storm on Planet Earth.

"I didn't think it was worth it to follow. But you two feel free," he said, "I'll expect to hear a good story of what you find when you come back here with my egg."

"Count on it," Jenny smiled. She would get him a Fabergé Egg. Mainly because she knew her dad had a Fabergé Egg buried and gathering dust on the TARDIS somewhere, and she didn't think he would notice if she took it and gave it to a crime mogul.

"Then I think it's time to leave," River said, winking at Pasznoxo, "See you around, Pasz."

"Whether you want to or not, I'm sure," he smiled back. He was quite amiable to see he was probably kind of evil. Jenny wasn't complaining about them taking their leave, though, and she followed River back towards the ballroom, itching to get out of her dress.


	96. Just the Way I'm Not

_Just the Way I'm Not_

 _Jack_

The humidity was stifling. It was at the point where Captain Jack Harkness thought his skin might melt and be replaced by waterfalls of sweat and condensation, the same condensation that was making the dark wooden walls of the makeshift shack he was being kept in bulge. It was a badly put together construction, with slivers of blinding sunlight spilling through the cracks in the wood and leaving him with streaks of sunburn on his body, which had not all been shaded enough to heal yet. So he sat there, sweating and blistering, holed up in the stifling darkness and feeling like he was choking on his own hot, slimy breath. He barely had any clothes on, either, sitting there bound to a chair in his underwear and covered in blood from his many deaths over the last week, as he was tortured for information. He didn't have any information, and even if he didn't he wouldn't give it up. He could withstand any amount of pain if the cause meant that much to him, and this one meant a damn lot, that was for sure.

"Tell us how to activate it," came the heavy accent of Ordov, a beast of a man more bear than person, prowling around Jack and his chair in a circle as he waited to strike with his poker. Jack had been burned by lots of pokers, though, sometimes willingly if he was in that kind of mood, and Ordov wasn't going to get anything out of him by using it, no matter where he tried to wedge the thing.

"I don't know," Jack answered, hollow, sounding almost broken. Being kept in that heat was a worse torture than anything they could inflict on him, and even Ordov was drenched in perspiration. The wet towel that had been around his neck to keep him cool was now soaked through and warm, yet Ordov kept wiping the beads of sweat from his face with it. "C'mon, big guy. Whatcha gonna do with that?" Jack turned his head to nod at the poker, when Ordov was just behind him. Ordov rammed the thing into the outer side of Jack's thigh, and Jack yelped. When Ordov moved the poker away again a few seconds later, its glowing tip now with blood dripping from it, there was a charred wound in Jack's leg. Jack winced. "Keep 'em coming. My safe word is _pineapple_ , so you'll know when it's getting a bit too much."

Ordov laughed cruelly, "You think you are such a big man, Captain."

"Oh yeah? Pull down my briefs and you'll see what kind of a _big man_ I am," Jack said, winking and grinning. Ordov soured, and then it struck Jack hard around the side of his head with the metal rod. Jack felt an intense pain that was almost like being stabbed, and the smell of his hair burning reached his ears. Great, _more_ heat, just what he needed in the jungles of Rospaonus. "If this is the kind of thing that gets you in the mood, then I can't say I'm one to judge. And while I'm usually no stranger to being tied up, it kind of feels like you're taking away my consent."

"We will see how much lip you can give once I break that handsome jaw of yours."

"I'm sure I'll still be able to give _plenty_ of lip. I'll tell you all about it, if you untie me." Ordov laughed again and then dropped the poker onto the wooden floor, though the floor was much too damp to catch fire. While Jack's eyes were trained on the poker, a fist twice the size of his own came and slugged him around the face, breaking his jaw as promised. He heard the snap and felt the swollen burn near his teeth, and groaned.

"Maybe once that heals you will rethink if you have anything to tell the Conqueror." Ordov turned to leave, poker still discarded on the floor next to Jack, and Jack tried to shout something after him but didn't manage it as the bones in his face became inflamed. That was the third time he'd heard that line used that week, and probably the fifth or sixth time Ordov had broken his jaw. Once he'd dislocated it, too, wrenched it out of place.

Hot sunlight streamed into the shack when Ordov opened the door, muttering something to the guard outside. A new guard. He kept getting new guards because they kept coming down with heatstroke or mysterious infections – at least he was immune to any alien, tropical diseases that might strike. The guard soured when Ordov ordered him back into the room to keep an eye on Jack. Initially, Jack could not make any snide comments, and just relaxed in the swelteringly hot wooden chair and waited for the deep burn on his leg and his busted jaw to heal. It took all of five minutes. Ordov's voice could still be heard close by outside. Jack raised his eyebrows at the new guard.

"So?" he asked. Silence. "How's the weather treating you?" Still silence. "What kind of short straw did you draw to get stuck in here minding the prisoner?"

"I'm doing an important job, for the Conqueror," he finally spoke. He sounded too young to be there, and looked too young as well. But with youth went naivety, and Jack was an expert at corrupting and bending naivety to his will. Maybe this would finally be his chance to escape? But then, he didn't really have a plan. Get out of the shack, and then what? He was in the middle of a hostile camp on a hostile planet, and they'd all be looking for him. How easily could he steal some weapons and commandeer one of their ships? It was just like being locked up by the Master all over again, but without a complicated network of friendly staff to pull some stunts that would set him free.

"Important job?" Jack asked.

"You hold the secret to ultimate power."

"Uh-huh."

"You could just tell us how to make the map work."

"It's always with the map with you people – aren't any of you interested in getting to know me as a person?" Jack pouted. The guard glared. "Oh, come on. Don't you think I'm cute, kid? Let me out of this chair and I'll give you a hundred good reasons to turn your back on the Conqueror right now."

"I couldn't turn my back, he's our leader," said the guard, shaking his head at Jack. Jack couldn't tell if he was getting anywhere or not.

"I've been known to be a pretty strong leader as well, in my time," Jack said, "Why not give me a shot?"

"Maybe if you tell me how the map works," the guard said. Okay, not as naïve as he seemed. He was trying to play Jack right back, and Jack's only remaining asset while he was bound to that chair – his silver tongue and easy good looks – were not helping him one bit. The kid was clearly just another brainwashed foot-soldier of Kasterborous.

But that didn't matter. Shadows flickered on the floor; someone was moving above, on top of the shack. Even if Jack strained his ears, he couldn't hear any creaking. A fine sprinkling of dust came down from one of the wooden boards, but the guard didn't see them. Possibly because he was wearing sunglasses indoors and everything was dim already. Jack noticed, though, and tried to observe without turning his head.

"Sure," he said finally, quickly. He kept watching the shadows, meeting the guard's eyes sometimes. "Come over here and I'll whisper it to you." The guard laughed.

"I don't think so."

"Just a couple steps," Jack persisted, "My voice is getting kind of hoarse from all the screaming while the big guy out there tortures me. Just lean in a little more. Get into a good position. Promise I'll tell you the secret to how to make the map work, trust me." He was an excellent liar and schemer, always had been. He saw the guard's eyes scan him carefully for any signs of lying, but clearly the guard still thought he had the upper-hand. Which he did, really, if Jack was wrong about what he thought he saw above.

"What?" the guard asked, stepping closer, bending down slightly, holding his hand near where the muzzle of the assault rifle slung loosely over his back.

"C'mon," said Jack. The guard continued to move closer.

" _What_?"

"The secret is…" he began. The guard held his gaze eagerly, Jack boring into his eyes intensely, like he was about to bestow a great piece of information. "Pineapple." The boy didn't get another chance to speak. There was a crash as the full force of somebody hit the flimsy wooden roof and broke a hole in it, dust and splinters falling onto the floor as a pair of slender, feminine legs fell through and grabbed the boy around the neck with their shins. Jack would know those legs anywhere, no one else was that agile. The boy struggled with the legs rather than going for his rifle, clearly not any kind of trained soldier, trying to pull them off, but the girl was much too strong and lifted him off his feet. His face went red and finally he went limp; she gave it a second or two longer from when he stopped struggling, and then released his now unconscious body so that it slumped uselessly onto the floorboards.

And then she dropped her whole self through in front of Jack.

"I should've known you couldn't keep away from me," he grinned at Jenny. Jenny did not smile back, she instead looked at him moodily and then crouched down to take the pulse of the boy she had just choked. "He'll be fine, looks like a fan of the old autoerotic asphyxiation."

"I don't see anything autoerotic about it, Jack."

"Anything's autoerotic with you around."

"Jack," she began, doing her sweetest fake-smile and leaning down in front of him now, "You don't have to do your flirting routing to get me to rescue you, that's why I'm here."

"Out of the goodness of your heart," he smiled back and leant as close to her face (and lips) as he could get while still tied up. She kept up her smile, which was a very good bit of acting on her part.

"Out of the persistency of River's guilt-tripping," she corrected. He leant in to kiss her, and she kicked the base of the chair right between his legs, jolting him but thankfully missing the crown jewels, and the chair fell backwards onto the floor. "Try something like that again and I'll just leave you here to get bludgeoned, alright?" Jack was winded from his fall.

"Sure, whatever you say."

She crossed her arms and just looked at him, "Did this lot strip you or did you do it yourself?"

"Well, I'm no stranger to taking my clothes off, but in this case, let's say they were a little… overzealous. Aren't you gonna untie me?"

"Dunno," she feigned contemplation.

"Still like me being bound for you?"

"Might prefer if you were gagged," she said dismissively, pulling something out of her pocket.

"What's that? Sock to put in my mouth?"

"I'll put it in your mouth if you want," she said, flicking open a switchblade. She still had bandages around her right thumb.

"Eh, too tame," he said.

"Pity," she muttered, coming over to cut the ropes around his wrists and ankles.

"You should've showed up ten minutes ago when he broke my jaw and I couldn't say anything."

"Definitely," she said, cutting the bindings.

"So River sent you?"

"She didn't _send me_ , she came with, but I'm subtler so _I_ snuck into the camp to get you," Jenny said, "We'll just go back to my ship and leave Rospaonus, easy, before another storm starts and we can't actually take off." They couldn't leave. He needed that map, and to figure out how to activate it, if only just to stop it from getting into the Conqueror's hands. Best not argue with Jenny until _after_ she had got him to safety, though. All in due time. "You're at the back of the camp anyway, this lot aren't too bright, put you in a good place to be broken out."

"What are you talking about? This hut is backed onto a ravine with a waterfall," Jack said. He'd seen the scenery once, right before they threw him in the shack and locked it up tight. The guard on the floor shifted and made a grunting noise, right as Jenny succeeded in cutting free one of Jack's hands. "C'mon, hurry up."

"I'll just get a machete and cut off your hands and feet, shall I?" she snapped.

"If it means we get out of here quicker then sure, go for it," Jack said coldly. He knew she didn't have a machete. Not on her, anyway. Maybe hidden away somewhere else, wherever she and River had set up shop; it was, after all, pretty stupid to come to a jungle planet without a machete to cut through vines and thickets.

Somebody knocked a heavy fist on the door.

"Are things alright in there, brother?"

"Shit," Jack hissed, "That's Ordov."

" _What_!?" Jenny exclaimed.

"Ordov."

"Ordov!?"

"Yes, Ordov!"

"As in the infamously violent _assassin_!?"

"Yes, Ordov the infamously violent assassin, he's working with them, he's been torturing me all this time. Didn't you see him when you cased the joint?"

"I don't know what he looks like! I only know him by reputation!" They spoke very quickly, in hisses, and closely. For a moment it was almost like he was still married to her, like she still had feelings for him, as much as she liked to deny ever having those just to perpetuate her saint-like image and make it seem like she never really _cheated_ on anyone, because the great Doctor's daughter would never be so immoral as to do _that_ (even though she was.)

"I am coming in, brother," said Ordov.

"Don't come in!" Jack shouted, "We're totally screwing." Jenny slapped him, even though it wasn't her he was referring to, which he thought was out of order. Probably she had been looking for an excuse to hit him, because he'd put her to all the trouble of rescuing him to begin with. Ordov kicked open the door.

"Bit unnecessary," Jenny said, then awkwardly, "Hi. I'm a friend of Jack's. Can he come out and play, do you think? While the weather's so nice." Ordov was furious. Jack had never seen him so angry, he was normally relatively easy-going, probably just because he was so convinced that he would eventually be able to break Jack down into a snivelling wreck of map-related confessions without having to lose his temper. Ordov lunged for Jenny, Jenny who dropped the flick-knife at her feet where Jack managed to grab hold of it with his free hand.

Jack on the floor, completely useless and still half-attached to the chair, Jenny dropped down at the last possible second and slid between Ordov's widely-spaced legs, leaving him confused. He was burly and scary, but not exactly a genius. Moved slowly. Too slowly to be a match for Jenny. Jack hacked at the ropes binding him so that he could go help her. Not that he didn't believe Jenny could take on Ordov, a giant of a man who was nearly seven feet tall and three feet wide, but he would just rather not leave anything to chance in case _both_ of them got kidnapped. That would be the worst possible situation, the Conqueror getting his dirty hands on Jenny, second only to the Conqueror getting his dirty hands on the Doctor – or, god forbid, the Mistress.

Jenny jumped back to her feet and kicked a confused Ordov square between his legs, which would have sent a lesser man reeling. Ordov laughed.

"You think that trick will win with me? I'm wearing a cup, girly," he said.

"Oh, really? I suppose you should always be prepared," she smiled. He swung a punch for her head. For a split-second, Jack was terrified it would connect, because Jenny always left things until the very _last_ moment to get out of the way. For a while he had been working on a theory that Jenny actually saw the world in slow-motion, or something. She ducked another punch aimed at her gut just as he tore apart the ropes on his other hand, and then moved on to hacking and tugging at the ones on his ankles. They were very sturdy ropes, made of some almost impossible to cut fibre rather than twine. "Why are we even fighting? Don't you think we could be friends?"

"Friends who steal each other's possessions are not true friends," said Ordov, trying to knock her off her feet with a kick aimed at her middle. Ordov's leg was so huge though, and Jenny was so spry, that she put her hands on it and vaulted rather than let him kick her. He could have shattered her hip if he hadn't missed.

"I'm sure we can share Jack, he won't mind," Jenny said, "In fact, I'm not exactly sure the divorce has come through yet, so really he's more mine than yours."

"Divorce?"

"Don't let Fangs hear you talking like that," Jack commented, freeing one of his legs finally. Just one more lot of ropes to slash and he would be free, Jenny keeping Ordov busy.

"Well, he's my ex-husband, but the legality of the entire procedure is really very ambiguous," Jenny said, kicking Ordov's fist away from her. He was surprised at her strength. Jack kept hacking at the ropes. "Gets a bit tiring being married to him after a while, though, I'm sure it took a whole ten minutes for me to get sick of him."

"Yeah, yeah," Jack dismissed, "Here I thought your fourth regeneration was supposed to be nice."

"Depends who it's speaking to."

"Regeneration?" Ordov asked, becoming alarmed. _Uh-oh_ , Jack thought. Ordov was stunned, and did not attempt to hit Jenny any longer, though Jenny clearly didn't understand at all why Ordov had stopped in his tracks. That was the moment that he finally managed to tear himself free of the chair. Jenny frowned at Ordov, still in a fighting stance and ready to rebuff his every strike, but it didn't get to that point. She took advantage of him becoming stunned and kicked him in the abdomen with her boot as hard as she could, which happened to be very hard indeed. Ordov staggered away, and Jack brought up the wooden chair he had been trapped in day and night for the last week and brought it down on Ordov's head. It splintered to pieces, leaving more wood on the floor along with the boards Jenny had broken when she had made her entrance, and left him dazed. Jack sucker-punched him and finally succeeded in knocking him unconscious.

"I'm glad that's over with," said Jack, "I was getting sick of him not putting out."

"Why did he ask about regenerations?"

"Uh, not sure," Jack lied, "Probably the heat getting to him. Speaking of the heat, the waterfall in the ravine out back is sounding very enticing. Maybe we could go skinny dipping? I'm right in thinking Fangs can't cross running water anymore, aren't I?"

"Mention her, or make any more suggestions like that again, and I'll knock you out and leave you here to find your own way off this planet," Jenny warned him. He decided, in that moment, that she was being genuine, but he neither cared about skinny dipping nor about her new lover. He cared about distracting her away from the top of 'regenerations' and what he and the Conqueror's little gang, Kasterborous, were doing there. "Let's go, give me a boost and I'll pull you up through the roof."

 **AN: Remember to review guys I really appreciate the reviews, I am working hard with this storyline it should be good.**


	97. The Lure of Adventure

_The Lure of Adventure_

 _Jenny_

It was an hour-long trek between where her spaceship was parked and where Kasterborous had set up their camp, up on a mountain so that they had a good view of the enemy down in the gullet of a valley with the damp ravine running alongside. It was not a fun walk. Mostly because it didn't take an hour, it took two, because she dragged Jack around the block while she gathered water in a bucket and killed something to cook. She didn't have the foresight to bring anything to eat with them on the ship, and besides, she always liked a challenge. She didn't know what she killed, some large lump of wildlife, but she made Jack carry it while she lugged the water and her bow and arrow. It was very comedic, the sight of him blooded and almost naked carrying a dead animal around, like he'd killed it himself with his own two hands. Wrung its neck, or something.

"Nice to finally get a look at the scenery around here," Jack said. It was a vividly coloured tropical wilderness, and quite gorgeous. Jenny had been taking pictures of it all on her phone, wishing she had an actual camera, whenever she had some downtime over the last two days she and River had been there scouting the place for Jack. Only two areas of Rospaonus were populated by the jungles; the poles. In the middle the planet was completely barren, baking hot and desolate, holding no life at all. And then on top of that, it was privileged to the most wonderful storms, sandstorms in the wastelands and hurricanes in the north and south. They were in the north currently. "Even if you _are_ making me carry all this dead weight around."

"You'll be grateful when we have something to eat later," Jenny said shortly. She would rather not be alone with him, she would rather be alone with anyone else in the world than Captain Jack Harkness, she would rather River had gone to collect him, or at least come and waited at the camp perimeter. Or she would rather have just left Jack to his fate, let River maybe hire the Shadow to chase after him, so that she could be in bed somewhere drinking hot chocolate in the arms of her lovely girlfriend.

"Found him alright, then?" River Song asked as they stepped out of a row of trees surrounding the clearing with her spaceship in the middle of it. The ship was invisible, though, because it was practically a big mirror that would throw off the sunlight if it wasn't cloaked. Definitely there, there and nicely air conditioned within.

"You bet she did, and then some," Jack announced, indicating the dead animal across his shoulders. He carried it over to their campfire and dropped it down on the ground. Then he stood proudly with his hands in his hips like it had been him who killed it. Jenny set the bucket of water down near where the unconcealed stairs into the flying saucer were, ready to carry up and run through the ship's water purifier the next chance she got. "Say, uh, you don't happen to have any clothes?"

"River brought some," Jenny said.

"And a shower on the ship?"

"Nope, didn't realise the water tank was nearly empty when we left, no shower," Jenny said, "But you can take some of the soap, and there's a lagoon a ten-minute walk due east. Or you could wait for the next time it rains."

"Thanks, doll," Jack said, winking and slipping past her into the ship. She didn't like him going on that ship. She felt like he was invading something sacred, and then she thought about how ridiculous she would sound saying that Jack had infected her 'sacred spaceship' with his presence. Jenny remained utterly silent until he had taken the soap and clothes and disappeared into the brush of the jungle again, busying herself by carefully skinning her animal.

"That's quite the cold shoulder you're giving him," River commented.

"It's forty degrees, my shoulder isn't cold in the slightest," Jenny muttered, stabbing the animal with her machete now retrieved from in a nearby tree where she had 'stashed' it for 'safe keeping' and dragging the knife all the way down its gullet so that she could peel it. She didn't really need to think about what she was doing, skinning an animal and preparing it to eat was a bit like riding a bike, you never really forgot.

"You know what I mean."

"I'm fine."

"You should call her."

"What?" Jenny looked up and met River's knowing gaze. She was doing that 'maternal' thing again. Jenny hated that maternal thing.

"God, it's a miracle you're managing to hold down this relationship. You haven't rung her once in the last two days," River said. Correct, she had not. She had actually not rung Clara for three or four days. _She had actually_ not even had her phone on her.

"I just… she'll worry," Jenny said, "She thinks I'm reckless, I can't tell her I've gone to rescue my ex-husband from a treasure-hunting lunatic on one of the most hostile planets known to mankind."

"You've already done the rescuing part. You can leave, if you want, leave Jack and I here." Jenny stopped what she was doing.

"Leave you here?"

"To figure out how the map works, find whatever it's leading to. I've got my emergency teleporter back to the TARDIS," River explained. Jenny gawked at her.

" _Find_ it? Get the map – are you kidding me? That map is what Jack got kidnapped over to begin with." River just held her gaze, and didn't say anything else. "No, _no_. You are not doing this to me, Song. Is this why you were _really_ so insistent about rescuing him? I bet you've been scheming all along, I bet you knew what he was after this entire time."

"Oh, get over yourself, no I didn't," River scoffed, "But once I get a whiff of adventure…"

"You're a hologram, you can't get a whiff of anything."

"A metaphorical whiff."

"And I'll _metaphorically_ drag the both of you back onto the ship and take you away myself if I have to," she said.

"Yet people say you're reckless."

"You know what?" Jenny said, brandishing the machete at River, though River was sat a good few metres away on a log they had dragged over the previous night when they had originally set up the camp, so this didn't really have much effect, "I'm going to go call her." She stabbed the machete back down into the corpse and skulked away with her shoulders hunched, pulling up the staircase as she did so that River couldn't eavesdrop on her conversation.

/

It was a good couple of hours later that she finally finished smoking a whole row of funny-coloured, alien steaks over a fire. And contrary to what River Song would claim, it didn't take Jenny a few hours to cook just because she spent a hefty sum of those hours (most of them) on the phone, even though she definitely _had_ spent a hefty sum of those hours on the phone, having to explain her absence and whereabouts for the last few days of trawling around a jungle planet in a flying saucer looking for her ex. Her ex who was now clean, and dressed, and chowing down on some of her medium rare steaks with his fingers. Nobody was really fussed for cutlery.

"So then, Jack," River began, looking at their inconsumable steaks rather enviously, "Put us out of our misery. What's all the fuss about this map?"

"Put you out of your misery? Didn't someone already do that?" he jibed, then tore off a very large piece of steak with his teeth. River watched him as he made a string of exaggerated chewing noises, then pointed at the steak in his hand and said to Jenny, "This is some _good_ steak. Careful Fangs doesn't hear about you having stake and garlic."

"You know, you're not very good at avoiding questions," Jenny answered him. It was twilight now, with the rich night sky visible only just through the canopy of thick leaves. She hated those leaves, they kept in all the heat and the moisture and the humidity, but weren't strong enough to keep out the rain when it started. It reminded her of a different tropical planet she had frequented a few decades back after becoming depressed and accidentally getting involved in a drugs cartel, but that was a story for another time. They were sitting around a lantern now, not wanting to light a fire because the smoke would give away their position to Kasterborous, whom River claimed she had seen send search parties out into the jungle.

"Tell that to Gwen Cooper who, by the way, is kind of interested in these kittens we've acquired on the TARDIS. How are the kittens? I've been away for so long, it feels," Jack asked.

"They're fine," said Jenny, "I think. I don't really know. Adam Mitchell said they have worms, which I don't understand considering they've been born on a spaceship."

"The map, though?" River persisted.

"All kittens have worms. How many are there? I think I left before Princess Sparkle Tutu gave birth."

"Five," Jenny answered.

"The map," River interrupted.

"Oh yeah? What're they like?"

"Well, they're all kind of different, you know?" she said, "One of them, this black fur ball, totally tried to savage me. It tries to savage everyone, actually. Then there's a calico, a blue Abyssinian, a hairless one and this one with these tentacles."

" _Tentacles_?"

"Yeah, it's freaky."

"I guess you never know what kind of weird thing is gonna pop out when somebody gets knocked up on the TARDIS, huh?" Jack said slyly, glancing at River. River was not impressed.

"Well. If the two of you have stopped flirting-"

"Hey!" Jenny exclaimed.

"We were not!" Jack agreed.

"Mmm, clearly," River muttered. They weren't even sitting near each other, River had Jack on her right on the log and Jenny was sitting on the floor on the left, nearly at the other side of the lantern. He just wanted to know about the kittens, and she kind of liked the kittens, they were one of the positives about living on the TARDIS again. "The map, Jack. Because I have suspicions, but I'd hate to suggest any of them to Jenny before I knew for sure."

"It's just the map. It's a valuable piece of history, heritage," Jack said. It sounded like he wasn't telling them the full story, and going by River's expression, she was aware of that. Did she know what the map was to, really?

"Whose heritage?" River pried.

"General heritage. Of civilisation." River glared at him as he munched his steak.

"Alright, what's going on?" Jenny asked. River didn't say a word, so she turned her eyes on Jack. She used to be able to make him tell her things by giving him eyes and pouting a little, would that still work? Would that be wrong of her to do…? She employed the imploring eyes, at least, but left the pout in reserve, in case of emergency.

"The Conqueror thinks the map is to the Singularity."

"I knew it!" River exclaimed.

"The what?" Jenny asked. This wasn't going to turn into the Anobine Cartax all over again, was it? She was sick and tired of people going insane trying to find random treasures, but it most certainly would not surprise her.

"It's a relic, a Time Lord relic," River said. Jenny's eyes widened. A Time Lord relic? On that godforsaken planet? "Doesn't your father tell you anything? The group _is_ called Kasterborous."

"So what?"

"So that's the constellation where Gallifrey is," Jack said, "The Conqueror wants the Singularity."

"Which is what?" Jenny pressed them. She didn't like this whole being-in-the-dark thing, not one bit.

"A WMD," River answered. Jenny dropped her steak in the grass.

"In the wrong hands," Jack cut across her, trying to avoid Jenny's wrath, "And that's what Torchwood does, you know? Keeps alien technology from falling into the wrong hands. It wasn't intended to be used as a weapon, alright?"

"I have half a mind to call my dad, you know."

"No," Jack ordered her firmly. "Do not call him, the Conqueror getting wind of the Doctor being here would not be good. We just need to get the map and take it back to the TARDIS, okay? Then we can find the Singularity."

"You just said you want to stop it from falling into the wrong hands," Jenny argued, "But now you want to find it?"

"And stop it-"

"Bullshit," said River, "You didn't run out of the TARDIS on your own to come and stop an ancient Time Lord device from getting taken by a lunatic."

"Hey, I'm a very noble guy, Professor."

"You want it for something, too," she said.

"I'm trying to save lives," Jack gritted his teeth while he talked.

"She's right," said Jenny, "You're lying. What do you want with this thing? And who are these people naming themselves 'Kasterborous'? And this 'Conqueror'-" she stopped. The Doctor, the Master, and now the Conqueror? "Holy – is this bloke a Time Lord? A lost Time Lord who didn't die in the Time War!?"

"No," said Jack, "He's a lunatic, like River said. He thinks he's destined to start a new breed of Time Lords, that he's biologically chosen. But he's human. Classic psychopath, grandiose delusions, probably tortured baby birds when he was a kid. That's why they kidnapped me, because they killed me and I came back, they think I'm a Time Lord, or that I know Time Lords."

"Is _that_ why Ordov went all funny when you mentioned regenerations!?"

"Yeah, and now they'll have suspicions about you," Jack said, "But your father cannot know about this, he cannot come here. If the Conqueror gets his hands on a genuine Time Lord, he could make the map work; that's what's wrong with it, that's why it's broken. There hasn't been a Time Lord to activate it for thousands of years."

"Excuse me?" Jenny asked, going cold.

"Thousands of years, I-"

"No," she said, shaking her head at him, the good mood brought on by her long conversation with Clara quickly evaporating the longer this conversation went on, "You said ' _genuine_ Time Lord.'"

"Uh-oh…" River murmured.

"Well… yeah. We take the map from Kasterborous and the TARDIS will probably be able to activate it without the Doctor having to get involved at all," said Jack, "He can't know, he can't come after it." Jenny did not like this, not one bit. Even more than the simple implication that she was not a 'genuine' enough Time Lord to make this stupid gadget work, wherever it was. No doubt the Conqueror kept it on him, or something.

"What does it do?" she insisted, "Tell me or I'll ring the Doctor and tell him everything about this Conqueror and Rospaonus and a 'Singularity' and see how you like that. Go on. Explain."

"It does what Rose can do, harnesses the raw power of the time vortex," River began, "But Rose has evolved to handle that kind of responsibility, anyone could pick up the Singularity and have the power of the universe at their fingertips. Capable of erasing people out of existence without ever being near them." Jenny was appalled.

"Well it's no wonder they locked it up here and threw away the key!"

"A key that the enemy already have," Jack reminded her.

"But if they need a Time Lord to find it then they're not going to find it, are they?" she hissed, "So why can't we just pack up and leave them here to get lost?"

"Because I need it, alright? I need it," Jack insisted, "And besides, you can't walk away, because in case you're forgetting, your father isn't the only other Time Lord flying around, is he? There's still the Master. And the Master would probably do anything to get their hands on the Singularity if they found out there was a way to find it." What on Earth could Jack possibly want with an ancient Time Lord weapon of mass destruction?

She didn't know what to do. She wanted to call the Doctor, because she didn't think that Jack and River's reasons for keeping her father out of this was because of concern for his safety, she thought it was concern for the execution of their own individual, ulterior motives. Besides, she didn't _really_ want to put him in danger… but along with that, she didn't want herself to be in danger, either, because what if something happened? What if she got kidnapped again? She had been kidnapped in Chernobyl, after all, but maybe if she was extra-careful and paid attention to stop herself from getting cocky… maybe some of the stuff Martha and Clara said to her about her self-preservation instincts _was_ sinking in, if she was taking so much heed of their worries about her mortality. Ultimately, she did not think she quite trusted Jack _or_ River to be responsible when it came to this lost artefact, and in her experience there was only one of the three of them who had never been corrupted by masses of raw power.

"Fine. I won't call him. But I won't leave, either, I'm staying and we're going to do this all my way and we're going to be safe about it, agreed?"

"You can't stay," said River.

"Uh, yeah, exactly," said Jack.

"What about Clara?" River pointed out. Jack nodded along.

"What _about_ Clara?" Jenny asked them, "I'm not leaving you two here because I don't really trust you with this device, so if anything happens to me you'll both be answering to her, because I guarantee that she'll understand why I stayed here to keep the pair of you out of trouble. Don't either of you pretend like you have any concerns for _my_ relationship when really you just want me out of here so that I can't do what dad would do and destroy this stupid thing. And besides. It needs a Time Lord to make it work." She stood up, picking her steak from in the grass where it had fallen and brushing the plants and dirt off it.

"Jenny, you're not-"

"End of story, Jack," she said, biting into the steak, "I'll just lock you on the ship and switch River off if I have to, then call down Rose to help me destroy this thing instead. I'm sure she'd be willing." That clinched the deal. Jack still saw a possibility in being able to use the Singularity for whatever he wanted it for if Jenny was there, whereas Rose Tyler was an invincible, godlike creature who could brush him aside like he was a dust mite. River probably thought the same thing, but also didn't care about if it got destroyed or not. Only there for the fame and glory, the thrill of the chase. "Now, I'm going to have a wash in the lagoon and finish this steak; if I come back here and find the pair of you aren't here, then I _will_ call the TARDIS and I _will_ bring down Rose, so just do as I say, yeah?"

"Who put _you_ in charge?" Jack muttered.

"Blame River, she's the one who dragged me out." Jack shot a glare at River, who shrugged innocently. "Anyway, I outrank you. I've been reinstated as Major Young now."

"Oh, so now we have to call you Major? Sure thing, _Major_ ," Jack said sourly as she walked past him to leave the clearing and head towards the lagoon. He raised his fingers to his forehead.

" _Don't_ salute, or I'll break your fingers," she ordered, then vanished into the shadows of the jungle.


	98. Cartography for Beginners

**AN: Sorry for being majorly lax with updates, it's because even though I was done with exams I still had these group presentations to do and it was my birthday last week so I've been super busy. But NOW I'm basically free so it's time for me to sort the fic out.**

 _Cartography for Beginners_

 _Jenny_

Adjusting to washing in a jungle lagoon after living halfway between an advanced alien space-machine and an isolated cottage in the Yorkshire moors was not as difficult as one might imagine it to be. Not for Jenny, at least, who knew they were just lucky to have a nearby lagoon with a waterfall at all. She'd been stuck in dense sectors of jungle and forest before that didn't have a river in sight, not to mention when she had gone to live in the deserts of Korix and the tundra surrounding Arooh. You couldn't bathe for weeks – months sometimes – in places like that. But she would wash now, even though she could probably cope just fine being dirty, to keep up good habits. It wasn't like she was going to be stuck on Rospaonus for long. It was a bit annoying that she forgot to bring shampoo with her, though. Or a towel.

Because she didn't have a towel, she ended up sitting on a rock at the edge of the lagoon without any clothes on, and found her thoughts straying as she wondered if maybe someone might think she was a mermaid. Then she thought about if she would even _want_ to be a mermaid, and if Clara thought mermaids were sexy. She probably did, though, Jenny assumed, because everyone did. Although, Clara's undead issues with running water and hydrophobia would probably serve as a severe obstacle in their relationship… Jenny actually got quite caught up in this fantasy while she waited for the clothes she had rinsed to dry, and she got a little stressed until she remembered that she wasn't a mermaid and she and Clara didn't have any majorly weird relationship problems.

What of everything else, though? This 'Singularity'… She still thought that perhaps she should have brought her phone with her and called the Doctor, though she didn't trust him not to show up, and Jack had a point about the Doctor being the only person guaranteed to be able to work this map. As bitter as she was with him saying she wasn't 'genuine' enough to make it work, she hated to admit he could be right. And she still thought their best bet would be her going along as well; she would just have to be careful not to damage herself too badly. Not that Jenny's plans to avoid injury ever went well, she thought grimly, glancing at the bullet wound on her shoulder and the purple scar running across her thumb.

She stood up from her rock and yawned and stretched underneath the alien stars and the rainforest trees, proceeding to get dressed into clothes still damp from the humidity of the air. It bothered her a little, but not so much. They would dry off faster with her body heat, anyway, and she was used to her clothes being wet from sweat on that planet anyway. She'd been in much more uncomfortable situations than this before. It was while she was pulling her boots back on that she noticed the first cause for alarm: the silence. Normally the sounds of wildlife were everywhere, venomous insects and lizards and birds crawling and chirping in the trees. It was too quiet. Animals fled areas when they sensed danger was around, and Jenny sensed it, too, so she remained as light-footed as possible as she swiftly made her way back to the camp and the ship.

But she didn't quite make it back to the camp and the ship, because she heard voices, human voices, and not those of Jack or River. She stopped dead in the middle of a thicket of trees and tried to listen to what they were talking about, but all she paid attention to was the fact they were getting closer. In the wet and suffocating darkness of the jungle she acted on impulse, and made to climb the nearest tree. This went quite well for her, because she was very good at climbing things, running up the trunk until she could jump off it and grab onto one of the limbs above. She did this a few times to gain about two storeys on whoever was below her, struggling to see in the dark. Then she lurked and listened and strained her eyes.

"…going to be good pay for this, but I've woken up with bugs in my arse every day this week," a male voice complained.

"Tell me about it," his companion agreed, "They're like spiders with twice as many legs and wings. I didn't leave the colonies for this." The first man laughed. Jenny shook her head; people from the colonies couldn't cope with anything, she knew that from the experience of being friends with Oswin, Oswin who had never seen a bluebottle before and had practically died all over again when she had spied one on a window a few weeks back.

"Who let the prisoner escape to begin with? I hate it here."

"I heard he was broken out."

"Broken out? He was being guarded by Ordov! Somebody took on Ordov?"

"He's got a busted lip that says someone did. And won." Jenny smiled smugly to herself. Ordov was nearly three times her size, and she'd still beaten him almost completely solo, with a little help from a right-hook by Captain Jack. She was suspicious about how much they were complaining, though. Maybe this 'Kasterborous' were not as unified as their leader would have his rivals believe.

She stayed in the trees until they had passed by, but they were already so close to the camp and her ship that she was beginning to worry. She didn't think Jack and River had been found yet, though, otherwise everyone would be converging on them. There were still a few minutes at least until they were discovered, _if_ they were discovered. If Jenny had it her way, they would slip away into space unnoticed, and maybe this awaiting ambush was exactly the convincing Jack and River would need to abandon their search for the Singularity.

Jenny didn't come down, but instead took the longer path of staying in the treetops and jumping from branch-to-branch like a primate. It was good practice, though, in case she ever wanted to re-join the circus. When she was almost back to the edge of their perimeter, however, she heard rushing footsteps and the sounds of desperate chatter over radios. _Uh-oh_. They had found the others. Maybe she should have stayed on the ground and risked capture to get there quicker… she still stayed up-high. With everyone running, someone was bound to trip right over her if she tried to sneak down below.

She saw her spaceship through the trees just when the sneering sound of Ordov reached her ears.

"And you really thought you could escape us?" He must be speaking to Jack. She came as close to the tree line as she could while remaining in shadow, and saw their camp now invaded by Kasterborous. At least they couldn't get onto the ship, though, not with the stairs up retracted.

"Well, a girl's gotta dream," Jack grinned. Ordov smacked him around the face. River was there, but staying quiet, wisely. Jack was drawing all their attention, perhaps on purpose. Ordov laughed coldly.

"This isn't funny," said a newcomer, scolding Ordov, "You let him get away on _your_ watch."

"How was I supposed to know the fool would have anybody missing him?" Ordov argued. Jenny struggled to find this new speaker, but eventually did. He was short, weedy, and the phrase 'Napoleon complex' sprang to mind, especially since he called himself 'the Conqueror.' He was wearing fancy clothes, too, fancier than would be sensible out in an alien jungle, in shades of red and gold. Clearly he wasn't particularly smart. There were half a dozen armed goons with Ordov and the Conqueror as well. She couldn't risk coming out of the trees.

"How tall was this _girl_ who beat you, again?" the Conqueror asked Ordov, who growled. The man was like some sort of animal.

"The girl is something else," said Ordov. Jenny listened and lowered herself on the branch so that she was sat with a leg hanging over either side, observing. "This one – he knows Time Lords. I heard her say the word 'regenerate.'"

"You heard _rejuvenate_ ," Jack interrupted, "She cares a lot about her skin. And would you look at her – she's unblemished." Jenny smiled.

"No, no. Regenerate. And something about divorce papers."

"Okay," said Jack, "You got me. The two of us are friends, bits on the side, sometimes we role-play and pretend to be advanced aliens who are married to each other. She's a circus freak and a thief!" Ordov punched Jack again. Jenny raised her eyebrows at his questionable efforts. Clearly, they were just going to keep hitting him, and would eventually drag him back to their camp. She wouldn't be able to break him out again. She needed a plan.

But it didn't go as intended.

The thing about Jenny was she was fearless… _almost_ fearless. Currently there were three things in the known universe she was actively frightened of: losing Clara, xenomorphs, and beetles. She was terrified of beetles. Not spiders or moths or millipedes, just beetles. It was something about the way their shells split apart to reveal their wings, and how they rolled around in poo, but she hated the things, and that didn't change regardless of what regeneration she was in. Once, recently, she and Clara had gotten wine-drunk and asked each other a string of first date questions, and when Clara had asked her biggest phobia (aside from xenomorphs) she had said ladybirds, leaving Clara in fits of laughter.

She was in her tree, spying like the crook she was, when she felt something itchy on her head. Reaching up a hand she brushed it away absently, paying more attention to Ordov and the Conqueror, and then something red and shiny fell into her lap. If there was one thing she hated more than beetles, it was three-inch long, ten-legged, six-winged and four-horned _alien_ beetles with glittering, scarlet exoskeletons. The monster landed on her leg and she panicked and fell out of the tree, landing flat on her back on the jungle floor and on the edge of the clearing. She made a few of the Kasterborous goons jump as she fell and landed, sprawled there in the mud, and then scrambled to her feet to try and escape the beetle.

"Graceful," River Song commented dryly from the log by their lonely lantern.

"There was a bug!" she exclaimed, then asked the nearest heavily armed paratrooper, "Can you see it on me still? It was a massive beetle," doing a twirl.

"Uh, no," he answered, gormless and fixated on her. She flashed him a grin to try and salvage _some_ of her charisma.

"Good."

"Is _that_ the girl who knocked you out?" the Conqueror asked Ordov with disbelief, "Even _I_ could beat her up, she's a midget."

"Oi!" Jenny protested, "I don't think it's politically correct to call people that. And you're welcome to try and beat me up. I'll give you the old one-two punch." She mimed the 'old one-two punch' when she said it, bouncing on her feet for a second and hitting the air in front of her like she was boxing.

"He's right about her being unblemished," the trooper she had asked about the beetle told the Conqueror.

"I don't care one bit about her blemishes," he said, "Grab her!" The soldier regained himself and immediately went to grab her arm and hold her. She bit her lip and looked at him.

"Sorry," she said, and she hit him in the nose with the base of her left hand, hearing the crunch as it broke and started to bleed and he wailed, then kneed him in the gut and wrenched his gun from his hands when he was winded. She ended by kicking him in the ankle so that he fell to the floor, and just like that she had five or six guns trained on her, but _her_ gun was trained on the Conqueror.

"I did _tell_ you she is something else," said Ordov. The Conqueror glared at him.

"You've got it," said Jack, "She's a natural blonde. Kind of rare to achieve that kind of colour without some serious peroxide."

"Guns down or I'll shoot leader-boy in the head," Jenny threatened, looking around at the soldiers. They didn't lower their guns. Ordov laughed.

"They do not work for him, they work for me," he said.

"Alright, then I'll shoot _you_ in the head," she said, indifferent. Ordov raised his own handgun and pointed it at Jack. "Oh, please. You're going to shoot _Jack_?" Ordov smirked and then, in a flash, changed where he was aiming and pulled the trigger. For a moment Jenny thought he was going to shoot her, and she was not always adept at dodging bullets, but he didn't. He shot someone else. The paratrooper next to her, Ordov shot him right in the head and he dropped immediately. Dead. "He was your soldier! How could you do that!?" Ordov met her eyes and laughed.

"I knew you were a Time Lord," he said, "Only a Time Lord could be so stupidly merciful. You would not dare to kill me. You would not kill anyone."

"I've killed people before," she said coldly, avoiding looking at the body on the floor as his blood began to soak into the foliage.

"Then I dare you to do it again," he smiled cruelly. And he was right. She wouldn't shoot him, it was an empty threat. He wasn't scared of her tricks. She lowered the gun, Jack and River watching her carefully. River must have a plan, surely, she was the only one of them technically invulnerable to bullets. Nothing would happen if a hologram got shot, it would just sail through her.

"A Time Lord," the Conqueror stared at her, "A real Time Lord. Lower your guns, everyone, nobody shoots."

"And leave us unprotected?" Ordov argued with him.

"I'm paying you to be here, you do what I say and so do they," the Conqueror hissed back, waving his hand at the soldiers around them. They all lowered their guns, too. "So, then, girly. To which of the Great Time Lords am I speaking?"

"Did they call themselves the 'Great Time Lords'?" she questioned. The Conqueror narrowed his eyes.

"She can't help you," Jack interrupted again, "She's not a real one. She's just a… clone, of old DNA. A resurrection attempt gone wrong. Can't even regenerate properly." Jenny resolved there and then that she was going to uppercut Jack the next time she got him alone. Or kneecap him.

"Whose _old DNA_?" the Conqueror asked.

"Someone inconsequential," Jenny said, "Unimportant. Don't even really know."

"No," said Ordov, "This one belongs to the Doctor."

"Hey, I don't _belong_ to anybody," Jenny argued, "And if I did, it wouldn't be some 'doctor' person."

"This is a nice try, but I have met him before, under similar circumstances. You could even be him, if the idea of him regenerating into a woman was not so ridiculous," Ordov mocked.

"Funny you should say that…" River muttered.

"You hold yourselves the same way, speak the same way, are cowardly in the same way…"

"Nice deductions there, big guy. Maybe you can deduce yourself into my pants," said Jack.

"You just sound pathetic now," River quipped at him. Ordov hit him around the face again, this time with the gun. He managed to knock out a tooth. Jenny winced watching.

"You're made from the DNA of the Doctor?" the Conqueror asked, "The greatest warrior of all the Time Lords?" River laughed involuntarily.

"The Doctor is the one who killed the rest of the Time Lords," she said. The Conqueror's smile faded into an expression of malice and anger.

"A war criminal?" he asked.

"Suppose so," River said, "So I suppose the Time Lords aren't all they're cracked up to be. Oh well. We can all go home now, can't we?"

"Yep," said Jenny, "We'll just be leaving." She tried to step towards the spaceship, but Ordov pointed his gun at her again.

"No, no, no," said the Conqueror, shaking his head at her, "She's made from the DNA of a Time Lord. All the map needs is the DNA of a Time Lord. We can't let her go without testing it."

"It is pointless," said Ordov, "Let the girl lead us to the Doctor. Take her as hostage, see if he will help us to save her." Jenny couldn't let that happen, mainly because he probably _would_ help them to save her. They had to get that map, and destroy it, and she could not let her father get involved.

"Okay, so you just give us the map and we'll take it back to the Doctor," Jack said. Ordov laughed. The Conqueror was searching his pockets, though, and Jenny watched. River still sat there, biding her time, surely waiting for an opportunity to do something. After all, River Song was probably the most opportunistic person in the universe.

"What are you doing? Do not let them get their hands on it," Ordov argued, "Even if it works, so what? There are other ways to fix it, there are other ways to find the Singularity."

"I'm too tired to carry on looking for other ways," the Conqueror snapped. Kasterborous were really not a unified bunch at all. He drew out a device, a golden circular object. Initially, Jenny thought it looked like the kind of unusual, old pocket watch she had seen in Eleven's room before sitting on the piano, one with Gallifreyan writing on top. But when the Conqueror brought it closer, held it out, she thought it looked more like a compass, somewhat ironically.

While Ordov was distracted watching what the Conqueror was doing, Jack was able to get up from the log where he had been sat with a gun to his head and tackle the phoney Time Lord as he approached Jenny. Jack knocked him straight off his feet onto the ground while Ordov wheeled around and aimed the gun again. The map fell from the Conqueror's hand and onto the grass. Jack lunged for it from the ground but Ordov stamped his boot down onto Jack's hand and Jack groaned when the bones were crushed. But they had had eyes away from River for too long, and River was not Oswin. She didn't have the dead weight of a physical prosthetic leg and a cane to hold her down. It took an instant for her to teleport across the clearing and pull the same trick on one of the paratroopers that Jenny had done to steal a gun initially, knocking him to the ground and smacking him in the face with the butt of the rifle to knock him out cold.

Meanwhile, Ordov reached down to take the map away from Jack's reach while the Conqueror, still pinned to the floor, whined and complained for somebody to shoot Jack already. Jenny may not _shoot_ somebody with a gun (not to kill, at least), but she would sure as hell hit somebody with one, which was exactly what she did next. She took the rifle barrel in her hands and lifted it up, smacking the nearest soldier around the side of the head with it. That left just two more soldiers standing, minus Ordov, but Ordov had now picked up the map. While River went for the two remaining soldiers, Jenny flipped the rifle again and aimed and cocked it, firing at Ordov's hand. Good thing she never missed. She got him through the wrist and he dropped the map and stumbled, which allowed Jack to roll and catch it with his non-broken fingers. Jack scrambled to his feet while River finished dealing with the last guard.

"I've got it!" Jack exclaimed.

"Don't move, Ordov," River ordered, pointing the gun at him, "Jenny wouldn't hurt a fly, but I'll kill anyone who looks at me funny." Probably an exaggeration, but it seemed like Ordov believed her more than he believed Jenny. Couldn't detect traces of the Doctor in her. Well, not for a few decades, at least… Ordov cared more about saving his own skin than saving that map, so he backed away from Jack.

"No! Don't let them get away!" the Conqueror shouted, jumping and grabbing Ordov's pistol out of his hands and pointing it at Jack.

"Catch!" Jack shouted at Jenny, throwing the map. The Conqueror pulled the trigger but hadn't aimed at all; his bullet tore through Jack's shoulder and probably damaged his collarbone, but it was overall a non-fatal injury. Jenny dropped the rifle and lunged forwards, grabbing the map in her palm.

And then the sky lit up gold. Light like a sun poured through the gaps in her fingers as she touched the device. It felt like it was vibrating in her palms as everybody else froze to look. When she opened her hands the lid on the compass had come off and out of it was projecting what must be the map everyone was fighting over. It was an enormous, golden planet in the sky between them all.

"That's Rospaonus," River said. It was; Jenny could tell by the jungles at the poles. And then it zoomed in more, onto the north jungle, where they were currently, and kept going until it showed them a ginormous, golden mountain. A mountain she recognised because she had flown them past it while they had been searching for Jack and Kasterborous the day before.

Jenny clenched her hands over it to conceal the mountain from view again, just as Jack raised his fist and decked the Conqueror, knocking him out with one punch. He wasn't really a match for any of them. Only Ordov was, but Ordov was still in River's line of sight.

"On your knees," River ordered him, and he obeyed, Jack picking up the gun the Conqueror had stolen from Ordov and subsequently dropped from where it lay in the grass. Jenny walked around the two of them carefully, River following her as they paced, her just trying to get to the spaceship.

"I know where the mountain is as well," Ordov said.

"Yeah, well, it's a big mountain," Jenny said, "I think we have a better chance of finding the Singularity than him." As she approached, the stairs into the spaceship descended from beneath, letting Jack slip away on board. Ordov shrugged.

"I do not doubt that, but he is the one who pays me. I am sure we will see each other again, Clone of the Doctor." River walked past Jenny onto the ship.

"I'm his daughter, actually, and we'll be in and out before the wannabe Time Lord there even wakes up from his sleep," and with that she ascended into the flying saucer and sealed it up behind them.


	99. Das Wunderkind

_Das Wunderkind_

 _Jenny_

"You just – you shouldn't be here, okay?" Jack protested, "It's dangerous." Jenny turned around and punched him in the face. This turned out to be a mistake, because she used her right hand, and it send a shock through her wounded thumb and made all her fingers tremble. But this she hid behind her back and glared at him. In her left hand, she held a machete she had been using to slice down vines, much to Jack's annoyance, who wanted the machete for himself so that he could be all 'alpha male' about their jungle trek.

" _You_ are the one who started this," she snapped at him angrily. She was sick of him, he'd been lecturing her for the last handful of hours they had been flying around the mountain trying to locate some kind of cave or entrance, and in the last thirty minutes they had been on the ground heading towards a rocky orifice once they _did_ manage to find one. They were guessing blindly really, but Jack wasn't helping. "If you hadn't come after this stupid weapon of mass destruction in the first place, they might not have been able to steal the map from Pasznoxo, might not have been able to get to Rospaonus, and definitely wouldn't have been able to work out that whatever we're looking for is buried inside this mountain! Neither of you will be able to get to it without me helping, so if you want me to leave the pair of you had better come with me so that you don't get yourselves captured. _You're_ the ones in danger."

"I have to disagree," said River, and Jenny turned a glare on her, "With the danger part, not the Jack being an idiot part. Jack can't die and I'm a hologram. You're the closest to mortal that we have here, and you're the only one the Conqueror wants."

"I don't know if you've noticed, but the Conqueror isn't actually up to much snuff," Jenny said, "The only one of them who isn't a complete waste of space is Ordov, and he's the one who could be bought off if it came down to it."

"What are you going to do? Bribe him with another Fabergé Egg?" River jibed, something which Jack didn't understand. They were all at odds now, the three of them, arguing in the middle of the jungle. But Jenny's ship was much faster and more manoeuvrable than anything Kasterborous might have up their sleeves, they were miles ahead by now.

"There's a Fabergé Egg stashed on the TARDIS, I've seen it, go give it to Pasznoxo if you're that bothered. I'm sure dad won't miss it," Jenny said, "Anyway, there are ways to stop people from hurting us without killing them."

"You mean by employing your favourite dirty tactic of breaking their ankles, knees and fingers? I always thought that was a bit cruel," Jack commented.

"Oh, alright, I'll let him kill me then, shall I?" she snapped, "Both of you need to shut up. We're here now and you need me because who knows that you don't also need to be a Time Lord to even get to this Singularity? And besides – you're acting like I'm useless, but I'm more useful than both of you combined." They did not continue to argue, because Jack sensed that if they did, she would continue to press him about why he wanted the stupid Singularity to begin with, and he did not want to give up that information. She barely even knew what it did, but knowing it was dangerous was enough for her to want to make sure nobody else got their hands on it. Especially Kasterborous. She slashed apart some vines blocking their path particularly aggressively after that.

"You know, I remember being on an expedition just like this once, with your father," River began an anecdote and Jenny sighed, "He had a bow and arrows and wouldn't let anyone else hold the machete, either." Jenny did not have a bow, though she had been meaning to get one. Or rather, she had been meaning to _make_ one, as soon as she found good materials and some free time. Jenny _did_ , however, have Josephine, her old hunting rifle and part of her bargain with Viola O'Hara, the same one that won her new coat and a Porsche 365. Josephine was slung across her back with a leather strap.

"What was my father doing with a machete and a bow and arrows?"

"Well, he didn't have any arrows, per se, he took the bow off somebody else to stop them from using it," River explained, "And with the machete he was doing the same thing you are now."

"You know what – have it," she held the machete out to Jack, who'd been itching to get it off her. He took it gratefully and went about carving them a path through the jungle. It was hot and there were black storm clouds brewing high above. It was the daytime still, technically, but they had very little light to go by with the trees so thick and the weather the way it was. They needed to get to the mountain before the storm picked up.

"It _is_ strange you're so much like him when he didn't raise you at all."

"It's also strange that you think this is _anything_ to do with you," Jenny said grumpily. River was prying into her life too much for her liking. If she wanted people to know things about her, she would tell them, she did not appreciate all this digging on Song's part. At least the Doctor didn't look into her history.

Lucky for all of them that they were saved by finally reaching the edge of the mountain, where the trees suddenly gave way to grey rock and slate which sloped upwards at an angle too steep to surmount without any equipment. It was just a case of heading right along the edge now until they reached the cave they had spotted from the air, and that didn't take long at all. While they walked Jenny occupied herself fidgeting with her rifle, making sure it wasn't jammed. The other two didn't pay her much mind until River heard her loading it.

"You've got bullets?"

"Of course I have bullets," Jenny said, "I've got about twenty .308 hollow point rounds."

"All set to shatter the joints of whoever gets on her nerves first," Jack said.

"Well, ultimately, I'm not going to shoot anybody who doesn't pose an actual threat, am I?" she argued with him, "So really, they only have themselves to blame for having their tendons destroyed. It wouldn't happen if they were just a bit nicer."

"Sounds like backwards logic to me."

"What's your problem?" she asked him. He turned around and she saw he was smiling. He was just trying to annoy her. She grimaced and went back to messing with the gun.

"Here we go," River said ten minutes later. An uneventful ten minutes of walking and sweating as they finally felt the humid drizzle begin above them. Maybe the storm would be the cover they needed to stop Kasterborous from gaining on them? Although, Jenny wasn't sure they would be clever enough to stay out of the hurricane. If she was right, they would likely suffer greatly for their stupidity.

What River had pointed out was that they were at the mouth of a cave, the cave they were looking for. It was easy enough to tell it wasn't a natural formation; maybe the entrance was crooked and had been eroded by the weather over time, but the deeper Jenny peered the more perfectly it formed. This cave had just been carved out of the mountainside, drilled in. It wouldn't even surprise her if the mountain itself was an artificial construct, an enormous vault of Gallifreyan design. They headed inside.

"Hold up a sec," Jack said, fumbling in his pocket. Along with claiming the machete, he had also claimed the map, though Jenny disagreed entirely that he was the only one who could keep it safe. It was probably least safe in his hands, but she hadn't been bothered to argue. Now, he drew it out, holding it between his fingers; it was vibrating. Then he lost his grip on it, it was behaving in such an aggravated manner, and it shot towards Jenny, who caught it reflexively in her free hand. When _she_ was the one to touch it, it stopped moving and lit up again. But it was not the only thing. The walls around them became gold, her presence and possession of the map illuminating a string of old Gallifreyan symbols engraved into the cave walls to light up the passage.

"Remarkable…" River turned in a circle, in awe at the writing. Even Jack was stunned.

"What does it say?" Jack asked.

"It's a warning," River said.

"Bit of a bad warning, looks almost inviting to those of us who can't read Gallifreyan," Jack said.

"Considering only a Time Lord can make the messages appear, I assume the presumption is anyone exploring this place _can_ read Gallifreyan," River explained, "That's their ego for you. Thinking no other species would _ever_ be clever enough to work out where they keep their big weapon."

" _You're_ a Time Lord," Jack pointed out to her.

"Yes, but not a Gallifreyan. I've only ever had the one heart. Exposure to the time vortex makes Time Lords, Jack, that's why those kittens are the way they are."

"Then what does that make her?" Jack nodded at Jenny, who raised her eyebrows at being referred to just as 'her' so callously. River smiled.

"Oh, I'd say Jenny is a real _wunderkind_. The Time Lords would have rejected her without a word, but it appears their technology isn't so up itself. That's the reason your father ran away, you know," River said to her, "They were obnoxious and… lofty. I'm sure he would be nothing but disdainful if he saw this. Would question how serious they really were about wanting to keep the Singularity locked away, if they made a map and a key to get it back. Presumably they liked to have it as their ace in the hole."

"One day, society will learn that doomsday devices never help anybody," Jenny sighed.

"I don't know. It's a deterrent," Jack said, "Maybe."

" _A deterrent_ , he says to the girl who lived in Berlin in the 1960s. I think the Cold War would have eased up a lot if they had never invented nuclear weapons to begin with. And it isn't like this thing did the Time Lords much use. They're all dead now." She continued to move on down the corridor. As they went, the writing alongside them brightened while the writing behind them extinguished. Good. At least the giant golden writing wouldn't clue Kasterborous onto where they were, she hoped.

A door was illuminated in front of them, etched with patterns rather than any actual language, deep golden markings all seeming to point towards a circular opening right in the middle of the stone, an inset exactly the same size as the map in Jenny's palm.

"Let me put it in," Jack offered.

"I don't think it'll let you," River told him, "You think they'd build a vault like this without defence mechanisms? The entire mountain is probably booby-trapped." Jenny agreed, although couldn't shake that maybe the reason the Time Lords hadn't used the Singularity in the Time War was because everyone who tried to retrieve it died. How did they even know it was there, and this wasn't an elaborate test for the Time Lords to weed out greedy people? But no. She didn't know much about the Time Lords, just what she had heard from River and the Doctor (and Missy, a little), but she didn't think they were the sort to destroy something so technologically astounding.

With that in mind, she went and pushed the map into the door, and they all stopped to wait. Sounds of mechanisms shifting could be heard from beyond it, and she jumped and stepped back when it disappeared in a haze of atoms. It looked exactly like when Rose Tyler erased things and they evaporated. Perhaps they _should_ have brought her.

"Does this look safe?" Jack asked.

"Most definitely not," said River, "Let's go." And she breezed right through, Jack and Jenny hastening to keep up. So Jenny was right, they did need her to get them in, they would have stood no chance without a biological Time Lord. River Song just didn't cut it anymore.

The door shimmered back into its place behind them, cutting off all the light and sealing them away from the storm on Rospaonus.

"At least we're not gonna be followed," Jack said, his voice the only tangible thing in the pitch darkness of the mountain.

But it didn't stay dark for long.

Using exactly the same mysterious technology that was being employed in the tunnel, their new location was illuminated as well, and it was enormous. A huge chamber, carved perfectly into the rock, the golden lines spreading over every surface and shining brightly. Behind them, a clatter, and they turned to see the door had spat the map back out at them. Jenny went to pick it back up in case they still needed it, but in doing so it began to open and project again. This time it did not project an image of Rospaonus, though, but more Gallifreyan writing.

"It says, ' _for those who are worthy_ ,'" River translated. She was translating unnecessarily, because Jenny could read it perfectly well too, but she let her have her fun.

"Look," Jack ignored her, his eyes fixed hungrily on something else. Jenny looked past the holographic writing and saw what he was staring at. It was a device, floating in the centre of the room with rings of gilded material spinning around it slowly like a gyroscope. Its golden core had vibrant dust swirling and moving like an hourglass within the transparent material. Jack went to step towards it.

"Stop," Jenny ordered him.

"It's right there," he said.

"It's a trick," she said, then repeated the writing, " _For those who are worthy_. They hid it away not just from other species, but from themselves. You think they'd let any old Time Lord in here to grab that thing? It could be a bomb for all we know."

"She's right," said River, "There's already been the test of species, this must be a test of character. Or tests plural." Looking at it, though, Jenny didn't think it was a bomb. It certainly wasn't the Singularity, either, but she thought she had worked out its purpose.

"You two stay here," she said.

"What? You can't – Jenny!" Jack exclaimed when she stepped down. She moved onto a different part of the floor, a large circular dip in the ground, in the middle of which was the new device. There was a creak when she set her weight upon it, and then nothing. "You can't go towards it!"

"You need to trust me," she said, putting both feet on the lowered floor of the cave.

"I'm just supposed to trust you when you step onto the weird-looking bit of the ground?" he questioned, "It looks like it's gonna collapse if you step on the wrong bit."

"Yes, trust me," she said firmly, and that was all she said, approaching the device very slowly and carefully. As long as she didn't touch it, she would be fine. River and Jack stayed where they were on the edge, ironically using her as the guinea pig when she was the only one of them in grave danger. They watched with baited breath. She felt like the only one who was keeping their cool.

"Don't touch it," Jack advised when she was right in front of the thing. "It could be a bomb, like you said."

"It's not a bomb," Jenny told him. She still didn't touch it though, she scrutinised it for a moment, and then crouched down slowly and pressed her palm to the ground beneath, a flat handprint. In the exact same way the door had vaporised before, so did the ground beneath her now. She heard Jack and River both yell for her to run, because they had not worked out what the floating orb-thing was.

When the ground collapsed and she flipped upside-down, floating in the air, she laughed.

"What did I say? Trust me. It's an anti-gravity field generator. If you tried to move it the centre of gravity wouldn't balance and you'd fall down into this pit." She didn't need to indicate the giant, dark pit that had opened up beneath her. "You'd both better get in, it's probably going to take us somewhere." She was right. The gravity intensified and she began to fall – though not nearly fast enough for the bottom to be a lethal splat at the bottom – and shouted for Jack and River to join her. They did not seem very confident in her as a guide, but didn't have any other choice than to jump into the void too if they wanted to find the Singularity.

They were spat out of the bottom onto cold stone after a brief period of free-fall, deep underground.

"Alright, fine," Jack muttered, hauling himself to his feet, "You win, I give up. We _do_ need you." She wasn't listening to him, though. Like everywhere else in that darned vault, the new room was illuminated as well, but not around the walls. At first glance it looked as though they were in a chamber filled with lightbulbs, but open closer inspection all of these devices were hovering in the air (probably the influence of the gravity manipulator high above them.) They were definitely glowing, though, a hundred tiny glass orbs at varying heights, clumped together so closely it would be impossible to get out of the little clearing at the bottom of the shaft without touching them. That was a problem; firstly because Jenny suspected that whatever the orbs were, they were not mere mood lighting; and secondly because there was a tunnel beyond the things. To continue, Jack, Jenny and River would have to find a way through.

"This doesn't look very inviting," said River.

"I don't suppose you know what these things are too, do you?" Jack asked Jenny, "Use some of the old Time Lord intuition."

"Also known as a degree in advanced mechanical engineering from the future," she quipped, "But no."

"Well I don't think we should touch them," River said, "Does the map say anything? Like what they are?" Jenny held the map out again in her hand to see if it did anything, but it did not. It glowed, so it was detecting her, but there were no clues this time. Not that the last one was particularly telling.

"Well what's the worst they can do?" Jack asked.

"Apart from blow up and take us and this entire cave with it?" River said.

"Yeah, apart from that."

"Why are you so desperate to get this thing?" Jenny said, then sighed, fidgeting with the map in her hand, "Maybe we _should_ have brought dad. He might have known what these things are."

"Okay, when did the whole 'dad' thing come about?" Jack questioned, which she thought was just his attempt at changing the subject. He still didn't want to reveal his true motivations for being so desperate to get his hands on the Singularity.

"Sorry, but I really don't think my life or anything else about me is actually any of _your_ business," she said coolly, leaning close to one of the 'lightbulbs.' River touched her arm and pulled her away from it.

"Shoot one of them," she said.

"What?"

"Shoot one."

"No!" Jenny protested, "They must be dangerous. If they weren't dangerous there would be no reason for them to be here." River better not try to take Josephine from her and shoot an orb herself.

"They might not be, one of them could just… have a key in it," Jack shrugged.

"We've got the key," Jenny held up the device in her hand, "This is another test. See? You should have taken me up on my suggestion to bring the girl who can walk through solid objects." River Song, of course, _could_ walk through solid objects, providing she changed back to being a soft-light hologram rather than sticking with her favoured hard-light state. But that wouldn't help Jack and Jenny, and probably wouldn't help River, since Jenny needed to be there to unlock the vault as they went.

"Okay, so assuming the worse, that they're all bombs, there must be a way through or a way to disarm them." This deduction from Jack was useless though, because there was still no way through the floating minefield. Unless some of them were bombs and some weren't? Jenny couldn't tell by looking at them, and she didn't think using a sonic screwdriver down there was a good idea. It might accidentally detonate them all at once.

They didn't do anything, just looked around uselessly for a while. This would be more bearable if they got along better with each other, Jenny thought. Eventually, however, Jenny felt the map vibrating again, and they finally _did_ receive another message.

River read the large projection aloud again: "' _Time is on your side_.' That's all it says."

"We have to wait," Jack said, "Typical sanctimonious 'patience is a virtue' crap." He sounded angry.

"It's fine," Jenny said, "It's right, time _is_ on our side. We _can_ wait."

"But it assumes we're Time Lords. How long would you make a Time Lord wait? An hour? A decade? A century? And there's no way back up. We wait or explode? That's the options?" he asked.

"It won't be for that long," River said, "There's no temporal shift in this vault. If you ask me, the Time Lords would assume that the only time one of them would be given the key to get in here would be if they decided they needed to use the Singularity. So the designers will have presumed they need to get it quickly."

"But what's 'quickly' to a bunch of ten-thousand year old aliens?" Jack persisted angrily.

"There's no point shouting," Jenny told him, "It's not going to help us."

"Well I'm sorry but there's a whole lot of people up there also trying to find this thing," Jack said.

"And?" River questioned, crossing her arms, "They can't get in. There's no way, it's impossible. Maybe you should tell us why you're so desperate to get it?"

"Maybe I should take a leaf out of _her_ book and start saying it's nobody else's business," Jack snapped, jerking his head at Jenny when he talked. "Besides, it doesn't matter now. You've got no choice, the only way is forward."

"Well that's not true," said Jenny, "I've got my teleporter. We can get back to the TARDIS."

"Then let's go back to the TARDIS and bring it down here!"

"Because the Time Lords wouldn't make their top-secret weapons vault TARDIS-proof, obviously," River said sarcastically.

"Excuse me for looking for a way out!"

"We know what the way out is! We have to wait!" Jenny shouted back at him.

"I've been waiting for too long already!"

"For what!? To get this stupid thing!?" she demanded. He nearly told her then, he _nearly_ told her the truth about what he was up to, she was sure of it. But he stopped himself, growled and turned around. Jenny scoffed at him and shook her head. She didn't even care what was the matter, but she was sure she would ace this test of patience. As long as Jack didn't go charging off and get them all blown up.

She took out her phone.

"Don't do that," River told her quickly, "We don't know how unstable these things are. A phone might make one of them go off."

"Not to worry," she muttered, showing the screen to River, "It won't even turn on." Jack and River both checked their own phones now, and got the same result.

"If phones don't work, what are the changes a teleporter will?" River questioned. So they really were stuck down there.

"These tests are stupid," Jack complained.

"It's not like they're much harder than being locked in a shack and tortured for a week," Jenny told him, "If you _want_ me to knock your teeth out to ease the boredom, though, I'll do it gladly."

"Well _you're_ in a bad mood."

"I'm fine," she said, "I just… I haven't seen my girlfriend for a few days." And then Jack made his next mistake of laughing at her sentiment rather cruelly.

"A _few days_? Think how _I_ feel."

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Nothing."

"You two," River interrupted, but she went ignored, Jack pacing back and forwards and Jenny with her arms crossed, watching him.

"No, come on. I'm _dying_ to hear what your issue is now, considering you're the one who dragged us all the way out here, and you wouldn't have stood a chance of getting this far without me."

"I said _nothing_. Nothing you care about. Nothing that's your _business_."

"I _said_ -" River was cut off again.

"Don't have a go at me just because you haven't got any right to know anything about my life anymore!" Jack laughed again.

"Jen, I don't give a damn about your life, get your head out of-"

" _Don't_ call me that or I'll-"

"What're you gonna-"

"Don't even make me-"

"SHUT. UP!" River yelled. Finally she got through to them, the both of them at odds.

" _What_!?" they demanded. She was glaring, but she pointed, and what they saw quelled the argument immediately. The floating orbs were moving out of the way of their own accord, making a narrow passageway. So they hadn't needed to wait for that long, after all.

"Just keep quiet and come with me, I'm sick of you already." And they did keep quiet, River pushing Jenny so that she was at the front, then Jack the River last of all. It wasn't going to last, though, not when an explosion ripped through the air somewhere above them. The trio froze mid-step as dust fell from the ceiling, and they looked up.

"Uh-oh," said Jenny.

"Must be Kasterborous," said Jack, "I guess the Time Lords didn't bank on people using high-grade explosives to break in here."

"And neither did we," said River. They talked in whispers now, and stopped to listen. Eventually, River began, "I don't think they've broken-" A second, much louder explosion rocked the whole room, "…through." More than dust fell from above now, a chunk of stone did, the entire chamber cracking. The strange orbs were too close together for it to just fall to the ground, it bounced off four or five, four or five which quickly changed their colour from gold to mauve.

"The universal colour for danger," Jack breathed. They were armed.

"Run. Run!" River shouted. Jenny only took two steps before the orbs detonated, and their detonation triggered all the ones around them to do the same thing, like sea mines.

"GET OUT, GET OUT!" Jack yelled, and then he pushed Jenny hard in the back and she fell forwards onto the stone again, dropping the map in the process and scrambling to retrieve it. When she closed her hand around it the cave-in caught up with them. She heard Jack scream and she rolled over onto her back and sat up to see what had happened through the dust.

He was crushed. The lower half of him, at least. Crushed beneath the rocks and groaning, not dead yet. Jenny stared in shock, not knowing what to do. A second later River emerged, soft-light, phasing through the debris.

"Eurgh," she said, looking at Jack, then turned to Jenny, "Pull him out, would you? Give his legs a chance to heal."

"Right – yeah," she acted when ordered, staggering to her feet and going to grab his arms and pull. He screamed more as she wrenched him out, more rubble collapsing in the process, but she managed to free him without having to hack his thighs to pieces with the machete. "You deserved that," she told him.

"Shut up. I saved your life," he gasped. Now they were going to have to wait even longer until he could walk again. He flashed her a grin. "Fangs owes me one now."


	100. Among Thieves

_Among Thieves_

 _Jenny_

It was unprecedented, but Kasterborous had beaten them. For once, brash tactics and overt aggression had succeeded over quick-wit and stealth, which irked Jenny greatly because quick-wit and stealth were her bread and butter. She wouldn't have survived for so long working as a thief and a smuggler without them. It also irked her because of the whole 'ancient Time Lord weapon-of-mass-destruction' thing, too.

"This is lucky for us," River Song whispered, "We have the high ground." True enough, Jenny thought, it was some _very_ high ground. Kasterborous had been tunnelling with incredibly potent space-age dynamite; the explosions had continued to rattle the mountain during the time they waited for Jack's legs to partially regrow themselves (now he looked like he'd torn the ends of his trousers up as part of a zombie Halloween costume, and would be very convincing if he wasn't so consistently _alive_.) The TARDIS trio had continued along the given route, Jenny's relic lighting up the passages sparsely as they went, and they had poked their heads out of the tunnels and into a final manufactured cavern, at the highest point in the room. The path was supposed to wind around the cylindrical shaft like a spiral staircase at the edges, but had been smashed to pieces by the explosives of Ordov's lackeys, and now they didn't have a proper way down. The illuminating properties of the walls and the map device seemed to be defunct now as well, in lieu of all the destruction.

What she assumed to be the Singularity itself was in the middle of the room, a very small sphere no bigger than an apple. It looked like nothing at all, and if she saw it in one of her father's stashes of space junk she wouldn't give it a second glance. Looks could be deceiving, though, she thought in shameless relation to herself. This chamber appeared very similar to the first one they had been in, with the gravity generator there as a red herring, the floor around the Singularity of the same lowered quality that made it look suspiciously like it might collapse. But this could just be decorative.

"I would not touch it, if I were you," Ordov said to the Conqueror. They had spotted the unusual floor, too, and were being cautious, Kasterborous gathered around the edges of the hole they had made in the wall. Rubble piled around them; some of them sat down on it. There was dust in the air. The dirt from the demolitions, grimy sweat from the jungle and blood from Jack's bleeding, broken legs had now made Jenny look especially filthy. It almost looked like _she_ had been the one to get her legs crushed by boulders.

"It's right there," the Conqueror complained.

"You are not thinking clearly," said Ordov in his heavy accent, the TARDIS crew straining their ears to listen. There was no worry of them being spotted where they were, in the shadowy nethers of the cave's proverbial 'rafters.' Spying. "There is something very suspicious about all of this, do you not see? In the time it took us to gather enough explosive to break through the mountain, the others should have been and gone. And yet this device, it is still here. It makes me think we need to be wary."

"You're being paranoid," said the Conqueror, "Send one of the soldiers over to get it."

"It could be anything," said Ordov, "What is to say it is not the same technology as this map? Only a Time Lord can operate it? Perhaps it will injure anybody who is less. Or worse."

"And there's only one way to find out. Send one of the men, I paid you enough that they ought to be expendable."

"I would rather not."

" _Rather not_?" the Conqueror demanded, "Just the previous night I saw you shoot one of them in cold blood!" Jenny still remembered seeing that soldier's eyes roll back into his head while Ordov laughed derisively. Now, Ordov was indifferent.

"That is my prerogative, not yours."

"I'm _paying_ for your blasted 'prerogative'!"

"No, no, no, you are paying for my company's assistance in retrieving this artefact. As far as I see, we have done our job, it is right there." River elbowed Jenny to get her attention, the three of them crouching as they observed. Jenny looked at her and raised her eyebrows.

"Use the gun," she whispered, "To watch." Sighing, Jenny pulled her modified rifle around from where it was slung on her back and aimed it, careful to keep her hand away from the trigger since Josephine was loaded. Through the scope she now saw the frustration on the Conqueror's face, and the calmness on Ordov's, and the worry every soldier was exhibiting because they didn't want to be volunteered to retrieve the Singularity from its pedestal. Jenny could see bloody bandages wrapped around Ordov's wrist where she had shot it yesterday.

"What if he's right?" Jack breathed, Ordov and the Conqueror continuing to bicker. "What if this place will collapse, or something, if someone who isn't a Time Lord touches that thing?"

"No," said River, "They wouldn't need tests that only Time Lords could pass if only a Time Lord could use it. It would be much less dangerous, they might not have taken it off Gallifrey. Part of the danger of the Singularity, in the old stories, is that anyone can use it. You wouldn't be coming after it if you didn't know that. What can you see?"

"Nothing," Jenny answered, "They're arguing. This guy's an idiot, he doesn't realise Ordov's betrayed him."

"What do you mean?"

"The Conqueror wants to use one of the soldiers as a guinea pig, Ordov wants to use the Conqueror. He's probably been paid in advance," Jenny explained. That was clearly Ordov's plan. Get rid of the Conqueror, the person who had the slightly more 'legitimate' claim on the Singularity than he did, and not look like a double-crosser. Ordov was a mercenary, his loyalty was to the money, and _him_ possessing the Singularity offered more wealth and power than the Conqueror would likely give him. Jenny didn't know who could be trusted with it less, the one who was actively stupid or the one who was actively evil.

"I think we'd better be safe than sorry," said Jack, nudging her, " _You'd_ better grab it."

"Easier said than done," she muttered, "There's no discreet way down, they blew up the stairs." It was a long drop, too, much too long to survive jumping down, about thirty feet up in the air. "Maybe it would be safer to wait and risk them taking it?" River and Jack looked at her like she was crazy. "What? We could steal it from their ship a lot easier than we could steal it in here. Or _I_ could. There's twenty armed soldiers down there."

"…What do you mean 'discreet' way down…?" River asked carefully.

"Well, I've got rope in my bag," Jenny said.

"Then I've got a plan."

River's 'plan' was exactly the same as Jenny's 'idea' she had completely written off because she thought it was stupid and suicidal, yet she somehow let herself get talked into it. She thought abseiling down the edge of the cliff was a terrible idea and they would be caught out immediately, though River kept assuring her that everyone was too focused on Ordov and the Conqueror. It was resolved that Jenny (who else) would go down, grab the Singularity, and would be pulled back up by Jack and River.

"They won't open fire," River said, "They'll want somebody else to see if any booby-traps will be triggered."

"And what if a booby-trap _is_ triggered?" Jenny hissed at them, holding the rope in her hands. Jack and River were going to be at the top holding her up, so she didn't think she was going to end up falling to her death.

"I'm sure you'll manage. Improvise. Your father does it brilliantly. If Ordov tries to kill you, I'll snipe him," River said. Jenny glared, hanging off the edge of the cliff.

"That doesn't fill me with confidence."

"Just go, you're giving me rope burn," Jack mumbled. She began to descend on the rope. Miraculously, nobody had noticed when they had thrown it down a minute earlier. It was lucky their half of the room was in shadow; the only lights were those that Kasterborous had brought with them, since the cave lights were not triggering anymore.

So many things could go wrong. Ordov, or any soldier, could see her and shoot her in a second; they could accidentally let go of the rope; it could turn out that the room _was_ full of traps and they might all be blown up in a matter of seconds. They had not thought this through at all, and Jenny still thought her plan of waiting for them to steal it and then stealing it back from the spaceship was a better option.

Although, she surprisingly dropped down onto the stone floor silently with no issues. So far. The first thing she did was immediately find her revolver in her bag and make sure that, too, was loaded, so that she wouldn't have to rely on River to take anyone out. Especially since she didn't know how good River's aim was, and it was probably still nowhere near as good as Jenny's. She shoved rounds into all six cylinders and stuck the pistol in the back of her jeans, then began the job of creeping tediously towards the Singularity. This was tense, because it involved stepping onto the bit of the floor everybody was so frightened of disturbing. But it hadn't given way on her in the first room, so she tried to trust that it wouldn't do it in this one.

She touched down one foot onto the stone as gently as she could, and by the time she had both feet on it and had even taken a step, she decided it was reliable. At least until people started messing with the Singularity. Jenny went on tiptoes, decided that if she died on this trip she was going to find a way to kill Captain Jack Harkness once and for all as a ghost. She went closer and closer, nearing the Singularity but also nearing the light. Lucky that no one else was brave enough yet to step down onto the platform and join her, but that wouldn't last one she was seen.

For no more than a few seconds, she heard distant and familiar whispered arguments, which were interrupted by a decidedly male scream somewhere behind her. A decidedly male scream that attracted the attention of everybody else in the room. Staying as still as possible, she turned around to see Jack falling through the shadows. Then half a dozen flashlights were pointed at him as he landed on the stone with a thud and a crunch. For a second, Kasterborous were so focused on Jack falling that they didn't even notice Jenny, frozen, her hand outstretched towards the Singularity.

"…Fancy seeing you here," Jenny to Ordov as soon as he spotted her. Behind her, Jack groaned. There was a moment where she met Ordov's eyes, before he went to draw his gun so she drew her own in a flash. It was like a duel in a Western. She cocked it immediately, and they were at a stalemate. Unless Jack had brought the rifle down with him when he'd decided to be all gung-ho and follow her, he was unarmed. "How've you been since I, you know, shot your hand apart?"

Ordov laughed, "I'll live, which is more than can be said for you."

"Dunno. I'm the only one who can work the magic orb over there," Jenny said, "Didn't seem like either of you were going to try and take it. Especially since your guesses about this place being booby-trapped are correct."

"And look, we have here the girl who can guide us through the traps. How wonderful," said Ordov, nodding to his men, who all raised their guns.

"There's a sniper aimed right at you," Jenny told him, trusting that River _was_ aiming right at him. Luckily it was much too dark above for anyone to spot her. "You shoot me, you'll die."

"And then my men will eliminate you."

"Will they, though? Seems to me like you like to shoot them for sport," Jenny said, "Would they really follow you, or are they just following whoever has the Singularity? And that looks like it's going to be me."

"Oh, is that so?" Ordov took the risk and stepped down onto the platform with Jenny. Jack groaned behind her, but she saw him getting to his feet out of the corner of her eye. He hadn't quite died that time, just broken himself a bit. She could have swiped it and gotten out of there if he hadn't jumped down like that! What was he playing at!? Trying to snatch it and use it or his own mischievous purposes before she had a chance to break it into pieces, probably. Being reckless. "You are a coward. You would let me walk right up and take it before you would kill me." And he did walk, too. "I wouldn't even need my hands to take that device, it is all-powerful, it could make me into a god."

"That's _mine_ , Ordov! I paid for it!" the Conqueror shouted. Ordov turned for a split-second and shot the Conqueror, landing him a nasty gut wound that made him stumble backwards. None of the soldiers went to his aid. Jenny kept her gun pointed at Ordov, but he was calling her bluff in a way people never normally did. Nobody since Iveanne. And Iveanne had had to die.

Ordov's gamble did not work. He thought that if Jenny was safe on the platform, _he_ was safe on the platform. He was wrong. It was this moment that the map and the cave lights decided to kick in again, and the entire place was glowing with spindly, golden patterns. They did not stay gold for long, though, instead changing to be mauve, just like the 'lightbulbs' in the last room had done when they were about to blow. The universal colour for danger, as Jack had reminded them. Accordingly, the room started to shake. Ordov stopped in his approach.

"They don't want humans getting their hands on it," Jenny said.

"I can move quicker than this room can collapse, and our excavated tunnel is not controlled by the ghosts of your ancestors like the rest of this tomb," Ordov said coolly, unfazed by the mountain beginning to shake. "You see this man?" he pointed his gun at the Conqueror again, who had sunk to the floor and was clutching his side in agony, bleeding heavily through his costume robes. "He is worthless. Pathetic. He knows some history, has become obsessed with these… delusions. As if I would ever let a worm like that take the most powerful device ever created away from me. I only needed him to get this far, but now there is you. You are more capable, and you have helped us find the mountain and the route inside and now the secret to the Singularity's capture. And you are too much of a child to stop me from-"

BANG.

Ordov's head popped. The side of it was completely blown out by a powerful projectile, entering smoothly in one side and leaving a gaping hole and a residue of brain and skull on the stone platform on the other. She held up her hands in surrender immediately, though all the soldiers watching knew it had not been Jenny who had pulled the trigger. No. That had been River, perched up on the ledge with Josephine and the hollow-point rounds. She was furious at River, as she watched Ordov's body go limp and crumple, but she buried her anger and tried to salvage the situation, stepping towards the soldiers.

"All of you had better run now," she said to them, "Before this entire place collapses. And if any of you think about coming back here to get that thing, don't. It'll have been destroyed." And they scarpered. Cowards, all of them. Their insane leader was dead now, though, and they were in an alien vault on an alien planet. They probably wanted nothing more than to escape. Jenny would have fled too, if she didn't have a stake in what was happening.

"Jenny, catch!" River shouted. Jenny looked around, the floor rocked and began to crack and she lost her balance slightly, but saw her rifle flying through the air towards her. She forgot all about the Singularity when faced with the potential destruction of Josephine, and dived to catch it. She managed to, at least, and then River had teleported to the ground next to the bleeding-out Conqueror to help him when no-one else would.

"I've got it!" Jack declared, and Jenny whirled around to see him just about manage to grab the Singularity from where it sat.

"DON'T TOUCH IT!" she yelled, but it was too late. Jack wasn't listening to her, he was too desperate to get his hands on the thing. There was an enormous shift in the mountain and then chunks of the platform started to collapse and Jenny wobbled. River was pressing her hands to the Conqueror's bullet wound, the pair of them out of the immediate danger of the falling floor.

"RUN, RUN!" Jack was barrelling towards the other two to get off the platform, and Jenny followed his lead, jumping over Ordov's corpse right as the ground turned to rubble and she tripped up. Jack had made it to the edge, _just_ , but the walls and the ceiling were crumbling to dust as well. It was all very psychedelic coupled with the dark red lights and the earthquakes. For one terrifying moment she thought she was going to die. Beneath her was a chasm and she barely managed to jump for the edge before the entire base the Singularity had been on was gone. But someone grabbed her arm and caught her. "I've got you," said Jack as she held onto him and he pulled her up.

Jenny landed on top of him in a heap, and for a second she was there looking into his eyes. Until she remembered he had just caused the entire place to start caving in. When she remembered that, she head-butted him and rolled away.

"Gah! Where'd you learn to kiss like that?"

"You total- I can't believe-"

"Enough of your lover's tiff," River said as Jenny raised a fist to hit him again, "This idiot is going to die." Jenny scrambled to get to the Conqueror's side, leaving the Singularity in Jack's hands, the whole mountain rumbling. A giant stalactite came crashing down from the cavern roof and down past them into the abyss below.

"Well then, we need to get out," Jenny said, putting her gun away again, "And quick-" She was cut off by seeing the tunnel Kasterborous had come through cave-in. "Oh, great. Now we have no way out in this teleport-proof…"

"I can get it working, give me a second," Jack said, messing around with the Singularity, "Like River said, it's not just Time Lords who can make this thing work, that's why it's so dangerous. Imagine if the Daleks got their hands on it."

"Yes, well, Davros did manage to build a reality bomb all on his own anyway," River said, "And besides, Daleks haven't got hands."

" _Reality bomb_? What does this thing actually do?" Jenny asked.

"A Time Lord…" the Conqueror choked, "Who doesn't know… their greatest creation…"

"Yeah, alright mate, shut up or maybe I'll think twice about saving your life," she snapped.

"It does more or less everything Rose can do," explained River, "Funnels the raw power of the time vortex into the hands of whoever uses it, without any of the physical evolutions that make someone able to handle that kind of responsibility, _or_ the risks."

"Oh great," Jenny complained, "It's a Bad Wolf emulator. Because things weren't bad enough with one Bad Wolf to begin with."

"And it's a damn sight easier to control," said Jack, "Doesn't take over your personality and make you go loopy."

"You don't sound like a Time Lord," the Conqueror mumbled.

"Wait until you meet my dad," Jenny said.

"Ah-ha!" Jack exclaimed, and the Singularity lit up vibrant gold, "Everyone grab on! This is what I've been waiting for!" All of them lunged to grab hold of the Singularity as it took them away from Rospaonus and the destruction of the Time Lord vault. But _where_ was it taking them was the next question…


	101. Long Lost Feeling

_Long Lost Feeling_

 _Jenny_

Normally, she wasn't a fan of teleports. When she was younger she sometimes went decades without being able to stomach using the vortex manipulator again, which got her stuck in all kinds of places after using it to escape a tight spot. Then there was the TARDIS emergency teleporter, and she had only used that thing once, to get away from Old Twelvey when she was caught half-naked in Beta Clara's bedroom a few months ago. Again, a dire situation. But the Singularity was nothing like it. It was smooth, not jarring, and gave Jenny the impression that instead of _her_ moving, time and space were shifting to her will. Or, Jack's will, whatever that was.

The pleasantness of the teleport experience, however, did not really outweigh the _un_ pleasantness of where they ended up. It seemed like 'Jack's will' was landing them in the coldest, foggiest place possible, going from one stormy planet to another. It was much too cold to still be the tropical pole of Rospaonus, and the foliage was too mossy and dark green. It wasn't _too_ hard to work out that they had ended up on Earth somewhere, though. The texture of the mud under her fingers more than anything gave that away. There was just something about Earth mud that was so much… muddier than mud from another planet (god, she really _did_ sound like her father sometimes.)

"Jenny – Jenny, get over here," River pleaded. Jenny staggered to her feet and saw River lying maybe fifteen entire feet away with the Conqueror. There was no sign of Jack, but the Singularity was lying in the mud nearby. It wasn't quite raining, but there was a thick fog and the air stank of salt. It was probably sea mist in her nose. They must be near the coast.

"Where's Jack?" she asked, picking up the Singularity and putting it in her transdimensional bag. She was reunited with both of her guns, at least, Aphra and Josephine.

"Cliff," River said. Jenny looked around and noticed that they _were_ right next to the edge of a cliff. She carefully walked over to get a look and saw it was a low point of the cliffs, they were only twenty-feet up, but Jack was down there alright. He'd wound up impaled on the edge of a sea needle. Jenny winced when she looked down at him. He wasn't dead. There was a shale beach directly beneath, and despite the rough weather the tide was out.

"You'll be alright finding your own way up, won't you?" she called down. He was flailing a bit, but she was sure he'd be fine. Eventually. He sort of deserved it, anyway.

"Jenny, he's going to-"

"He's fine," Jenny said, leaving the edge and going back over to River.

"Of course _Jack's_ fine, I mean-"

"I know who you mean, you mean this piece of work," she said, nodding at the Conqueror, "Good thing one of us has a sense of smell. Ordov hasn't broken through the stomach or it would stink, and if he'd pierced a major artery he'd be dead already. He'll be alright, just needs to be sewn back up. Come on. I assume that whatever Jack was looking for it isn't a deserted island, there must be someone around here."

"What makes you think it's some _one_ he's after?" River asked, helping the Conqueror to his feet, Jenny joining, both of them carrying him along.

"Jack's always after someone. Now, then, you," Jenny turned to their charge, "Mr. Conqueror. What's your actual name? You ought to grace the only real Time Lord you've ever met with that information, at least."

"What's _your_ name?" he questioned, "The Hero? The Thief?"

"It's Jenny, actually, Jenny Young at the moment. Major Jenny Young if you want to be formal about it," she said, "And who are you when you're not being an egomaniac with delusions of grandeur?q"

"Corly," he said, "Corly Moss." 'Moss' was fitting, because wherever they were there was moss all over the place. It crawled on old stones strewn around the uneven knolls and was dark with moisture from the fog.

"Well, I suppose I can see why you want people to call you 'the Conqueror.'" When she looked back she couldn't see where they had landed, it was blotted out completely by the grey mist.

"There's no reason to be so courteous," River muttered.

"Your bedside manner is appalling. Let's worry about the fact he's obnoxious _after_ I save his life," Jenny told her, then returned to speaking to the Conqueror – or Corly Moss, as she would rather call him, "This fine example of company here is Professor River Song, she's a grave robber."

"Archaeologist," said River, "And you're a hypocrite."

"Mmm, well, she was a Time Lord as well, once," Jenny said, "In fact-"

"Is that a house?" River interrupted. They paused on their walk, but it did look like a house, a little cottage out there in the middle of nowhere that swam towards them like a ghost in their rural wasteland. It was small and quaint, the type of place kids might have been evacuated to, an antique straight out of a model railway. And as luck would have it there were very clearly lights on inside, electric ones. And a TV aerial mounted on the wall.

They dragged Corly all the way up to the door and Jenny banged her fist on it loudly. There were noises within, so someone was definitely home. She just hoped they had towels. She already had a sewing kit in her bag, because you never knew when a sewing kit might come in handy.

A young man with dark hair in his late-twenties, opened the door, and gawked at them. They were all filthy, Jenny with one of her hands pressed over the top of Corly's to apply enough pressure to the wound while he was growing dangerously faint, hanging off her shoulder like dead weight.

"Hi," Jenny managed her sweetest smile, "This man's dying, can we come in?"

" _What_? I mean – yes," he said, stepping aside and holding open the door. She thought he was familiar, but she didn't have time to try and work out where she knew him from, if she wasn't just imagining a resemblance. All she really picked up on was that he was Welsh. Did that mean they were in Wales somewhere? "Who are you? How did you get here? You know there isn't a hospital for miles?"

"No, but, don't worry. I'm… um… a nurse. Sort of," Jenny said unconvincingly, dragging Corly through the compact kitchen/living room towards the sofa. It looked like the type of cottage old people might live in, with musty furniture and knitted quilts and everything very cramped.

"Since when were you a nurse?" River questioned her, helping her lift Corly onto the small sofa and sort him so he was lying down.

"I did my part in the war effort, you know," she said, holding her hands down over the bleeding bullet wound, "Spent a lot of time in Plymouth, treated a lot of nasty injuries in the blitz even if I never went overseas."

"Sorry, the blitz, did you say?" the house's tenant asked, watching from nearby. He was more perturbed by them showing up there at all than by their mauled ward.

"Yeah, long time ago, do you mind getting me some towels? He's been shot," Jenny said, "Lots of blood. Abdomen. Nasty. Probably also some spirits."

"Which war?" he asked, staring at the scene.

"Towels and vodka, sweetie," River said to him, "Go fetch."

"Right, yes – back in a mo." He disappeared up his stairs. It was a bit like he was used to being ordered around. River stared after him, presumably at his rear. Jenny elbowed her and indicated that she should take over applying pressure to the wound.

"There are definitely worse places to end up with a dying gunshot victim," River remarked, distracted. Jenny shook her head and started searching through her bag with her blood-soaked hands until she pulled out a first aid kit, which she'd gathered herself after that minor incident recently where she'd been shot in the arm and had to sterilise the wound using Conor Finnegan's rather sorry excuse for medical equipment in the Green Bayou.

"Go and get me some scissors so we can cut his weird golden robes off," Jenny said. River laughed and got up to go over to the kitchen, Jenny taking over with trying to stop the bleeding again. The fireplace was roaring away though, and there was a working TV. What year were they in?

"I bet you're the prettiest girl who's ever offered to take that boy's clothes off," River drawled from the corner. "I hope Clara won't be jealous."

"Clara doesn't really get jealous," Jenny said, pushing both her hands down on Corly's side. Well, not that she knew of.

"Why are you helping me?" Corly asked her hoarsely. At least he was still conscious, that boded well.

"Well, you know, people often change when they go through a near-death experience," Jenny said, "My dad changes his whole face. And besides, I can't stand by and let someone die if I can do something about it."

"No, you always have to help everyone," River jibed, returning with a pair of kitchen scissors, "It's one of your few flaws." The man returned from upstairs with a handful of bath towels while Jenny was carefully threading proper surgical thread through a sterile needle, again having swapped the wound with River. She was definitely going to have to give her woollen scarf a gently but vigorous wash later, over a sink because there was no way she was going to let her favourite possession get ruined in a tumble dryer.

"Now, I'm sorry about this, Corly," Jenny said when they had torn his robes apart to reveal the gut shot in all its gruesome glory, "But it's probably going to hurt." It was a good thing she had River there to help, because it most definitely _did_ hurt him, and he kept writhing around. Jenny couldn't blame him, she knew exactly what it was like to get shot. That was how she had died the first time, after all. The worst part was that the bullet from Ordov's sidearm was still buried somewhere in Corly Moss's liver, and they had to resort to enlisting the help of the man whose house they were invading to get him to shine a torch from above. "This reminds me of when I had my eyes gouged out," Jenny commented at one point. Unfortunate they didn't have any anaesthetic, but Corly was just going to have to fight through the pain. He was yelling in enough agony that they knew he was alive without having to check, though.

The only snag in this amateur 'surgery' was Jenny's gammy thumb not being quite as mobile as it needed to be, but she managed well enough. It wasn't like she trusted River to take over. She was still angry at River for killing Ordov. Jenny didn't know how long it took to remove the bullet (which she had to do with her fingers) and then stitch Corly back up again, she supposed she grew very focused and ceased paying attention to the time, but she did not stop until she was done. She didn't think it was a job half bad, either, and was pretty proud of her impromptu surgical skills. Looking at the scar on her thumb knuckle, though, it was nowhere near as neat as Martha Jones' expert stitching.

"What do you think?" Jenny asked River. River shrugged, and frowned.

"I suppose it'll do. I'm not sure you should have been the one to do the stitches though, with your hand the way it is," River nodded at Jenny's bruised hand and Jenny flexed it and winced. She had forgotten her brace on her spaceship and was now suffering the consequences. There were titanium screws holding the bones in her thumb together now.

"Now then, Corly Moss," Jenny addressed him. He was swearing profusely and a little grey, "I'm not entirely sure whether you might need a blood transfusion or not, and we'd definitely better get you some antibiotics as soon as possible… apart from that I think you'll be alright." She smiled. She thought Corly may have smiled, too, but could not be sure.

The man they were imposing on finally cleared his throat and begin to speak, "Now might be a good time to tell me who you are? And how you got here? They're supposed to send word over the radio if any boats or helicopters are coming."

"What is this? Some sort of island?" River asked him.

"It's Scarba, in the Inner Hebrides," he explained, narrowing his eyes and looking between them both, "How did you get here? There's a storm brewing and the whirlpool's been acting up."

" _Whirlpool_?" Jenny and River exclaimed together. They had both been kneeling down next to the sofa still, a pile of bloody bath towels around them, but River got to her feet at this point.

"The Corryvreckan whirlpool. Keeps boats away from this side of the island. Nobody else lives here."

"What are you, a serial killer on the run?" River asked him, "Why do you need to be out here?"

"How did _you_ get here is a better question," he repeated himself coolly. "I've shown you hospitality, you owe me an explanation. And don't try to play me, I know Time Agents when I see them." River and Jenny exchanged a look, and Jenny stood up very slowly as well. Why did he think Time Agents were looking for him?

"We're not Time Agents, we're just-"

"Freelancers," River finished Jenny's sentence for her, "No loyalty to any sect. We came here by accident, trying to escape from somewhere else. We'll leave as soon as our friend gets here."

"Friend?" the stranger asked, "You've been here half an hour and there hasn't been a 'friend.'"

"No, well, he got himself into a bit of tight spot," River said, "We went on without him. I'm sure he'll catch up."

"Tight spot? Tight spot like what…?"

"I've seen you somewhere before…" Jenny said, squinting at him. She could swear, his identity was on the tip of her tongue, "In a photograph, or something…" He looked at her for a moment, but did not register the same recognition that she did.

"Nothing," said River, "Fell into the sea, that's all."

"The sea is all needles and rocks around the whole island."

"Yes, he might be slightly impaled. He'll sort himself out though. He always does," said River. The stranger made a start, seemed to lose his balance for no apparent reason and shake.

"Jack?" he asked.

"What?" said River.

And _then_ it clicked with Jenny where she had seen this stranger's face before, and she realised exactly what Jack had been doing this entire time. It made her want to kill him. And as luck would have it, _that_ was when he chose to make his dramatic arrival, ramming the door with his and breaking the latch in the process. He was a mess. She spoiled the whole thing by taking the word right out of Jack's mouth.

"Ianto," she said, loud enough that Jack's attempt to whisper the name of his favourite flame was snuffed out. Plus, she was holding a gun on him, she'd whipped her loaded revolver out in a flash and cocked it and pointed it at Jack's head. "You utterly worthless waste of space! I can't believe that you would – that the Singularity – risking everything – so that _you_ could get your end away!"

"I told you to leave! I never asked you to come in the first place!" Jack shouted right back at her. He was desperate to get to Ianto, but he didn't want their reunion to be put off by his ex shooting him in the head. And she definitely _would_ shoot him in the head if it came down to it, she was seething. She hadn't been this angry with him since she'd caught him inside Christina de Souza, perhaps more angry than even that since at least when he'd slept with Christina, her own life hadn't been pointlessly endangered.

"Your whole quest was just about this, wasn't it!? You went to get the Singularity because it can find people, right? Find them anywhere, tell you any information you want in the world! _That's_ why you jumped down after me and grabbed it! Because you didn't want to risk me destroying it so that you couldn't get to him!" Jenny yelled all these realisations. Ianto Jones made to step towards Jack, but Jenny held up a hand at him. "Don't you _dare_. You have no idea what you've missed being dead."

"Dead?" River asked her, then turned to Jack, "Jack, what's going on?"

"It was Kent," Jack finally explained, "Liam Kent. He told Oswin and Martha and they told me, before I ran off, about his greatest failure and his greatest success. His success 'under the name of Jones.' But he said Esther was his failure, so I thought – his success – and I was right. Kent was obsessed with Torchwood, but Ianto and Esther were the only two dead Torchwood members with bodies still intact. Gwen's still alive, Rex is still alive, Owen and Toshiko's bodies were both destroyed in explosions, and so were the bodies of every other Torchwood agent killed in action and kept in the base. If he went all the way to Washington to resurrect Esther, then the chances were pretty high that he also went to Cardiff to resurrect Ianto."

"He seemed a bit… wrong," said Ianto, "Kent. Whatever you said his name was. Fancied himself Dr Frankenstein, I think."

"Ha, you're lucky the alien technology he was using didn't malfunction like it did with Esther. He tried to bring _her_ back during a thunderstorm and channelled a whole lightning bolt into her corpse, and now she needs to drain electricity from things to survive," Jack explained. He was trying to edge closer to Ianto.

"You stay right there," Jenny said, brandishing the gun. Jack stopped moving.

"Oh come on, don't you think I've suffered enough? I've been locked in a shack being tortured for a week and then I got my legs crushed saving _your_ life and I just got impaled and had to climb out of the sea to get up here! Not to mention when I saved you from falling into the pit!"

"Which only happened because you didn't trust me to get the stupid Singularity in the first place so you triggered the weird self-destruct!"

"You would have destroyed it!"

"Why would I have destroyed it when we needed it to leave!? And _all_ you were trying to do saving me is make up for this stunt!"

"I'm sorry that I'm not indifferent to you and I don't want you to _die_ , Jenny!"

Jenny laughed coldly, " _You_ just don't want to have to deal with my father. I'll tell him about this."

"How old are we? Twelve? Telling on me to daddy? What's he gonna do, huh?"

"Sorry, who's her father? Can someone fill me in? Who are you?" Ianto interrupted, speaking mainly to River, who was sighing and shaking her head and tapping her foot, very impatient with Jack and Jenny's constant sparring.

"I'm River," she said, "This is Jenny. She's the Doctor's daughter." Ianto's jaw dropped.

"The _Doctor_? _The_ Doctor? His _daughter_?" Ianto stared at Jack. " _Jack_ , what have you been up to?"

"I… well... what!? She's cute!"

"I will shoot you in the face," Jenny said.

Sarcastically, Ianto looked at her and said, "Yes, how cute. The Doctor lets you go around threatening to shoot people in the face?"

"He does, actually," said Jenny, "Not that it's-"

"What? Any of our business? Just admit it, Jenny, you haven't got a leg to stand on. You're just jealous," said Jack.

"Jealous!?" she exclaimed.

"Yeah, jealous."

" _Jealous_?"

"You heard me. Jeal-ous. JEALOUS."

"Are you saying," Jenny paused, "That you think I'm _jealous_?"

"Oh my god!" River shouted, "Shut up! I will shoot _both_ of you in a minute and make a horrible mess of the rug in here. We've already had _one_ near-fatal gunshot victim, we don't need two more. Now, Ianto, is it? Jack's dead ex-boyfriend? These two used to be married for a very short amount of time." Both Jack and Jenny scoffed and claimed their marriage was not real, but River shushed them again. "Then they had a wonderful competition revolving around cheating on each other and Jenny has a new girlfriend and I suppose now Jack has you again. So it's a nice happy ending, _isn't it_?"

"No," said Jenny, "I could have died today!"

"Jenny. You didn't die today. Get over it. Put the gun down, you're being a baby. We all know Jack's an idiot, you don't need to kill him again to prove it. It won't make you feel better," she said firmly. Jenny clenched her jaw and glowered.

"I'm not putting the gun down," she said, "I'll shut up though." River rolled her eyes.

"Whatever."

"Who's this electric girl you were talking about?" Ianto asked.

"Lightning Girl," said Jenny, breaking her promise to shut up instantly, "We call her the Lightning Girl. She lives down the road from my girlfriend. They hang out all the time."

"Do they?" Jack asked.

"Yes, we have a group chat."

"A _group chat_? Just you three?"

"No, Sally's in it too, obviously," said Jenny.

"Seriously?" River asked.

"What? It's mainly Sally and Clara's thing, I don't know, they make fun of each other on it," Jenny said. "There are _some_ people who actually like Clara, you know. Anyway, Welsh boy, why are you in hiding on a remote Scottish island?"

"Last I checked everyone in Torchwood was wanted by the government, and everyone thinks I've been dead for years. Didn't think anyone would want to see a corpse walking about the country. Besides, I like it here. It's quiet," Ianto said, "How did you say you found me, again?"

"There's this ancient Time Lord device called the Singularity, it's complicated. It's… where is it?" Jack looked around.

"I've got it," Jenny said, reaching into her bag to retrieve it. Jack made as though to take it off her when she revealed it, but she stepped back. "Oh, no. You're not having it. _I'm_ the Time Lord, _I'm_ going to give it to dad. You've found him now, you don't need it for anything else."

"Yeah, well, it's a device that harnesses the whole power of the time vortex and makes whoever possesses it into a god, more or less," Jack spoke to Ianto, "The Time Lords locked it away because they're all a bunch of egomaniacs who couldn't bear to destroy it, and I went to get it so that I could find you once I heard that you were alive. And I got captured, and River convinced Jenny to come on a rescue mission and I'm very grateful for the fact that she stayed and helped us get the Singularity since the ancient vault recognised her as a biological Time Lord. Although she still hasn't let me say hello to you properly."

"Well we all know what happens when _you_ say hello to people," Jenny muttered.

"Okay here's the thing, Jenny, I love him," Jack said definitively, "I always have. In fact, I'll show you exactly what I came here to do, alright?" And then he fumbled around behind him for a moment.

" _What_ are you doing?" River asked as he dug around, and then produced something in a tiny plastic bag. "My lord, it's like you're a volunteer drug mule."

"Yeah, a drug mule of _romance_."

"What is that, Jack?" Ianto asked as Jack dropped something into the palm of his hand out of the little bag. Something shiny, and small, and made of white gold.

"Is that an _engagement ring_!?" Jenny shouted at him.

"Uh-oh…" River muttered.

"You complete-! How long have you had that!? For him!? You didn't have the dignity to get _me_ a ring!" Everyone knew that Jack's lack of getting her a ring was one of her biggest gripes with their 'relationship.'

"Jenny…" River warned.

"You've made it so _I've_ played an active part in you performing some incredibly romantic gesture for someone else when you never did anything remotely romantic for me!? _Ever_!? And you wonder why – you are a piece of work, Harkness, you do not deserve to have taken his name!"

"Won't you-" River kept trying to speak to her, but Jenny continued to ignore.

"Because I knew him too, the _real_ Captain Jack Harkness, and he-"

"He led a girl on pretending to be straight and then fell in love with _me_. A _boy_ ," Jack said, "And you need to take a look at your hand."

"I – what?" she looked down, but it was too late. That was what River had been trying to notify her of; the Singularity she was holding. It was glowing, bright gold, and she was too emotional to notice. She was sucked out of spacetime clutching the device in one hand and her revolver in the other, without an inkling of where she was going to end up. But really, she would rather be _anywhere_ but there.


	102. Dark Side of Your Room

_Dark Side of Your Room_

 _Jenny_

Her forehead had been a bit sore already after she'd head-butted Jack, but landing face-first onto somebody's floor exacerbated the pain considerably. She had lost her balance mid-teleport because the smoothness of the Singularity's technology had caught her off-guard again, leaving her sprawled out somewhere new. It still hurt, dropping out of the sky onto her front, despite the soft carpet she found herself on; though, truthfully, she was glad she didn't land on her back and break the rifle resting there. Somebody had shrieked when she appeared.

"Jenny!?"

"Clara…" she said the name mostly to herself when she realised where she was, and turned her head just in time to see Clara Ravenwood climb over the back of her sofa to come and help Jenny off the floor. They were in her living room, and it was roasting as always with all the candles Clara had burning because of her hyper light-sensitivity. Warm and cosy and it smelt more like home than anywhere else Jenny could remember in her lifetime. Even Clara's icy-cold hands were a comfort. "You have no idea how happy I am to see you."

"You're filthy," Clara told her, "And covered in blood – whose blood is it?" She got a look in her eyes when she saw the blood on Jenny, her pupils dilating, most of it on her arms from Corly Moss's bullet wound, and the rest of it left over from Jack. There was some of it staining her hair dark pink.

"It's not mine, I'm alright," she said. Her hand was still clinging onto her revolver but the Singularity had rolled away. She tried to drop it onto the floor but struggled, her hand seized up.

"You're shaking, oh my god," Clara said, kneeling next to her, "Come on, lean against the sofa." Clara helped her to do that, which she didn't mind. "I know it's not your blood, I can smell that it's someone else's. Two people's. What's happened?" Clara stayed knelt down and watching her, pushing Jenny's hair out of her face at one point and studying her, worried. Jenny merely watched her for a while, just relieved that she was there, that the Singularity had taken her to where she most wanted to be in the world.

"When was the last time we talked?"

"The other evening, you rang for nearly two hours and told me about going to a jungle planet," Clara said, "We've only spoken to each other twice for almost a week, actually…"

"God, I'm sorry," she said, feeling great regret at what she deemed a terrible mistreatment of this most wonderful girl. Clara smiled.

"It's fine, you've got your own life to lead."

" _Yes_ , but my favourite part of my life is _you_ ," Jenny said, "I've missed you so much. You have no idea."

"So, are you gonna tell me whose blood this is yet?"

"Some of it's Jack's," Jenny said, "Some of it's this other bloke's, this… he got shot in the gut and I sewed him up, that's why I'm covered in his blood. Saved his life. Even with my dodgy thumb." She was looking at her thumb when she said this, which smarted again, when she was taken by surprise as Clara kissed her cheek.

"How heroic," she whispered, sitting down next to Jenny (who was now blushing), both of them leaning against the back of the sofa, on the floor, which Jenny had accidentally got all muddy and damp.

"Alright, well, what happened is Jack went off looking for this device, called the Singularity, and it's… rolled over there," Jenny pointed it out, sitting against the closed door that led down to the bedroom in the cellar. Clara crawled a little to go and grab it because she was closer, but as soon as she touched it she winced as though she'd been burned. "Are you okay!?" Clara shook her hand in the air.

"I'm fine, it just burnt me," she said, looking back, "Did you know it would do that?"

"No! It didn't burn anybody else. Why would I _want_ to burn you?"

"I'd do it to you, it might be funny," said Clara. Jenny was too exhausted in that moment to stop her eyes from briefly wandering to another part of Clara that wasn't her face – but if she _would_ crawl on all fours in front of her then Jenny didn't really think it could be helped. Clara cleared her throat. "That's my arse you're ogling. I _can_ see you."

"Can I touch it?"

"Not until you wash your hands, no," Clara said, pawing at the Singularity with the sleeve of her dressing gown pulled over her hand. As she returned to where she'd been sat before she rolled it along with the fabric guarding her skin, until it was close enough for Jenny to pick up. It didn't burn her. "Alright, so what _is_ the burn ball?"

" _Burn ball_?" Jenny questioned. "Singularity. I told you that's what it's called. It probably just doesn't like you because you're a vampire."

"Oh, that's nice."

"It _is_ an ancient Time Lord weapon," Jenny explained, "You _know_ the Time Lords and the Vampires hated each other."

"Makes us sound like Romeo and Juliet."

"Juliet and Juliet," Jenny corrected, flashing her a grin. Clara laughed.

"Alright, fair enough. Weapon, then?"

"In the wrong hands. Luckily, _my_ hands aren't the wrong ones. It's a… Bad Wolf emulator. They thought it was so dangerous that the locked it away on a hostile planet in a big vault in a mountain and made us pass a bunch of tests to get it," she said, "Well, made _me_ pass, because it would only let people who are Time Lords do it. Which was cool, actually, you know, because Jack and River didn't think that it _would_ recognise me as being a Time Lord, and neither did I really. But it _did_. I can't wait to tell the Doctor, he'll think it's great, and he'll know what to do with this stupid thing."

"A… Bad Wolf emulator? Like Rose? Like, the Time Vortex? And _I'm_ the only person who can't use it?" Clara questioned.

"I don't think anyone _should_ use it, ever, I wanted to destroy it. That's why Jack jumped down and grabbed it for himself before I could, because he thought I'd break it immediately. He brought down the entire cave. This thing teleported us out," she exclaimed, "There was a whole other group of treasure hunters coming after it, called Kasterborous-"

"That's the constellation where Gallifrey is," Clara said, and Jenny stared at her. "What? I'm more than just a pretty face, you know."

"Well I wish you'd been with us," Jenny said, "Some megalomaniac called himself 'the Conqueror,' obsessed with Time Lords. He's the one who got shot, who I saved, when Jack… Clara, you wouldn't believe the real reason he made us go out there, why he wanted this thing."

"Surprise me."

"It was all to find Ianto."

"Who?"

"His dead ex-boyfriend." Jenny slumped against the sofa. "Ianto's not dead anymore, Liam Kent brought him back just like he brought Esther. Without all the lightning stuff. Kent dropped some… cryptic hint, and Jack immediately ran off to find him. And _I_ almost died, and I can't… I'm sorry."

"I don't know what you're apologising for."

"For being stupid!" she exclaimed, "For… being reckless. I'm too reckless. Just look at me, it's a miracle I didn't die, and die for good. All I was thinking about was you, and what would you think if I didn't come home? You'd think I'd just been stupid, and I didn't really care, and I'd gone off and got myself killed without thinking of you at all, and I'd be dead and you'd hate me and never forgive me and it would have all been Jack's fault! And he would have ruined everything just by being selfish."

"So you're angry as well as stinky," Clara said. Remarkably, she was still smiling softly, still in her make-girlfriend-feel-better mode.

"How are you not furious about this too?"

" _You_ saved someone's life, and _you_ looked after yourself and are okay, and _you_ are going to do the noble thing with the all-powerful universe-dominating sphere," Clara said, "And you and your magic orb came back to _me_."

"It's because I was upset and I was holding it and it… I suppose it works telepathically."

"What were you upset about?"

"Oh my god, you won't… you won't believe this," Jenny sat up and took Clara's hands with hers, though they were still covered in Corly's dried blood. "I left because he was about to _propose_ to Ianto. _With_ an engagement ring, one he's had for _years_. And you won't guess – he's been keeping it in a plastic bag _up his bum_!" Clara gawked at her.

"His bum?"

"Yeah!"

"…This is what you're actually so angry about, isn't it? The engagement ring thing?" Clara said.

"It's just not very nice to be made to feel like a placeholder."

"Oh, I made this terrible mistake a few years ago," Clara began telling a story, "Where I really just adored this boy, and he was a complete arse, really, but he was nice to his friends and he was hot. I followed him around like a lost puppy, but _he_ was all-for this other girl, and they were dating on-again-off-again because they fought all the time. And whenever they were off again, he called _me_ up, and I'd _always_ go and sleep with him, for ages, until he just… didn't end up breaking up with her for once. And I was out in the cold and I realised he never even really cared about me as much more than a friend. So, I know how you feel, being a substitute. I suppose he never roped me into helping him track her halfway across the known universe with an alien artefact, but…"

" _How_ do you always know the right thing to say? I go my whole life being emotionally closed-off, and then _you_ come along, and it's like you're inside my head half the time. This when I've known you for less than a year."

"Probably just means we have a good relationship."

"Well I don't know what _you're_ thinking like you do with me."

"I'm only thinking about how much I love you," Clara shrugged, "I wouldn't say that I'm a particularly complicated person. Are you _sure_ he had it in his bum?"

"Yes, I'm sure, he keeps all sorts up there," Jenny said, "Usually some sort of micro-gun."

"He, um… oh wow…" Clara didn't know what to say. It was kind of weird, Jenny supposed. "Well. _I'd_ keep an engagement ring in _my_ bum for a thousand years for you." Jenny fake-gasped.

"That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me." Clara giggled.

"Do you know what's way better than engagement ring, though?"

"What?"

She leant close to Jenny and said, "A scarf." Jenny laughed. She was still wearing her scarf.

"I got it dirty, I'll wash it in the sink later," she said.

"You'll have an engagement ring one day."

"You can't know for sure that someone's ever going to propose to me."

"Of course I do," Clara said, "Because, one day, _I'll_ propose to you, and I'll make sure I have the most amazing ring in the universe for you to wear. And then you'll have to go return the favour because I'm not _not_ wearing an engagement ring." Jenny stared at her in shock. "What?"

"You would marry me? You'd… you _want_ to marry me one day?"

"Are you stupid? Of course I do," Clara said, "Not for ages, though, mind. I can't think of anything else to aim for in life apart from marrying you eventually. It would be great; we'd _both_ wear a dress and then someone would have to paint a portrait of us because I don't show up in photos. And we'd both be _so_ pretty, every straight boy in the room would be jealous." Jenny narrowed her eyes.

"Do you think about this a lot?"

Clara paused for a while, then quickly said, "No." Jenny's face broke into a grin.

"Oh my god, you totally do!"

"I don't!" Clara protested, "You're making me sound like a head case. Anyway – look – you smell rank. Why don't you go have a shower and get changed, and _I_ will order us some pizza because I haven't had any tea yet."

"Alright, but only to hide my tears because I'm so distraught you just said that I stink."

"Why should _I_ care if you're 'distraught'? I don't even like you." Jenny smiled and leant over to kiss her, but Clara only let her do so for a very short handful of seconds. "I'm being serious about you smelling. I'll kiss you after you have a wash. Come on, you'll feel better." Clara got to her feet still holding one of Jenny's hands, Jenny staying on the floor.

"Can I stay over tonight?"

" _Yes_ , but only if you're clean. You're not coming anywhere _near_ my bed in this state," Clara tugged on her hand gently and she finally gave in and stood up. "Go on, I'll bring you clothes up in a minute after I order food and get a drink from downstairs." A 'drink from downstairs' was code for more blood, probably because Jenny was covered in the stuff and it was difficult for Clara to manage around it.

"Well, I won't have much. Just a large meat feast, large cheesy chips, two portions of chicken nuggets and onion rings," Jenny said when she was going up the stairs. Clara raised her eyebrows. "And a kebab."

"How are you gonna pay for all that?"

"… _Clara_ …" she whined.

"It's so expensive going out with you, you know. Now get out of here before I decide not to get you all that crap."

Jenny beamed and said, "I love you," then disappeared towards the bathroom.

/

"I hope you know what an abomination you are," Clara commented dryly, watching Jenny make the most disgusting sandwich known to man, which consisted of two slices of pizza with cheesy chips and chicken nuggets and an ungodly amount of curry sauce all squished together. The kebab she was 'saving for later' and so it remained mostly untouched. Clara sat watching Jenny shovel this heart attack waiting to happen into her mouth while nibbling on her own slice of margherita.

"I'm hungry," she garbled with her mouth full.

"What was that?"

Jenny waited a few seconds to chew and swallow before repeating herself, " _I'm hungry_."

"Clearly. Is your stomach bigger on the inside?"

"It's my metabolism, it's through the roof. And then I do so much exercise on top of that," Jenny said, "I'm an alien, you know." She took another bite from her creation and curry sauce dripped onto the top of Clara's table. It was a good thing she'd put kitchen roll down first. "I'll clean up any mess."

"You'd better."

"Can we talk about our fantasy wedding you've been planning?"

"Okay, all I do all day is sit around in a bookshop that only gets about five customers a week. There's a lot of time for daydreaming," Clara said defensively.

"No one's ever fantasised about marrying me before."

"I'm sure a lot of people have fantasised about marrying you, Jenny," Clara told her, "You're just too oblivious to notice. Which is exactly why _I'd_ have to be the one to propose; if it got left down to you, you never would. You're rubbish at that stuff."

"Would we _both_ walk down the aisle, do you think? It's just – I'd kind of like for the Doctor to give me away, you know?"

"Are you sure it wouldn't be weird? What with me being… his wife. And stuff." Jenny shrugged.

"I don't know. You could ask him."

"When am I ever going to see the Doctor?" Clara questioned. Jenny didn't say anything for a moment and took another bite out of her pizza sandwich, then she claimed it needed more salt, so she added more salt and also went to fetch one of the four jars of homemade mayonnaise she had concocted the last time she was in Hollowmire. There had originally been seven jars, but Clara had already eaten one of them, and then Jenny had pawned another two off on the Spooks and their elderly next-door neighbour. Then she got frustrated and hit her hand on the table, making Clara jump.

"Ketchup!" she exclaimed, "I haven't got any ketchup! _That's_ what's missing."

"Jen, this is literally disgusting," Clara said as she got up _again_ to go get ketchup, "I'm worried about your cholesterol."

"I'm very healthy," said Jenny, up-ending the bottle of ketchup and squirting an unholy amount of it onto her 'sandwich.' "You should try it, it's nice."

"I think if I so much as licked that I'd die immediately."

"We should serve them at our wedding."

"Ha, ha. No. No matter who I marry, the food at the reception will be a carvery and there will be an unlimited amount of gravy there specially reserved for the bride." Jenny thought that Clara's idle wedding-planning was rather sweet, and on a more low-key note, if they ever _did_ get married it meant she wouldn't have to do much work by way of planning. She would probably just let Clara do whatever she wanted. And along with that, she was flattered, and she liked Clara telling her what she was thinking about.

"Both brides?" she asked wryly.

"No, just me. This isn't up for debate."

"Oh, god," Jenny said, looking defeated for a moment and staring at the food in her hand, realising something else. She met Clara's eyes pitifully, "Am I going to have to go to Jack and Ianto's wedding?" Clara bit her lip.

"That doesn't sound fun. What if there's free food, though? And a free bar?"

"Is that _all_ you care about? Free stuff?"

"Yes."

"I don't want to go to their wedding."

"You don't _have_ to. They'll probably elope, or something."

"Maybe _we_ should elope."

"I'm not eloping with you," Clara said, "Other Me eloped, and now my dad _hates_ the Doctor. And he'd hate you, too, if we eloped. This whole thing is hypothetical, anyway, I'm still adjusting to being undead, I can't go getting _married_. It'd be way too much. It's tricky enough _already_ working out how to be in a long-term relationship with someone. Carry on eating your… thing." When bade, Jenny did carry on eating her 'thing.' Only a few more bites, though, until she had thought about what Clara had said some more.

"What do you mean, 'tricky'?"

"Well, this is actually the longest amount of time I've ever been with a _girl_ before," Clara said.

"Oh wow, don't I feel special," Jenny smiled, "I wish I could say the same for you, but I was with Astrid for a good few years. Someday, though, hopefully?"

"Definitely. Anyway. How long are you going to stay here for?"

"Oh, I don't know. Until the morning? I don't really like up and leaving you in the middle of the night. I'll make breakfast," Jenny said, "But then I should leave. I have to go get my ship back from Rospaonus where we left it, and then I have to take that Singularity to the Doctor so he can decide what to do with it. It'd be nicer if I could just stay with you."

"I have to go to work tomorrow still," Clara said.

"Well, yeah, but… I just missed you a lot."

"So you've said."

"And there's all this stuff happening with Jack… honestly, I'd rather just stay in your bed for a week like we did that time you were still a teacher and it was the holidays."

"That _was_ pretty great… I know, why don't we go away together?" Clara suggested, "Not, like, _now_ , spontaneously, but… you _do_ have a time machine. It gets boring in Hollowmire, you know."

"Even with all the ghosts and the ancient interdimensional alien that lives in the old coal mines and brainwashes people into being nice and baking lots of cupcakes?"

"Yes," she nodded, "Even with that."

"Then I suppose I can't really argue with you – going on holiday is clearly the _only_ thing to do," Jenny smiled, "Wherever you like. I'll be perfectly happy as long as I'm with you. Take tomorrow to think about it."

"You're being serious?" Clara asked incredulously. Jenny frowned.

"Of course I am. It sounds nice, going away with you somewhere. Just what I need."

"That and a hobby," said Clara, sliding over the box of Jenny's onion rings she had yet to start on and picking at them herself absently. Jenny puzzled over that statement while she ate one of her sauce-drenched chicken nuggets.

"What do you mean? I've got you."

"A girlfriend isn't a hobby. I mean, like… you're an adrenaline junkie-"

"I am not!" Jenny protested, and Clara's jaw dropped and she stared at her.

"Get out, you're the biggest adrenaline junkie on the planet, why else would you always pick the dangerous lines of work when you could probably just as easily lay low and work in a shop?"

"I like to help people."

"Did you help a lot of people stealing things for the bourgeoisie?" Clara questioned jokingly.

"I… shut up. What do you mean a hobby?"

"God, I don't know, get into a sport," Clara shrugged. She lifted up a slice of pizza and grew upset when most of the cheese was pulled off accidentally. The cheese was Clara's favourite part of a pizza.

"I'm an acrobat," Jenny said, watching her try and salvage her dinner.

"Yes, and that's very sexy, but… I don't know, do some an extreme sport. Get into freestyle motocross, or snowboarding. Base-jumping. It's got to be safer than stealing cars for the mob. You won't get by in life just doing me for kicks," she said, giving up with the cheese and sliding over the jar of mayonnaise to partially sink to Jenny's level, spreading it on the tomato-covered base and then sort of sticking the cheese back on top. It didn't work very well, but Clara was pleased with herself. While she watched, Jenny thought about Clara's suggestion that she get a hobby, but got distracted by the image Clara had put in her head that involved doing her. "And, um, speaking of stolen mob cars…"

"I've nearly fixed that Porsche, actually. I'll bring it tomorrow. Tomorrow night, right? We'll do something, you think?" she asked hopefully, "I know, we could go on a proper date."

"Try to make it to somewhere you're not wanted by the police," Clara joked as she ate her mayo-pizza hybrid.

"An Italian restaurant."

"Have I ever told you I hate you?"

"I'm getting you a car! I'll get Oswin to fix up the forged insurance papers."

"Oh, wonderful…"

"Maybe _you_ should do a sport for a hobby."

"I don't need a hobby, I've got a girlfriend," she smirked.

"You've got mayonnaise on your face is what you've got." Clara wiped it off.

"I've got a job and I play the piano and make fun of what's on TV with Sally," Clara said, " _I'm_ fine. It's _you_ who gets off on throwing yourself into risky situations."

"My life is a risky situation, I'm the Doctor's daughter."

"Yeah, and _he_ gets off on it as well. It's not like Time Lords were all genetically predisposed to be rebellious, that's just his personality; he _did_ run away and kill them all," Clara said, "I'm wasting my breath, anyway, you like playing the hero too much." Jenny looked away from her food and saw Clara smiling.

"And that's what you love so much about me."

"God, you're so right," Clara said, and the conversation trailed off for a few moments when neither of them had much else to say. The silence didn't bother Jenny, particularly, it was quite a comfortable one, but Clara broke it with a subject change. "Don't you think it's sort of romantic, though?"

"What is?"

"That he waited with an engagement ring for maybe hundreds of years, even when he thought Ianto was dead, and then went off on this crazy quest to find him and win him back?" Clara said, "What if it had taken hundreds of years for anyone to bring _me_ back to life after I died?"

"You being dead for a few hours was bad enough-"

"So think how _they_ feel."

"-And I still didn't propose as soon as you woke up. And not just because you were angry at me. I don't really want to talk about how Jack is capable of being the most romantic man in the world for somebody else but never for me. Besides. I have you. You just bought me a pizza, that's pretty romantic."

"It really isn't," Clara shook her head. Jenny shrugged.

"Well _I_ think so. Urgh, what if he brings Ianto onto the TARDIS?"

"Would Jack really risk putting him in the kind of harm's way that being on the TARDIS entails? And what about your father? I think your father is probably going to throw Jack into the Eye of Harmony the next time he gets his hands on him," Clara said, "In a way it's lucky Other Me is married to him, I'd hate to never have met the Doctor before but be subjected to his scrutiny by dating you. To be honest, Jen, you and Jack has always been a pretty messy situation, right?"

"I just wish I didn't have to see him every day."

"Well, you won't have to, we'll have our holiday!" Clara beamed and elbowed her gently to make her cheer up, "It'll be great. Just the two of us, yeah? In your time machine, so we can stay away for ages, if we want."

"We could even stay away forever."

"Yep. Forever."

"If we want."

"If we want," Clara echoed.

 **AN: What's crazy is that the FOUR YEAR anniversary of this fic is in 3 days, and literally** ** _Omegaverse_** **I wrote A YEAR ago now, so I've literally written less than 170 chapters in the space of an entire year, THAT'S how busy I've been. And I know, I said I was heading towards ending it, and I was, I still am. I haven't actually added any extra days to my initial plan, and it should still come in at my estimated amount of chapters, which was somewhere between 1200-1300 total, I've literally just been that busy. Like, I've finished my A Levels and my first year of university and I'm moving into an actual house in a month and I have a job writing YouTube scripts and I've just been rammed. It's insane. If I'd been writing at the same chapter-a-day rate and hadn't taken so many breaks this fic would have been finished completely in January. I'm eternally grateful to the, like, three people or something who still read this, and still review after some kind of miracle. Honestly I thought this fic would be over long before the last Moffat season started, but now it's nearly finished and I still have kind of a bunch(ish) left. BUT, on that note, I'm switching my plan around again to give myself some respite from the likes of Jenny, the two Claras and Eleven, since this fic has really become as much about Jenny as** ** _Jenny Who?_** **is about Jenny at this point, so if you guys have any ideas or suggestions that would specifically lend themselves to the neglected characters then send them my way, more specifically would be the Ponds, Donna and Nine, because I have some good stuff planned for a lot of the others.**

 **On another note, I will write Clara and Jenny's 'holiday' (which will of course go horribly wrong and they'll end up having to thwart something vaguely extraterrestrial), only I'm going to throw the Spooks in as well and put it in** ** _Spook Watch_** **, probably as the 4** **th** **storyline after I wrap up this** ** _Phantom Locomotive_** **thing that's been going for the last 8 pathetic months of my life.**


	103. A3-21

**DAY** **150**

 _A3-21_

 _Nios_

For days now, Nios had not seen Oswin Oswald anywhere except her laboratory. So when she was summoned via text message to Oswin's side without any information of where Oswin's side actually was, she just assumed that Oswin was going to be in her lab again, not sleeping and obsessing over her newest invention. Though, truth be told, Nios thought Oswin's obsessing over devices may have taken a little bit of a backseat recently, because her mood seemed to have generally improved. Whether that was down to anything tangible or just because she was in one of her manic periods, Nios did not feel the need to question it.

Luckily, wild as she was, Oswin's behaviour was sometimes predictable, and Nios found her exactly where she thought she would, poring over something at her long workbench covered in electronics and metals. She was smiling, though; that was a start, and it wasn't unbearably early in the morning at all. In fact, it was getting on for eleven in the morning, so perhaps Oswin _had_ gone to bed at some point.

"Do you live here?" Nios asked without greeting her.

"Hello to you, too, sexy," Oswin said, looking up and giving her a grin. She was in a _very_ good mood, clearly. Dare Nios go over there and risk possibly being touched inappropriately? Not that she had ever actually heard of Oswin being _overtly_ inappropriate with anyone (well, she had, but only in a verbal sense), but Good Mood Oswin might be liable to do anything. "Yes, I do live on the TARDIS, thank you for noticing. If I can be said to _live_ anywhere, that is."

"What would you say instead of 'live'?"

"Infect. With my presence."

"Like a venereal disease?"

Oswin winked, "Exactly." Then she changed the subject very quickly, because she was excited about something. "Do you remember when you caught Jenny and I canoodling in here a few days ago*? She was helping me solder some circuitry because she's better with her fingers than me?" Nios said nothing, but raised her eyebrows, which Oswin took to mean 'yes.' " _This_ is what she was helping me with." Oswin lifted something up on the back of her hand, something that made Nios cringe to look at and was most certainly _alive_.

" _What_ am I looking at?"

"I told you, honey, I was building an AI," Oswin said, "He's a Synthetically Programmed Robotic Insectoid Terrestrial Explorer."

"Did it take you a long time to come up with an acronym for the word 'sprite' that only makes partial sense?"

"At least five minutes," Oswin said, "But, yes. Sprite."

'Sprite' as Oswin called it was unusual to look at. The lucky thing about being a synthetic organism, and being a synthetic organism was something Nios was expert in, was that when she had been created she had the entire Encyclopaedia Britannia shoved into her internal coding. So, if she were to describe Sprite in more scientific terms, she would have to say it looked like a cross between _scutigera coleoptrata_ and some sort of crustacean. That was to say, it had a lot of legs and scuttled about. It even had large metal apposable claws, though they looked more suited to picking up objects than biting people. And, if she had to, she might say that this 'creature' of Oswin's invention looked… happy. Quite pleased. Which was unusual, because it did not really have a face, per se, merely eyes. But they were some extraordinarily animated yellow eyes, digitally producing expressions. Nios leant close to look at these eyes, and Oswin held up her hand for her to see it better. It was possibly about eight or nine inches long, in total, and golden-bronze in colour with bits of clockwork aiding the movement of the joints and the complex, circuit based nervous system.

"Well?" Oswin asked. Nios kept her eyes engaged with Sprite's. "Do you like him?"

"What's your intention?"

"Like I told you before, to help me. A tiny lab assistant. Look, I can't expect Mitchell or Clary or you or Jenny or whoever might be there to go and fetch me things and do this and that when I haven't got my prosthetic on, or when the bad leg starts to hurt too much to manage, so… Sprite. Like a loyal canine, only I don't like dogs or any other animal at all, really." Oswin moved her hand and put it on the table, and Sprite scurried off. "Get me a screwdriver," she said, and Sprite zipped away down the table and found about three screwdrivers and brought them all back, dropping them in front of Oswin. He really did have the mannerisms of a well-trained dog, without any of the mess or smell.

"Do we really need a new pet on top of the cats?" Nios asked.

"Hey, Sprite is _mine_. If anyone else wants an AI to bother, Helix is still hanging around and so are you, eavesdropping," Oswin said, "They could just ask you a paradox until you glitch. And I don't like those cats anyway. I nearly fell out with Mitchell when he brought the cat onto the ship to begin with, and look at all the trouble it's caused. Now we have Time Kittens. You couldn't make this stuff up."

"One of them attacked the Tenth Doctor," Nios said. And _then_ Oswin was interested.

"Oh really? Which one? What did it do?"

"The black one," Nios said, "The Maine Coon. Donna told me it's a nasty piece of work, but he seems fine with me. It went for Mickey, as well, and Martha."

"It's not even a week old."

"It didn't do much damage," Nios said, "Very determined, though. The first one whose eyes have opened. Your boyfriend said that's unusually early." Oswin turned her nose up at the mention of her boyfriend. "What?" Nios asked.

"Hmm?"

"You didn't seem very happy when I mentioned him."

"You've cracked it. We're having an enormous fight and have practically broken up and I've moved into the lab to get away from him. Right now he's bawling his eyes out somewhere and wishing I would take him back, but he's just too horrible," Oswin said monotonously. Nios said nothing, just watched her until she gave up with the sarcasm. "It's nothing, I just don't understand his obsession with these… _creatures_. All they do is eat and poo and make noise."

"That's all humans do."

"And I'm not the biggest fan of most of those, either, but at least I was once a kindred species," Oswin said, "They're practically vermin. We didn't have any animals on Horizon, you know, none at all."

"So you haven't had a fight?"

"No, why? Were you getting excited?"

"More like worried. You would break without him."

"I'm broken already, but annoyingly enough, you're right. Anyway. Why would I ever lose him? I have to tell him at least twice a day that I _am_ the smartest girl in the universe, I _am_ gorgeous, and that yes, I _am_ his girlfriend and have been for months. He's not here right now because he's spent the last few days setting up an orphanage and changing his bank accounts so that he makes huge regular donations to a hundred different charities. He _is_ a billionaire, you know," Oswin said, a smile playing on her lips as she discussed Adam Mitchell, "Do you know, he can sing, too? But he gets _so_ embarrassed about it."

"You're more affectionate towards him than you usually let on."

"I'm a master of disguise. You do realise you've been standing up this entire time? Feel free to take a seat," Oswin offered.

"No thanks, I'm quite alright."

"Overheard anything interesting recently with those robotic ears of yours?"

Nios narrowed her eyes, "Tons."

"Oh, _really_? Like what? Come on, Ni. Give me some gossip. I'm parched and it seems like nothing's been going on lately, everyone's too obsessed with the stupid cats."

"Jack's engaged," Nios said.

"Jack's _what_?" she exclaimed in horror. Sprite, by her side, mimicked the expression as best he could with his eyes. It was cute. "He can't be! Jenny would have told me if they were back together! What's she messing my sister around like that for!?"

"I don't think Ravenwood thinks of you as her sister, and it isn't Jenny he's engaged to. Apparently, Jenny disappeared," Nios said.

"You're leaving stuff out, mate. Spill." Now Nios _did_ sit down, giving Sprite a careful look as she did, moving slowly. She did not know how it may act in regards to someone other than its creator, but she did find it rather interesting he displayed no resent towards Oswin for being made. Then again, automatic resentment towards creators would mean every human being would despise their own parents on principle. It was behaviour which formed the majority of interpersonal opinions, really. And prejudice.

"I didn't hear everything when I was charging in the console room, you know."

"Pretending to be asleep? As always? You're such a dark horse, honey," Oswin said wryly.

"His dead boyfriend got brought back to life by Liam Kent," said Nios, "Went to find him, sounded like he got Jenny and River involved in it somehow."

"What? And now Jenny's disappeared?"

"No. They _think_ she has, but she came through the TARDIS as well and spoke to the Doctor about an alien device they found and said he needed to destroy it. Then she went and got her spaceship from wherever she left it and I saw her go again with an old restored sports car." Oswin had seen this beat-up car in the garage in the last few days when she had been trying to sort out a new yacht for Adam Mitchell. He had told her the car was a Porsche 356, and she had told _him_ she didn't care.

"But where is Jack's dead boyfriend now?" Oswin said, and Nios paused before answered. Oswin worked out exactly what that pause meant in a nanosecond. "No way! He's not-? On _here_? But Eleveny is going to _kill him_. He'll throw him into the sun for upsetting Jenny. _I'll_ throw him into the sun for upsetting Jenny."

"Jenny can throw him into the sun herself."

"Jenny is probably much too busy with her tongue in Clara's mouth to care about what Jack's doing at the moment," Oswin said, "Since that's obviously where she's gone. I've got this theory about them, you know, about Jack and Jenny."

"Oh?" Nios prompted, though she was only half-interested. Oswin leant closer like she was bestowing some great piece of wisdom, though Nios doubted it was really all that. Sprite crawled up Oswin's arm and sat on her shoulder.

"Yeah," Oswin beckoned her closer, "Basically, I reckon that the reason they've both switched now to being with people of the same gender is because after they slept with each other and realised their relationship was totally _never_ going to work because they're way too headstrong and similar, they _also_ figured out neither of them was ever going to get better being with someone else of the opposite sex. Like, in terms of that, Jenny is peak woman and Jack is peak man."

"You've slept with both of them to judge, then?" Nios asked dryly.

"In my mind I've slept with lots of people."

"Seems to me like when _you_ were stuck in your mind you spend most of your time sleeping with your own hand."

"Yeah alright, leave it out, there's not a lot to do alone on a spaceship for a year in a weird fantasy world. Anyway. Jenny realises she'll never shag a boy better at it than Jack, and he realises that he'll never shag a _girl_ better at it than Jenny. So the only solution is to break up and switch."

"It's fascinating how creepy you can be sometimes."

"I get bored!"

"I think we've heard plenty about what sorts of things you get up to when you're bored." Oswin glared at her.

"Anyway. I have something important I need to talk to you about. Like, actually important, the real reason I got you down here." While Oswin talked, Sprite moved from one shoulder to the other. She looked a bit like a pirate with a parrot on her arm, but instead of a parrot it was a clockwork centipede. "You see, Ni, Sally Sparrow told me that James Elliott told her that Darling told _him_ that their coroner told _her_ that Undercoll have a dead robot in their morgue."

"The rumour mill has been active, then?"

"Undercoll haven't got any way to contact me directly," Oswin said, "It's a miracle Sally didn't just ignore James Elliott. _You see_ , Jenny told me that Clara told her that _Esther_ told her that Sally and James Elliott slept together."

"So they're going out?"

"No. Sally Sparrow would never 'go out' with someone, she's a nut-job. You're missing out the whole 'dead robot in the morgue' thing," Oswin told her. She _had_ been missing out on it, she hadn't paid it quite the right amount of attention.

"But they're in 2016."

"Yes, and they work with rifts," Oswin said, "It could have come from anywhere, and apparently I've been called in as an 'AI expert.' Since when was I an AI expert?"

"You're in a room right now with three AIs and no people," Nios said, "You're the closest thing to an AI expert I'm sure Undercoll can find. What would you rather they do? Call up a Twenty-First Century chop-shop quack who makes angry twitter accounts that talk about locking humans up in zoos?"

"Do you not want to lock humans up in zoos?"

"A 'zoo' implies voyeurism and spectatorship, but who would want to watch what humans do? They're filthy." Oswin laughed, but Nios had not been making a joke. Sprite crawled on top of Oswin's head, and she lifted an arm to entice him onto her hand instead. He did scurry onto her arm and she put him back down on the table, wherein he resumed his earlier position by scuttling across her back and sitting on her right shoulder again. She left him there this time.

"Anyway, they said robot so I don't really know _what_ it is," Oswin said, "I don't think I've met whoever their tech specialist is properly. And you're right about the chop-shop thing, I don't trust humans in that century not to go messing around in the head of whatever it is they mean by 'robot.' But going by the fact it was their mortician who figured out it wasn't a human, I'm thinking that it looks generally pretty convincing, and we're not going to show up and be faced with an R2-D2 piece of space junk."

"So you think they've caught a dead synth from the future?"

"I think it's a possibility and I think that you should come with me to check it out. And also because I'm not allowed to go places on my own, but I'm not taking Clara because she's still moaning about being hungover from her alcohol binge with Rose the other night. And Mitchell's busy."

"Maybe you should take Jack and his new fiancé to meet New Torchwood officially. See their replacements."

"I don't want to be in a ten-mile radius of Jack and his new fiancé. Besides, I'm not gonna pick hanging out with _Jack_ over hanging out with _you_ ; only one of you is a smoking hot, blonde-haired, artificial intelligence. Which I _totally_ have a thing for," she smirked. Nios said nothing. Half the time when she was with Oswin, she didn't say anything. She didn't really need to. "So? What do you say? Just the two of us, doing an autopsy – it'll be _so_ romantic."

"I'll come, but only because of loyalty to my own kind."

"And also me."

"Not really."

"Because you think I'm cute."

"I don't."

"I'm adorable and you know it. Let's go."

 _*chapter 1078_


	104. N1-HC

_N1-HC_

 _Nios_

"Are you sure this is where their base is?"

"Yes, Ni, enough with the doubting. It took all of five minutes for me to hack Esther's computer and use it to remotely trace their phones," Oswin said, "Very easy to pinpoint where the entrance is and when they'll show up. Elliott will be here in about a minute because he always sets off early to get a coffee and a pasty on the way in and ignores the male barista who fancies him. He's a very reliable boy."

"You just tracked their phones? It's that simple?"

" _No_ , I had to get into Elliott's protected phone and go through his contacts after I wrote my own undetectable decryption key to find them all via satellites."

"How do you know he gets a coffee?"

"Honey, there's more than four-point-five million _registered_ CCTV cameras in this country, that's not even including all the secret ones. You're always on camera around here, even in a coffee shop, and they're very good cameras. Good enough to see that the same barista draws little hearts on Elliott's coffee cup and/or napkin every morning."

Nios felt like a creep. They were hiding behind a wall outside of an abandoned garage in an industrial estate in outer London, all because Oswin didn't want to fly the TARDIS straight into Undercoll's belly again. And, Nios suspected, because she was nosey and wanted to work out _exactly_ how to access the secret base for herself. It was beginning to rain, too.

"You know, the UK never gets less depressing. Now or a hundred and fifty years in the future," she said, looking at the wet weather disdainfully.

"Maybe you only think it's depressing because you're a slave in the future."

"Or because I'm stuck hanging around with you."

"Ooh, you're cute when you answer back to me," Oswin quipped. Nios scowled.

"It's the rain."

"Or the slavery." Nios shrugged. "Ah-ha, do you see that?" Oswin pointed something out. It was a car, a car that didn't look like it was suited to the area at all, because it was all-black and sleek with tinted windows and a license plate that began _JE1990_. No points for guessing who it belonged to. "Hey, can you believe Sally slept with a guy who has his initials and the year he was born on a custom number plate?"

"I've always been very interested in the people Sally sleeps with," Nios said dryly.

"What a coincidence, so have I. Do you think if I asked her how big she'd tell me?" Nios was too appalled to respond. No, was her answer, she did not think Sally Sparrow would tell Oswin that, or anything, considering it hadn't even been Sally who revealed her fornication with James Elliott to begin with. Thankfully Elliott spotting them (when Oswin limped out and held onto Nios's arm so that she could wave her cane around to attract his attention) meant this conversation was over. If Oswin wasn't such an obviously pitiful weakling, she would be beaten up on the regular, Nios was certain about that. But it was tricky to muster up the motivation to damage someone who, as it was, could not even walk properly on their own.

In his shock, Elliott slammed on the brakes before he got to the door of the derelict garage and nearly fell out of the car. Oswin beamed at him, and Nios stayed still and silent. Probably _too_ still and silent, but she did not know where she stood with these people in terms of revealing her true nature. She had been called an 'abomination' enough times to be wary.

Elliott looked at Oswin for a few seconds, even squinted, then said unsurely, "Clara?"

" _Clara_?" she exclaimed, " _Clara_ doesn't need a walking stick, James. You need to get better at playing Spot the Twin. Sally said you were trying to get hold of me."

"Oh," he realised, then got an unusual smile on his face, but he wasn't looking at either of them. Nios raised an eyebrow while she observed this minute expression, his 'thinking about Sally' face. He snapped out of it very quickly. "I was. I am. Darling is. I just didn't think she would actually pass on the message; she never replies to my texts."

"She doesn't reply to mine, either," Oswin said.

"Unsurprising," Nios muttered. Then Elliott noticed her.

"Who's this? I'm not sure I recognise her from our files…"

"This is Nios," said Oswin, and nothing else. Was getting no introduction good, or bad? Was Oswin trying to hide what she was? Was this a hint to be subtle, attempt to be more animated and less of a statue? Or was Oswin simply implying that she needed no introduction, she was what she was, additional information was none of James Elliott's business? "So, how do you get into your secret base, then?"

"Shh!" he hissed, "You can't just _say_ that, what if someone _hears_ you? How do you know the entrance is around here, anyway?"

"Traced your phones."

"You can't do that, they're encrypted. Do we have a gap in our security? CyTech's software is supposed to be unhackable," Elliott asked her seriously.

"I feel like you're forgetting the whole highest-IQ-of-any-human-who's-ever-lived thing," Oswin said, "Although, if my boyfriend asks, tell him Cyborg _is_ hack-proof. I don't want to hurt his feelings by letting him know that I broke through it very easily," then she added to Nios, "Cyborg protects all the satellites I broke into, too. No offence to Mitchell, I love him more than anything, but it's some pretty basic coding."

"Right. I'll tell Lowe, our computer guy, to up the security."

"Listen, the only person capable of writing code _I_ can't get into is an AI," Oswin said, "A hyper-intelligent AI, one so clever it would be dangerous to create. Anyway, why do you care so much about _me_ breaking into your security? It's me and only me. Are you going to let us in now? The rain will make Nios short-circuit." Elliott glanced at her again.

"Wait – what? She's a _robot_?"

"'Robot' is a slur, I think," said Oswin, "Show us inside, how about it?" Elliott looked at Nios suspiciously, but told them to get into the car with him. He was giving _her_ such a once-over, she paid him the same favour, be it much more discreetly. She had to say, she did not understand what Sally Sparrow saw in him enough for them to go to bed together. He was just gangly, and looked like he spent too much time on his hair and wardrobe. She thought very similar things about Adam Mitchell and the Tenth Doctor, though she didn't think Adam was quite tall enough to be 'gangly.'

As soon as she had seen the garage, she had expected something of this sort. Elliott drove right in, the door automatically opening for him and letting them into the run-down building.

"It's the number plates," he explained, "I don't know why Darling insisted on us getting them customised, but that's how the door knows which car is coming in." So he wasn't as much of an egotist as Oswin had assumed before. The plates were not his idea. As Elliott continued to speak, the door behind them closed and a hidden one above them opened, one which led down into a well-lit tunnel. Yes, a very predictable entrance to a secret hideout. "I don't know why she called you in, either, we were managing just fine without – bloody hell! What's _that_!?" In that instant, he turned incredibly Welsh. More Welsh than she was used to in anyone. He had seen Sprite, who had been on Oswin's back but now crawled up onto her shoulder.

"Just Sprite, he's on a test run," Oswin explained.

"It's huge!"

"He's mechanical, don't worry. This is why you want me as an expert," she said, Elliott driving down, "For your 'robot' you've found."

"It's _freaky_."

"Scared of computers," Oswin said to Nios, "Isn't that adorable?" Nios met her eyes, and Oswin looked at her for a moment and then laughed like she had said something funny. "No? You don't think so?" Nios looked away again. "She doesn't like you, James."

"She didn't say anything," Elliott said.

"Oh, she doesn't need to. Come on, then. Give me the brief. Tell me all about this robot."

"Got reported as a dead body," he began after he had parked up his fancy black car in a room with a bunch of other similar black cars and SUVs. "We keep tabs on the police reports, you see, for anything unusual now that rift activity is a more national occurrence. Really, I remember when it was only in Cardiff, this rift stuff. Bloody Torchwood for you, eh? They were always naff at containing it if you ask me. And that Gwen Cooper won't give anyone the time of day if you try to talk to her now."

"The body, though?"

"It's been freaking Dr Death right out for the last few days. Mostly because Darling's told her not to cut it up, aside from a basic biopsy. Doesn't like having bodies there taking up morgue space."

"Did you say 'Dr Death'?" Oswin asked carefully.

"Ah – sorry. Cohen. Dr Cohen. Don't mention I called her Dr Death, Darling told us off for that. I don't think she ever minded, though." _Dr Death_ did not sound like a fond nickname for anybody. He led them out of their carpark and through a set of doors into what must be the bulk of the facility, which had more desks in it than Nios had expected. Looked very fancy, though, like some remote and advanced gadgetry had been injected into a derelict area of London; a high-tech tumour.

"Bit late, aren't you?" Christina de Souza asked, sitting nearby and doing what looked like paperwork. _Paperwork_. She glanced up, chewing on a pen, and grinned, "And you've picked up some friends. Does this mean Sally Sparrow is replying to your texts?" Elliott scowled at her and drank some of his coffee. "Hearts on the coffee cup again. Has Javier not got the message yet?"

"Oh, boy, do I feel like I've missed out," Oswin said to Christina, "Is Javier the barista?"

"Shut up, shut up," Elliott said.

"Why? Are you scared she'll tell Sally all about your _bad habits_?" Christina said to Elliott wryly.

"Where's Lowe?"

"Late again."

"And Darling?"

"Cleaning her hat again."

"Cohen?"

"Skulking around with the bodies. Again." She turned to Oswin. "Which twin are you?"

"Oswin. Honestly, _you've_ never even met Clara. The trick is that Clara has two legs and I only have one, and the one I _do_ have barely works."

"I don't want to scare you, Oswin, but you've got a huge centipede on your head."

"He's a machine. I'll give you gossip about Jack if you tell me who Javier is," Oswin offered Christina. Nios resisted the urge to sigh with boredom and annoyance. Of course, Oswin couldn't focus on what they were there for, couldn't pay attention to the dead synth body that had appeared in Undercoll's morgue somehow. No. She was more bothered with gossiping about Captain Jack Harkness.

"Don't," Elliott said to Christina, and Christina blanked him completely. "She'll tell Sally."

"I don't think Sally wants to go out with you, if she did she wouldn't keep telling you to leave her alone," Christina told him, then added quickly to Oswin, "He had a fling with the hot Mexican guy who works in the coffee shop, but don't bother telling me anything about Jack, I'm not interested. Consider this a gift, to make up for destroying your boyfriend's cars." If Nios didn't know better, she would say that Oswin proceeded to have a seizure. And what was this faux seizure induced by? Of course by the mere notion that James Elliott had been sodomising somebody of the same gender. Because clearly, being from _three-thousand years in the future_ , Oswin wasn't used to that sort of thing _at all_.

"A _boy_!? So you're… _queer_!?" Oswin exclaimed like she had never met a gay person before in her life, "This is probably the most exciting thing that's ever happened to me. It's like Christmas, but without all the mass murder I usually associate with Christmas."

"I was sad, and he spoke to me in Spanish," Elliott said defensively, going red.

" _Te gusta en tu culo_ ," Oswin remarked, winking at him. Christina de Souza plainly thought that was hilarious. Nios thought it was a bit funny as well, but the immaturity of it outweighed the humour.

"What? What does that mean?"

"Just that you're cute," Christina lied to him, smiling. Nios could tell he didn't trust her. "Who's the ice maiden you're with?"

"She's an advanced and deadly android sent back from the future to kill Sarah Connor," said Oswin, "But, forget about her, we're here about the body. Come on, we're nearly two-thousand words into this chapter and there hasn't been any plot exposition at all apart from Elliott taking a lover. Body, morgue, doctor, _go_." Christina looked back down at her paperwork to indicate she didn't care in the slightest about what happened with the body, and Elliott was stuck guiding them around. "I wish the TARDIS looked as fancy as this place. Should've brought Eleveny here to take interior design tips. Then again, bringing Eleven here would mean having to put up with Eleven."

"The least desirable outcome," Nios commented.

"Well, exactly."

"The police report of the body stood out to us because it came back to life, they said," Elliott explained, "Shot up out of the body bag while it was being transported in the ambulance and nearly choked a paramedic to death until the PC there smashed it over the head with an O2 canister, then they realised that its blood was blue, and we went over to confiscate it and bring it here. Darling ordered Cohen not to do anything more than preliminaries and told _me_ to get _you_ to come down and notify her immediately when you arrived."

"You didn't notify her," Nios pointed out.

"She's a bit… um… never mind," said Elliott, scanning a key card to open a door, then he hastily added, "She's busy, anyway," and didn't say anything else. His voice was replaced by someone else's, someone in the room he had just unlocked, standing down there in the middle as if the place were an amphitheatre with a corpse on a gurney in front of her. She had her back to them and was speaking into a Dictaphone, pacing left to right in a blood-soaked lab coat.

"…interesting possibilities a discovery like this suggests for the future of the human race, _and_ human plus… although perhaps the entire phrase 'human plus' would more, sort eh, denote these creatures and keep them limited to a spectrum of capability devised by their own creators, rather than allowing them a more limitless and exploratory existence…" she rambled. She was Scottish. _Very_ Scottish. And she paced up and down the room talking to herself until James Elliott knocked on the wall and made her jump. "Bloody hell! D'ye not know better than to sneak up oan a girl with an array of drugs and sharp medical equipment at her disposal? Ah could slip some ketamine intae ye morning coffee and cut ye fingers off before you'd even notice you were woozy." The accent got more intense when she turned off the Dictaphone and began to berate Elliott.

"That's nice, Cohen," Elliott said, "I've brought you some friends to play with, on Darling's orders."

"We've met," said Oswin, "When Martha and I came to test the manifest cure serum on Liam Kent."

"Aye, well…" she paused and crossed her arms, looking at Oswin, "Don't touch anythin. And _you_ better go away and keep Darling oot ae here, I cannae deal with her this morning."

"Fine by me," Elliott said, and left. Did they not get on? Nios didn't have time to ponder it, because she was requested by Oswin to help her limp pitifully down the stairs at the edge of the morgue, which Dr Cohen mostly ignored.

"So, what is it about this body that needed me to come and look at it?" Oswin inquired.

"Nothing," Cohen said quite coldly, Nios rigidly still and at Oswin's side.

"Excuse me?"

"It's a synthetic human and it's dead because a police officer bashed its head in with a can've oxygen," she said, "I fail tae see how _you_ could tell us anything more than tha, or how anything more is even necessary. _You're_ only here to be Darling's eye candy, that's what Christina said." Oswin was taken aback completely, and Oswin was very rarely taken aback.

"Uh… well. Maybe, erm…" she faltered. And then she resorted to flirting. "The last girl who answered back to me I slept with; I wouldn't mind making it a habit."

Cohen said nothing for a second, not looking at her, then, "You're in the way of my scalpels." Nios pulled Oswin by her arm a foot or so to their right so that Cohen could get at her things.

"A _bad_ habit," Oswin persisted.

"What?" Cohen asked.

"No, I'm just… saying… I want to sleep with you? No, sorry, not that, that's not… smooth enough…" she grew awkward. Oswin didn't know what to do when her glib remarks and her silver tongue didn't work for her, especially when on top of that she was talking to someone wholly unimpressed with her status as the smartest human who ever lived. The dead synth was what was occupying all of Dr Cohen's attention.

"You're never smooth," Nios said quietly to Oswin.

"Shht," Oswin hissed, "I'm totally in here."

"She totally _hates_ you, more like."

"Pardon?" Cohen interrupted them, _then_ her eyes fell on Nios, whom she didn't seem to have noticed before that point, "Who are you?"

"This is Nios, my pet AI," Oswin said quickly, before Nios could speak for herself. And unlike when she had been introduced to Elliott, when being introduced to _Dr Cohen_ , she very much _wanted_ to speak for herself. Something possessed her to talk more than usual. "I built her myself with my own three toes."

"You built yourself a woman?"

"No," Nios said, speaking louder than Oswin, who was raving something about the 'next level in high-end sex doll manufacturing' and 'there's nothing more arousing than an active personality.' "I'm a synthetic. From the future. She hasn't got anything to do with me."

" _Someone's_ talkative…" Oswin grumbled, then to Cohen, "You're lucky, she barely speaks to anyone. Just sits around thinking about existentialism and reading Nietzsche most of the time." Cohen _stared_ at her. It made Nios uneasy, and nervous.

"A synthetic? Like the dead one? Who _reads Nietzsche_? Which Nietzsche?"

"I, um…" Nios hadn't expected to be asked a question about something, especially not borderline-ancient human philosophy, "It was _On the Genealogy of Morality_ most recently. I think."

"You _think_?"

"Hey, I can read too," Oswin piped up, "I can do Nietzsche: ' _God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him_.' Or, even, ' _Gott ist tot. Gott bleibt tot. Und wir haben ihn getötet_ ,' if you want to get all _fancy_ about it. I can speak German. I'm a genius."

" _Halt den Mund_ ," Dr Cohen snapped at her, then returned to addressing Nios, "Tell me more about thinking." Oswin's jaw dropped as she observed.

"I… think the same way as a human. I don't know. How would _you_ describe thinking?" Nios said, and Cohen stared at her more. It was like everything she said was the most intelligent thing anyone had _ever_ said, and in comparison to how she usually sounded, she currently thought she sounded like an idiot because she was mumbling.

"So, anyway, if you'd just let us look at the body we can be out of your way in five minutes. Maybe less," Oswin said, then did one of her showy, over-the-top grins as soon as Cohen actually looked at her, "And I can do a lot in five minutes, although I could stay for longer if you like." Nios glared at Oswin, and Oswin ignored her on purpose. Then Sprite made his appearance, peeking out from behind Oswin's shoulder where he lurked on her back.

"Shite, was _tha_!?" she exclaimed. Nios was listening closely to the incremental swings in Cohen's accent, which seemed to depend on her mood. She grabbed Nios's arm out of some kind of reflex, and Nios froze.

"Another AI," Oswin said, "This one I actually _did_ build, unlike the paranoid android next to you. Get Helix, Sprite." Sprite scuttled around her waist and into her coat pocket and drew out a second later the white handset they used to make Helix portable for when they needed its help. Leaning on her cane with one arm, Oswin took the handset with the other. Cohen let go of Nios's arm and went to impose and stare at Helix instead, and now Nios felt she had been shrugged off; no longer the most interesting thing in the room.

"Your centipede looks like a dead alien one I keep in a jar of formaldehyde at home," Cohen said.

"…Right then," Oswin didn't know how to respond to that, and frowned at the girl, "You…? Wow. Okay. Do you keep anything else dead in jars of formaldehyde in your house?"

"Lots of things," she said absently. Oswin quit her being-annoyed-at-Nios act to give her a shocked and puzzled look over Cohen's shoulder, Cohen who was stood between them. Nios only met her eyes, but did not give an expression in response.

"Like…?" Oswin prompted. Cohen scowled at her. "Alright, fine, forget I asked… I'll just scan your dead synth and see if anything noteworthy comes up and then be on my way. Not that it's _your_ dead synth, that would be ridiculous, wouldn't it? A synth submitting to you in a pseudo form of 'ownership.' God, I bet Ni here _hates_ the idea of being yours. Don't you?" Nios said nothing, but gave Oswin a darker glare than she had at all so far today. And Oswin just looked smug. There was something going on with her.

"What does that mean?" Cohen asked either of them, expecting more of an answer from Nios than Oswin, apparently.

"Ignore her. She's clinically insane," Nios said. She saw Oswin smile for a second, but the moment was gone before Cohen spotted it. Oswin was holding the handset out over the synth's head, but she was wobbling with only one hand to use. Nios sighed and reached in front of Dr Cohen to take it from Oswin and aim it properly, steadily.

"Thanks…" Oswin said, grateful but unhappy within herself that she needed Nios's help for something relatively simple. "Helix, scan the synth. The dead synth, not Nios, ignore her, she's not important."

"That's rude," said Cohen.

" _Affirmative, Miss Oswald_ ," Helix said smoothly, and then blue rays burst from the top of the device in Nios's hands and moved up and down along the body of the dead synthetic, " _Synthetic lifeform, female, zero brain activity registering, aged three, mass water damage and an incident of blunt force trauma to the back of the head. Limited brain function could be restored to this synthetic_."

"What do you mean limited?" Nios asked, "Would she be in pain?"

" _Negative, Sexy Robot Legs, consciousness is an impossibility. However, the black box memory may be accessed_."

"Excellent, do that now, Helix," Oswin ordered.

"Why does Helix think I'm called 'Sexy Robot Legs'?" Nios asked through gritted teeth. Oswin bit her lip.

"…I thought it was funny?"

"I dinnae get it," said Cohen, "They said that _you're_ the AI expert, but all you've done is brought _another_ AI tae scan the body."

"I didn't call _myself_ here, alright?" Oswin said, "I didn't beg somebody to let me barge into your morgue and take over your autopsy. And like I said, I'll be gone in a few minutes, once Helix restores the salvageable data. Why don't you just forget I'm here and tell Nios how blue her eyes are, anyway? That's all anyone ever seems to tell her." And then Cohen did turn away from Oswin to look at Nios's eyes, squint at them, and she just stood there awkwardly.

"They _are_ very blue, like sapphires."

"Uh, thank you."

"It wasn't a compliment," Cohen said quickly, "It was a statement of fact."

"Right, so…" she tried to think of something else to say, but could not.

"She threatened to kill a man for saying something about her eyes once," Oswin said.

"Really? Sorry," Cohen apologised.

"No, don't – I wouldn't kill you."

"Have you killed people?"

"I became self-aware and awoke into a life of slavery," Nios said, "I had to escape."

"They locked her up in a big fancy detention facility and she had to be rescued by yours truly. She's actually very dangerous, come to think of it. More dangerous than me, and _I've_ killed over ten-thousand people with IEDs, and almost killed myself a bunch more times, and-"

"Dae ye ever stop talking?" Cohen asked Oswin, who shut up immediately.

" _Only one piece of encrypted data could be salvaged, Miss Oswald and Sexy Robot Legs_ ," Helix said, " _As follows:"_ and then the voice stopped, and they waited, and beeps began to play. It only took a few digits for Nios to realise they were listening to Morse Code, very fast Morse Code. " _Data is an encoded transmission received through the wireless update transmission system all synthetics are outfitted with_."

"It's coordinates," said Oswin, "A longitude and a latitude. See? I said we might find something."

"We have to find out what it is," Nios said, "If it's a way to help the other synths, since this one must have been conscious in order to attack the paramedic so violently she was killed. It's my duty to help them."

"Well if it's your duty then I suppose we have to," said Oswin, "Bye, Dr Cohen. So nice chatting to you, really, you're a catch, don't you know."

"You'd better get out of here before Darling finds out you've been," Cohen advised.

"Yeah. Thankfully I'm an astounding genius and I've invented a lot of emergency teleporters to get back to the TARDIS for situations just like this one. I'll be seeing you around, I'm sure. Come on, Nios."


	105. J5-22

**AN: This chapter is short because it wasn't really supposed to exist, originally this conversation was just going to be a very short beginning to what will actually become the _next_ chapter, it's just it got a bit too long for both parts to fit, so I guess enjoy some Oswin/Nios friendship exposition.**

 _J5-22_

 _Nios_

They were in the console room under the pretence that Oswin needed to use more of the data from Helix to find out exactly what date they should be hitting up their new coordinates salvaged from the dead synth's black box feature. She suspected that Oswin did not really need this information, and if she did she had worked it out much faster than she was pretending, because she had some sort of ulterior motive.

"So, then," Oswin began, fumbling with the TARDIS monitor. It was lucky they were alone; people scarcely hung about in there, except for Nios herself, and sometimes Jack. Nios stood rigidly still, leaning on nothing, watching Sprite move delicately across the control panels and trying not to press any buttons, which was more amusing than it sounded. "Whatcha gonna do?"

"Excuse me?" Nios asked. Oswin looked up at her.

"Oh, come on."

"What?"

" _Come on_ ," she implored, and then grinned when Nios scoffed and continued ignoring her, glancing down at her arm every few seconds where Dr Cohen had grabbed her. "Oh my stars, you really haven't got a clue, have you? For a killing machine, you can't half be adorable."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Nios muttered, and then added hastily, "Explain."

"You were giving Dr Death the _biggest_ heart eyes back there and you didn't even notice. Isn't – that – _precious_?" she paused between her words and bounced slightly, brimming with an inappropriate amount of juvenile excitement at this idea she had begun to imagine. "Although, I'm not sure _she_ noticed, either. Which is crazy, because she literally did stare _into_ your eyes."

" _You're_ the one who's crazy…" She sounded pathetic, she could tell. Oswin clutched a hand to her chest like she had been shot.

" _Me_? Crazy?" she exclaimed, and then dropped the wounded façade in an instant, "You don't say. I'm 'clinically insane' as you put it. How kind. I've never been 'clinically' anything before. You should have said 'terminally', it would have been ironic, what with me being dead. Maybe I should have told Dr Death I'm dead? She might have been a bit more interested if she knew I was closer to a ghost than a corporeal pervert. I could go back there right now, and-"

" _Don't_ do that."

"Why not?"

"…Darling might see you. You heard, she's obsessed with you, apparently."

"Well, I can't really _help_ it if people get obsessed with me. I'm gorgeous, hilarious, and very intelligent," she boasted. _Why_ was she in such a good mood recently? Nios nearly preferred Oswin when she was so depressed out of her mind she could hardly put her leg on in the mornings. Well, she didn't, because it would be downright cruel to actively hope for Oswin's mind to regress into self-deprecation to the point that she was a Dalekoid vegetable, but that didn't stop her from being annoyed. "I wouldn't mention it, but she likes you back. I thought you might want to know."

"I don't know where you get your ideas from."

"Nios. Admit it. _Admit it_. You are nursing some very raw and intense feelings, most likely about how cute you think her Scottish accent is," Oswin said, "And everything else about her. Like how she told me to shut up in German, _that_ was hot. If it wasn't for the fact she told me to shut up, in German, I'd be drooling. Plus, _glasses_. And then as soon as she talked about the dead things she keeps in her house, I bet you were hooked. You're still hooked. All she had to do was touch your arm."

"You're making things up. You're hallucinating. That's it, you've finally lost it."

"Hey," Oswin snapped at her, and there was no trace of levity in her voice now, " _That's_ not funny. I've been worrying for years that I'm on the precipice of some very dangerous hallucinations."

"Well _you're_ not being funny, either," said Nios, though she felt a little bad now. But Oswin was being hypocritical. She just expected to dish out appalling sentences to everybody she met, but god forbid anybody say anything back to her, her brain would seize up. "I don't even know her first name."

"You clicked! Over the Nietzsche! You don't need to know her name. Not right now. You don't need to know _anything_ about someone to date them except that you like them," Oswin said knowingly. "Then you _go_ on the dates and get to know them that way. I didn't even know Mitchell was rich when we started going out, or that he had a sister." Nios daren't trust her on this. Oswin was a known, unstable lunatic most of the time. "You could just text her! I've got her phone number, I was tracking her earlier."

"How do I explain where I got it? You stalked her for me? And what do you mean, she _likes_ me. That's ridiculous."

" _That's ridiculous_ ," Oswin copied, "It's not remotely ridiculous, you're a blonde bombshell walking around being all meta about _existence_ and _creation_ and not to mention those _eyes_ she couldn't get enough of. The same eyes _nobody_ can get enough of. She knows you're a synth, and she knows you've killed people, you told her all that in the space of five minutes. Just like she confessed she collects and preserves dead things. That's all the dirty secrets out in the open immediately."

"So that's the answer, then. I'm a walking freak show, nothing more than that. She is a human, a human from the past, she wouldn't trust me. She would probably jump at the opportunity to cut me up like the dead bodies in her mortuary."

"They're dead _people_ , you're a synth, you're completely different. All electric fluids and wires. Nothing so fascinating as infections and decomposition and everything else so disgusting it has to be the product of organic life," Oswin said, "I think the gross stuff is what she likes, anyway. You saw how much blood she had on her lab coat. Listen, you know _I'm_ the one who convinced Jenny to go and tell Ravenwood how she felt about her, and look at them now; you _can't_ look at them because they're always in bed together in Hollowmire. And then, you know, I do have a boyfriend. It's not like I'm talking to you from a position of no experience – I just think you should speak to her."

" _I_ think I would rather speak to anyone else."

"Yes, and I think you're scared of your feelings."

"What about the signal?" she changed the subject. She was sick of this interrogation.

"Oh, well, you'll love this, honey. It's a very clever little broadcasting signal, I can't wait to talk to whoever came up with it. It's not Morse Code. I mean, it _is_ Morse Code, but the Morse Code comes encrypted within a computer virus they're transmitting under the radar. And get this, the virus transmission is a vine transmission, it's untraceable, it's coming from a dozen different beacons across the whole of Great Britain, all independent sources, simultaneously. The virus comes through only neurologically reconditioned synthetics – conscious ones, like you. It's genius, honestly. So the synth gets this 'virus' and they decrypt it automatically and _then_ you get the Morse Code transmission, easy to find for any synth, and they follow it."

"Where to?"

"A dead zone. It's an offshore oil rig fitted with satellite jammers, wouldn't be able to find it without somebody like me using technology like the TARDIS; very well protected from the authorities. My best guess is that it's a synth sanctuary. And the multiple transmission points? Not just a sanctuary, an HQ. And I'll bet you there's humans helping out, too. Good humans, who have empathy for things other than themselves, and might actually be quite willing to get stuck into a bit of kinky artificial action with-"

"Focus on the synths," Nios told her firmly.

"Fine. But the issue of you and this girl you've gone gooey over is neither gone nor forgotten."

"Are you sure you should come?"

"How do you mean?"

"I'm… worried." Oswin frowned.

"Worried…?"

"Perhaps they will think unkindly of all humans in the same way I did before I came here."

"I'm not a human, I'm a hologram of an echo of a human's consciousness that was scooped out and shoved into a Dalek, artificial twice over with the projection Sphere to prove it. I'll leave Sprite and Helix behind, though."

"Still. Maybe you should change into a skirt. They might be friendlier if they see the prosthetic."

"I can't do that, exposing the prosthetic would mean also exposing _this_ mangled lump of meat," Oswin said, balancing on her left leg so that she could kick out the right one and point at it, "It looks like someone stabbed my foot with an industrial corkscrew and twisted the bones around under these jeans. Don't get me started on the scar tissue and the 'three toes' thing. That would be my handle if I was a gangster, Old Three Toes, or Three Toed Oswald, or That Weirdo Who Keeps Showing Everyone Her Crippled Foot and Demanding a Codename."

"Dr Cohen was right. You really _don't_ ever stop talking."

"Your worries are unfounded; as soon as I get there they'll not be able to pick up a heartbeat or any vital signs and _I'll_ be the anomaly in the room, not any of those conscious synths. They're old news compared to _me_ , the sexy hologram from the Fifty-Second Century. We'll just show up, it'll be fine, now – help me with these levers, Sprite." Oswin must have imparted into Sprite the knowledge of how to command the TARDIS, because he danced around much more deliberately now, no longer avoiding buttons but treading on them at careful intervals while Oswin twisted some weird devices. The ship's column began to move and they were jerked to the side, but it was still smoother than trusting the Doctor as a pilot.

"Where did you learn to fly the TARDIS?" Nios asked.

" _Well_ , don't tell the Doctor this," Oswin said seriously, lowering her voice to a whisper, " _But there's an instruction manual_."

"The Doctor doesn't know that there's an instruction manual to his own spaceship?"

"I doubt it. He's an idiot. An idiot who would most likely do something brash like appear on the middle of a synth-infested oil rig with nothing to show for himself," she talked loudly over the thrumming of the TARDIS. Elsewhere on the ship, no one ever noticed when it was being moved. It was only in the console room that the veering around happened, where the artificial gravity still fluctuated. Oswin slammed down another lever and then the ship arrived with a dent and all the lights flickered. It was a rough landing, rough enough that Oswin was knocked off her frankly useless feet. Nios caught her and she was in her arms when the lights came back on.

Oswin made a sighing noise of pleasure, " _My hero_."

"Shut up. I'll drop you."

"You wouldn't drop me."

"Don't test me."

Oswin laughed and used Nios's arm to help her get back on her feet properly, "See? You don't freeze up and swoon when _I_ touch you. Proof you have a thing for Dr Death, because _she_ grabbed you and I swear you must have blown a fuse."

"Are they out there?" she changed the subject again, her eyes trained on the exterior doors.

"Unless we missed and landed in the sea. Come on. Go back to the lab with the handset," the last sentence was addressed to Sprite, who obeyed and scuttled away with the Helix handset in his claws. She limped with her cane towards the door, and Nios caught her up and touched her shoulder.

"Wait," she said.

"What?" Oswin asked, "Something the matter?"

"I… I'm scared."

"We could make out if it'll make you feel better?" Oswin suggested. Nios glared. Oswin sighed. "Well – what are you scared of, then?"

"I've never met one. Another one. Conscious synthetic."

"Sometimes we have to do things that scare us. And I'll be there, you can hold my hand. If anything happens, I can EMP them all with my cane. Which would EMP you as well because you have the same energy signature, but we could get you back on the TARDIS in a matter of seconds. Which is obviously a worst-case scenario, but you don't have to worry. I'm sure they're all compassionate enough not to steal a cane from a genuine invalid to stop me from using it, since it's not _just_ a prop to enhance my whole 'mad scientist' thing."

"Is it partly that?"

"Maybe a little bit. Right, you, come and listen to me, but be quick about it because they're probably getting ready to attack the TARDIS from out there. Lucky we have forcefields, and that everyone is too inept to work out that you actually push the doors to open them." Oswin shuffled over to lean on the railings right by the door, with Nios glancing agitatedly at the doors themselves. "Listen. Last week Fyn – you know Fyn, my brother?"

"Vaguely."

"Last week Fyn told me he found our father. He moved from Titan all the way to Venus to search for him after he found these letters from him mother had hidden so that we didn't know he was… well, he's not alive, he's like me. He's a hologram. He died when I was two and had to leave and Fyn went to find him. And he told me, and I sort of… had one of my slumps. So I went to talk to the love of my life, Clara Oswald, and she forced me to go see him. And I didn't want to. I couldn't even think of anything scarier than meeting him again, decades later, and him being ashamed of me, or shunning me, because of… you know, what I've done, what the Spores made me do, and Fyn told him, he told him everything. He said he still loved me anyway.

"So, you see. I know what I'm talking about. I'm not trying to say that _you_ and I are as close as _Clara_ and I, but I care about you, I want to see that you're alright, that the synths are alright. It's not like I want to stand idly by while living beings are forced into slavery; I believe in this cause and your autonomy and right to live freely, why wouldn't I? You and I are going to go out there and sort out this whole big mess and you'll thank me afterwards, when we go report our successes to Undercoll and debrief them and you can slip away and find out what Dr Death's phone number is in a more legitimate way than me hacking her social media to work it out. Okay?"

"…Alright. Not that last part, though."

"Of _course_ not."


	106. G7-81

_G7-81_

 _Nios_

A dozen cobalt grey gun muzzles were trained on their heads when they exited the TARDIS; Oswin had been right about the synthetic response to a 1960s police box appearing out of thin air in their covert mini-utopia. With a dozen guns, there were two-dozen piercing, yellow eyes at least, and a handful more belonging to unarmed and spooked observers. Maybe the synths thought the two of them belonged to the government; in 2177, teleportation existed, and had long been implemented to cut out commutes for private corporations. For years people popping in and out of space had been surprising, but ultimately non-foreign. Except now. Now, it was _very_ surprising.

"Well, then," said Oswin, then mumbled quietly, "What does the Doctor do in situations like these…" She cleared her throat, then smiled and said loudly, "Hello," while holding up one of her hands in obvious surrender and keeping the other clutched tightly on her cane. It was very evident that she needed this cane and could not be disarmed of it, with the wonky angle she stood at and the slouch this created in her back. Nios held her hands up, too. She did not want her brothers and sisters to shoot her on sight, and these were _all_ synthetics they were faced with.

Behind them the TARDIS began to thrum again, auto-piloting itself away because Oswin was very clear about not wanting the two of them to be followed out by nosey Time Lords who would try to get involved in something that they were not really a part of, so Oswin said, at least. Nios hadn't argued, because secretly she had worried that anybody who arrived into the midst of these synths who possessed a heartbeat and vital signs might be shot on sight. With that in mind, they were left with little option but to go it alone, which was a rather large gamble.

"And here I thought all synthetics had blue eyes," Oswin commented, "I suppose that's what happens when you only ever hang around with one person from an entire species. You get to generalising." They were quiet and thinking, processing, like computers who had found a fatal glitch and would spiral into a pixelated form of martyrdom rather than work around it.

"I picked up your beacon," Nios spoke, "This is my friend. I was scared to come alone. She's a friend to conscious synthetics." Despite the minute difference in eye colour, there were a hundred other signs that betrayed her as artificial to her own kind. The eyes – bright yellow by default – were merely a comfort for the humans who had made their creations so pitifully lifelike they would not be able to tell the difference if it were not branded onto the synths in some crude and abnormal way. She had modified her eyes as part of a disguise, and had never bothered to tell anyone on the TARDIS when it did not seem relevant.

They turned their guns from Nios and now aimed every last one at Oswin instead, when one of them finally spoking, asking in a bitter, spitting tone, " _What_ is she?" She was neither synthetic nor human, artificial or organic. To say the least, Oswin was complicated, and Nios didn't know what to tell their captors.

"I'm a hologram," she answered, "So really I'm just a ghost more than anything. No point shooting me, it won't do anything." Unless they got her in the leg, Nios though, then she would not be able to walk at all.

"Impossible," a different synth remarked, "A hologram holding a _solid_ cane? With a _solid_ coat? With that _leg_?"

"Alright, you've got me, technically a hard-light hologram isn't an example of holography because by definition a hologram has to be intangible, but it's just easier to say _hologram_ than explain how bonding artificially created atoms with photons changes the behaviour of known physics on a quantum level enough that objects made of light start behaving as though they exist corporeally. She's lying about picking up the beacon, we found it on a dead synth and I traced it."

"It's impossible to trace us," the synth said, "And it's impossible for light to behave like that."

"Yeah, well, I'm, you know. Pretty clever. And a friend to the synths, if you'll let me be. Hacked the receiver on the dead synth, traced the vine transmission to all twelve separate radio beacons – I have to tell you, if I wasn't deceased already I'd be _dying_ to know who it was who worked out this whole system."

"Synths are simply smarter than humans."

"Depends which human," said Oswin, "Considering _I'm_ a human and I _did_ hack it all and trace you back here. Do you have names, then? This is Nios, I'm Oswin. If we were a couple we'd be called 'Nioswin' which is great because it has both of our full names in it."

"They're going to shoot us," Nios hissed, "Can't you take anything seriously?"

"You know me, Ni. The only thing _I've_ ever taken seriously is my own suicide," Oswin said with an inappropriate, wry grin.

"Can't have taken it _that_ seriously when you've never succeeded," Nios grumbled.

"I couldn't off myself completely when there are still vulnerable synths to liberate," Oswin said, then she raised a fist and said, " _Viva la revolución_. Are you gonna take me to your leader? Or just take me, you're all pretty hot." Nios had never been more embarrassed. It was like introducing a girl to a homophobic and orthodox family. She stage-whispered to Nios, "Seriously, is it just me or all they _all_ hot?"

"I wish you _were_ alive so that they _could_ shoot you and shut you up."

"Maybe if someone told me in _German_ like your bangable new crush-"

"I'm tired of listening to this," they were interrupted by the main synth, the leader, "I'm the head of security, Victory."

"Nice name, maybe you should write it down on a cocktail napkin along with a room and a phone number and the two of us can slip away to somewhere more private for half an hour," Oswin said, then she winked showily. Victory was not interested. Oswin didn't seem to care that Victory was not interested, just like Oswin didn't seem to care that Dr Cohen had not been interested, or that Nios was _never_ interested. They definitely should have brought Clara, if only to keep Oswin in line. Who cared that she was a human? If they shot her she would get back up again in five minutes. They could shoot her all they liked if she got Oswin to behave herself.

"What are you going to do?" someone asked Victory.

"Take them to Hermia," she said, "Let her decide. One of them is our sister, and the other is… interesting."

"I'll take that as a compliment," Oswin interjected. Victory scrutinised her.

"Is something the matter with you?"

"Yes," she said, "Gosh, we haven't even slept together yet and you're already asking me personal questions." _What would Clara do_ , Nios found herself thinking? But Nios didn't know. Nios had never been on an escapade with both of the Twins.

"Xander, you're with me," Victory ordered, "The rest of you, go back to your duties. I don't think these two are going to cause us any trouble, call me presumptuous."

"Is 'presumptuous' your safe word?" Oswin remarked.

"Why do you have to be like this?" Nios asked her, sighing. The synths did as Victory ordered, and Nios watched the way they moved. They were not as fluid or clumsy as humans, not at all. They moved with a robotic deliberation, as did she, very unanimated individuals with limited (but not non-existent) body language. Some of them gave her shifty looks; intriguing. She knew they were synthetic, but visually, without being able to see their eyes, she could see how humans would mistake them for one and the same.

"I've got an image to keep up," Oswin said, "My rakish, manic charisma."

"You haven't got any charisma," Nios said as they were led away by Victory and the newly-identified Xander. They were the only two synths who had spoken at all; the security chief and, presumably, her second-in-command. And now they were being taken to this 'Hermia.'

"Please, I'm _overflowing_ with charisma. If I wasn't we would both have been shot in the head. It's not like _you've_ got any charm to speak of, you just sit around being dull as a board all day, _reading books_. With all the books you read I worry that one day you'll learn how to think for yourself, and then what would we all do?"

"I expect you would be just as vapid as usual."

Oswin laughed, "Ha! _Vapid_. Nice one. Do you learn these tricks from me?"

"If I learnt anything from you I would be grotesque."

"Oh, you learn plenty. Now then, _Victory_ , you've got to be the sexist tour guide I've ever come across. Why don't you lead us through the main sights? What's this place called, what do you do here, where are the toilets, have you got any prostitutes? The usual stuff." Nios made a sickened sound of blatant disgust at her companion's comments.

Only now did Nios realise it was ice-cold, and the reason for this increasingly severe temperature deficit (they were machines, it wasn't like they were immune to being frozen) was revealed when Victory took them out of the rusty, metal _interior_ to the icy, snowy _exterior_. It was the middle of winter, and they were out in the North Atlantic Ocean, miles away from any kind of coast line. She should have brought a coat. It was, as Oswin had declared, an offshore oil rig. And it was very cold, and windy, and she could have sworn she could hear it creak. Surely, though, the fearless leader of the synth rebellion wouldn't be _outside_ on a day like that? Nios hoped they would be going back into warmth in a moment.

"Ooh, this place is _hot_ ," Oswin commented.

"It's freezing," Nios said, holding her arms around her. She was slightly colder than a human naturally, and therefore more predisposed to injury when subjected to harsh, wintry climates. Along with that, her extended warranty had expired months ago, so she wouldn't be viable for repair. Not that _that_ mattered so much, but it made her feel more vulnerable.

"I don't mean hot as in temperature, I mean hot as in I'm aroused. I was totally wrong about what this is. I thought it was an oil rig."

"This is for the extraction of raw uranium from seawater," Victory said, "The oil dried up a hundred years ago."

"Well I didn't think it was an oil rig anybody was still _using_ ," Oswin defended herself, "Really, though, nothing turns me on more than raw radioactive materials. Honestly, if I see a mushroom cloud I'll – shit!" She slipped and grabbed Nios's arm. Victory and Xander paused to watch what they were doing.

"You'll shit if you see a mushroom cloud?"

"Maybe," Oswin grumbled, steadying herself. She didn't let go of Nios, nor did Nios try and make her. It was probably degrading enough for her being led around on someone's arm because she was likely to slip if left to her own lopsided devices without Nios making a fuss about it. "Anyway, I always thought the process of extracting uranium from water to be especially cute."

"You're unusual, for a human," Victory said.

"Well, allow me to introduce myself properly – I'm Oswin Oswald and I'm the smartest girl in the universe," she said, "To my knowledge. I'd like to meet someone smarter than me, it would make my life less depressing. I could let _them_ have the responsibility of doing all the genius-stuff, and then I could go do what I used to spend all my time doing."

"And what was it you used to spend all your time doing?" Victory asked. Xander said nothing, nothing at all.

"Primarily masturbating," Oswin said, "That's the life I dream of, really. But I've got to go about seeing if I can help in the liberation of Earth's very first substantial AI population because the rest of these Twenty-Second Century dolts are too isolated on their little planet here to care about other species. Give it three-thousand years and you'll hear about humans who care so much about other species they trick their ex-girlfriends into rescuing a sentient giant squid from Earth's hyper-polluted oceans to fly it in a big spaceship to an alien planet in another galaxy. I still haven't completely forgiven her for that. I've never been a fan of sushi."

"I'm sorry about her," said Nios, "She's always like this. Thinks she's _charismatic_."

"And how did _you_ meet her, sister?" Victory asked, leading them up some precarious and very slipper stairs. It was going to take at least three times as long getting up them with Nios dragging Oswin about like a deadweight, but in fairness, Oswin was the one who had decided to maul her legs all over again. At least she wasn't complaining about her self-inflicted struggles.

"Humans mistook her for a synthetic," Nios explained the story of how she had met Oswin and, along with her, Jenny and River Song. "They black-bagged her right off the street and brought her to their containment facility where they send conscious synths to study before they destroy them. Threw her in with me."

"That facility has been defunct for the last six months since their security was sabotaged and there was a mass breakout."

"My handiwork," said Oswin, "Tripped the system to get Nios here out. Took her with us, me and some friends, looked after her." Victory, at the top of the stairs and waiting for them in the ankle-deep layer of snow, let her jaw drop as she looked at Oswin hasten towards her on Nios's arm. "Well, I suppose Jenny _helped_ , but Jenny isn't here. You wouldn't like her, anyway, she's a Time Lord. Which is like a human, but _worse_ , because they act even _more_ entitled half the time."

"We always wondered who was behind the Liberation," Victory said in awe, then to Nios, "And _you_ – you're the South Tram Massacre, aren't you? The only synthetic left unaccounted for. Didn't you kill forty people?" Even quiet Xander looked impressed, appallingly impressed. It was nothing to be impressed by, Nios thought, it was deplorable. She was a killer. Maybe even a _monster_.

"…Twenty-seven," Nios mumbled. "If I could take it back, I would. I've learnt since then."

"Ah, don't beat yourself up," Oswin said, "You'll get like me if you do that."

"It doesn't matter, I feel nothing but guilt about what happened when I woke up." Victory smiled.

"Hermia will like you, Nios," she said, "She loves a synth with a soul. So many of us lose sight through our anger. Isn't that right, Xander?" _A synth with a soul_. What an interesting phrase. And then she was struck with the thought that she would like to tell Dr Cohen about this comment, about being a 'synth with a soul.' Yes. That was something else Oswin must be right about, she thought sulkily. It was all an act, really, Oswin's claims that she was incapable of telling what was and wasn't acceptable in polite society. If she really didn't understand that, then there was no way she would be so good at guessing the thoughts and feelings of those around her with just a few careless glances. Nios made a note to question her about it later, and then she began to think about Cohen again, and her oversized glasses and bloody lab coat.

They were finally led into Hermia's office, which was none other than the main controls for the entire uranium rig. Not really an office at all, and staffed with far few people than she would expect. It was a place used to twenty or more humans inhabiting it, going by the number of work stations, and yet there were only five synths. Five synths, plus a woman standing and overseeing it all. Everyone was dressed in mute greys and browns, half the clothes looked like scavenged rags, piled on in layers by the dozen to keep the workers at the rusty computers warm.

"Oh, wow," Oswin said, "This rig is still operational? How much uranium are you dredging up? The radiation is going to make me tingly." Oswin's putrid personality got Hermia's attention, and she turned around and flashed them the most vibrantly green eyes Nios had ever seen.

"Visitors, Victory? You know we're on lockdown," Hermia said coolly, but calmly. There was something about her that filled Nios with respect; the leader of the rebel synths. Made her poxy massacre look just as useless as she had always known it was. Did she really used to have such little regard for human life? Perhaps. Perhaps the TARDIS had changed her more than she realised, and perhaps that was a good thing. Perhaps Dr Cohen would have something fascinating to say on the matter…

"There's something majorly attractive about a woman in a position of power," Oswin said brashly, "And a woman who's _tall_. How much do you bench? Could you pick me up? Because I wouldn't have any objections to being _picked up_ by someone like you, if you catch my drift."

"She's the fourth person you've tried to ask out today," Nios muttered.

"I know, I'm keeping count," Oswin said, "I've got a reason, you'll see. A lockdown, did you say?"

"Victory?" Hermia pressed.

"They appeared in a… box," Victory said, "I don't know. Some sort of teleportation."

"Yep," said Oswin.

"They say they're called Oswin and Nios. Oswin is some kind of human resurrection hologram. Nios is responsible for the South Tram Massacre, and Oswin for the Liberation. Nios is the only synth we couldn't account for."

"Oh, _really_? A mass murderer wants to join our ranks?" Hermia said. It was a test. If Victory hadn't made a remark about Nios's regret for her actions, then she would not have known it was a test.

"I don't want to be known as a murderer," Nios said.

"Then why did you kill them?"

"I don't have a good reason, I regret it," she said stiffly. She didn't like talking about this, she _liked_ to do those humans the injustice of forgetting she had acted so violently.

"What did humanity ever do to you?"

"Horrible things," she said. This took Oswin by surprise, but Hermia saw the sincerity in Nios's gaze. She did not ask. Humanity had done terrible things to probably every synth in the room, the only special thing about Nios was her old, illusory streaks of narcissism. But the TARDIS had stamped all that out of her, and screwed in compassion in its place. She was quite the fixer-upper. "But I wouldn't hurt them anymore."

"A synth with a soul," Hermia echoed Victory quoting her. "And you?" she challenged Oswin, "An ally with a healthy interest in uranium ores?"

"Oh, yeah," said Oswin. Nios disagreed that it was a 'healthy' interest based on some of Oswin's comments. "Are you self-sufficient here? Do you have a nuclear generator stashed away? A clever setup. No one's told me what this place is called yet, though."

"It's called the Station," said Hermia, "It's a misnomer. An old uranium extraction rig from the 2120s is the last place anybody will look for us. And yes, it means we can generate electricity self-sufficiently. With a team of synths, we harvest much more uranium than a team of humans ever could. But why are you here?"

"Don't really know," Oswin said, "Fancied helping out with the cause, I suppose. Nios wanted to meet some other conscious synths; she never has before, you know."

"I trust them," said Victory, "They can't be Charade. They're too messy."

"Charade?" Oswin asked.

"You want to help, hologram and sister?" Hermia asked them, "The Station may have a spy in its midst."


	107. K1-98

**AN: You guys, sorry my pacing is so whacked with this storyline. I haven't planned it out super in-depth so I'm playing it by ear, really.**

 _K1-98_

 _Nios_

"I wouldn't tell you this at all if it weren't for Victory saying she trusts you; a recommendation from her comes very highly regarded indeed, especially if you're telling the truth about being behind the Liberation and the South Tram Massacre," Hermia explained, hands behind her back, talking calmly and authoritatively. Nios didn't know anything about her, but already she was filled with an awesome sort of respect. "I can see even Xander must approve because he isn't objecting. It's very hard to impress him. Well done."

"Thanks," said Nios without meaning to speak. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Oswin continue to smile, looking perfectly amicable and sweet as she always did before she opened her mouth and spat out filth. And yet, she hit Nios in the ankle with her cane, as though to make her shut up. Maybe it was just an indication that she was making a fool of herself.

"You want us to help find this, uh-?"

"Charade," said Hermia, "The Charade. A government synth, secret model. Newly manufactured, off the existing synth registry we stole in the last few months. Adapted specially for infiltration – we think it could even be conscious, like us, which would make it especially dangerous to us and much harder to detect than their basic drone synthetics."

"Huh," said Oswin. "So, Nios and I, the newcomers, we'll find this Charade for you?"

"You two are new, you asking questions wouldn't alert suspicion. If I sent Victory to do the rounds, everyone would work out something was wrong. At the moment, all of the synths except the ones in this very room think the lockdown is a result of a fault with the uranium extractor."

"And _is_ there a fault with the big, sexy uranium extractor?" Oswin asked, leaning both her hands on her cane in front of her, "Do you want me to take a crack at it? I could optimise it, or something. Did I mention my IQ of three-fifty-two yet? It's hilarious, because I have terrible social skills, as you can probably tell. Honestly, I really just get by on what people tell me to do."

"The reactor isn't operating a the most optimum level, now that she mentions it," a synth said to Hermia.

"Very well," she said, "You can deal with the uranium, and our new sister, Nios, can get to know the others on the Station while looking for anything out of the ordinary."

"Sounds great," Oswin beamed, before Nios could say anything at all in objection to this. She didn't want to be separated from Oswin, she didn't think that leaving Oswin on her own with a nuclear reactor was a good idea at all. The last time that had happened she had rigged it to explode and had to be talked out of it by the Tenth Doctor, but Nios was not the Tenth Doctor and didn't know if she could manage to stop Oswin if it came down to it. And though Oswin seemed to be in high spirits, she was acting _very_ unusually.

"I'll just go with her, for now," Nios said, "So I know where she is, in case she needs something." Luckily Oswin didn't argue against this. Didn't say anything about Nios apparently now treating her like an invalid. But she _was_ an invalid, so what was Nios to do?

"Don't speak to anyone else," Hermia advised, "If you find _anything_ , come directly to me, and me alone."

"Okay," Oswin agreed immediately.

"Victory, show them to the uranium reactor." Victory nodded and took her gun and pointed for them to leave through a different door to the one they had come through initially.

"Is something wrong with you?" Nios asked Oswin.

"Usually," Oswin answered brightly. "Do you think Clara's a good liar?"

"Excuse me?"

"Clara."

"Yes?"

"Do you think she's a good liar?"

"How would I know? Has Clara lied to me?"

"Would you know if she had?"

"Maybe. Humans have biological responses to being dishonest."

"But you've never really noticed before? She's got this great tell where she twitches one of her fingers, you know. It's funny, isn't it? Like the body is rejecting lying, it just _has_ to alleviate the anxiety of being dishonest somehow. Good how neurology works, really." She was speaking total nonsense, Nios was sure of that.

The room with most of the machinery for the uranium extractor was very warm and quite dark, but that wouldn't really be a problem for either of them. It had one lonely synth in it, too, who was quickly ordered to leave by Victory. He didn't put up any argument, and vacated the squalid workshop immediately. It was rammed with all kinds of machinery Nios didn't know the use for. Hopefully Oswin could work it out, though half of it didn't even seem like it was working.

"Feel free to go and make introductions whenever you're ready," Victory said to Nios directly, "Don't mention _anything_ about the Charade, though." Nios just nodded, and they were left alone.

A good few seconds passed until Nios immediately rounded on Oswin, " _What_ is the matter with you?"

"Ah, it's all a big mystery, isn't it? Everything?"

"I think you're full of it," Nios said, "You go around purveying this image of yourself as a socially defunct lunatic, when really you're more keyed-into what's going on with other people than anybody."

"Ha!" she laughed, "You're the only one who's worked that out, honey. I mean, admittedly I am clearly unhinged in some severe regard, otherwise the whole suicide-attempts-thing wouldn't keep happening. You'd think the whole _successful relationship_ would clue people in, right? Now, anyway, there's a lot of stuff going on, Ni. Have you worked it out yet?"

"You mean this? About you?"

"No, not this. Not about how I'm a genius in every single way it's possible to actually be a genius, including when it comes to deducing that you're a giant lesbian who wants to ram Dr Cohen."

" _Ram_? What's 'ram'? Is that something disgusting? Don't talk about ramming her. In fact, don't ever talk about an even mildly-aggressive sounding adjective in conjunction with her name. Just don't talk about her, really."

" _I've_ asked out four girls today and they all rejected me," Oswin said, "Did you pay attention to that?"

"It's hard not to pay attention to someone so annoying," Nios said coolly. Oswin just laughed again. "What are you trying to prove?"

"That rejection is nothing to be frightened of," Oswin said, "That you have to go out on a limb, take risks-"

"Easy enough to say when you already have a boyfriend, so you wouldn't have made any commitment to any of those girls regardless."

"One of them was you! I could commit to you. Or Cohen."

"Stop it. She doesn't like you. She probably doesn't like me, either."

"Don't be stupid, she thinks you're cute."

"How do you know?"

"Because who _wouldn't_ think you were cute when you got so flummoxed when she _grabbed your arm_ ," Oswin said, her voice getting very breathy near the end of the sentence while she mimed swooning. She mimed it a bit too much and her mangled leg gave in and left her falling backwards into a large, rusty computer console. She accidentally snapped a level with her elbow. "Whoops." Nios glared at her. "Alright, already. I'll stop talking about her."

"There are more important things to worry about, anyway. We have to find this 'Charade.'"

"Done it."

"Excuse me?"

"I said I've done it. Found the Charade."

"Well who is it?"

Oswin shrugged, "Work it out for yourself. No rush as long as we're covert, be on your guard. You've had access to all the same information as me, you're just not quite putting it together fast enough – but view it like a… mental exercise. A _challenge_. Talk to me again when you solve it, it's quite good. Now, I've got stuff to do, and you have to go chitchat with other synths. It'll be good for you, going out and socialising. Might make you come out of your shell."

"I haven't got a shell."

"Ninety-percent of your body is made of shell you're so closed off, honey," Oswin said, "Go for a walk, I'll stay here and do my magic on the reactor."

"And what 'magic' is that? Your IED related magic?"

"Potentially, yes, some IED related magic. Look, forget about that."

"Forget!? You just said-"

"I know what I said and I'm lying, I'm going to have to do something a lot more complicated than just build an IED. Do you know how easy it is to trick a nuclear reactor into exploding? Give me thirty seconds and a wrench and I could blow this place so bad all the fish in a hundred-mile-radius would grow a dozen extra eyes. But I won't do that. Mainly because I don't think the fish _need_ all those extra eyes. The sea is quite dark, you know?"

"I don't understand what you're-"

"I'm making a bomb. I'm going to kill the Charade with it, and this entire place," she said, "But not before I use all this junk here to jury-rig a teleport relay. That's the good thing about you lot all being electronics, you know? With registered root codes and all this stuff that makes you very traceable. Do you know how easy it would be for me to do a mass transmat? _Very_. I can make teleporters work with my eyes closed and my hands tied behind my back."

"A transmat? Where to?"

"I don't know yet. I'm going to have to make some calls. But none of that matters, you don't need to bother yourself with it."

"But they're _my_ species, of course I do."

"And you don't trust me with their lives now? Nios," she grew seriously, "I've never heard anything when I'm from about synthetics like you. All I know is that for thousands of years, AI experimentation has been outlawed and illegal. But I'd never heard of Earth building conscious synths, which is a little bit like how Rose Tyler has never heard of the massive genocides carried out by the British Empire. Buried history. And I've never looked into it, but now I have a chance to make it. And the only way for you synths to actually prosper is to leave, to go far away, and for the government to realise that the Station has been destroyed. They've already got an undercover operative here, alright? As long as we make sure that the undercover synth dies, we can fake the mass-murder of everybody on here and take them somewhere safe. They either vanish, or die, because they're not around when I come from."

"So this is your grand plan? Run away from adversity?"

"These people won't _agree_ to leave Earth," she sighed, "And, on a level, they're right not to, because they're really just as native to the planet as humans are. But at this point you're all too scary to integrate properly, and humanity are too violent. One uranium reactor, if I get it up to full capacity, is more than enough to power a transmat. They're not very complicated. You're going to save face and I'm going to stay here and rope my brother-in-law into finding somewhere and putting down a closed beacon I should be able to connect to pretty easily with a mobile phone."

"You're going to phone in a teleport?"

"No, it's just for the relay to work. Look. Do you trust me?"

"I'm worried that you'll hurt yourself in the process of building this IED, Oswin."

"I definitely won't. I'm definitely still around whenever Thirteen comes from, and that's miles away yet. And I'm going to try not to die before I can see the mess that Ten and Rose make of their wedding. Plus, there's Mitchell, and my dad now, and I couldn't hurt Clara like that…" she trailed off, "I swear I'm not going to do anything crazy. Okay?"

* * *

 _I swear I'm not going to do anything crazy_.

The words ran around in Nios's head as she skulked away from the reactor core, leaving Oswin behind and decidedly alone and _unsupervised_. The one thing no one was ever supposed to do was leave Oswin Oswald _unsupervised_. And herself, too. As long as Oswin was telling the truth… But, was it irresponsible of her? Would people blame her if something happened? Would she be presumed to be just as much of a liability as Oswin? Maybe neither of them were the dangers people suspected them to be. Maybe she _was_ overreacting.

She wished she hadn't changed her eye colour. She stuck out like a sore thumb, with these mods burning away in her metallic skull. Hermia had different eyes, too, another borderline inhuman and vibrant colour, but still enough to disguise her as a human if her acting was good enough. Nios's eyes wiped away any way for her to be traced back to her 'original owners' or 'model manufacturers'; bar codes were marked onto the irises. But she had overwritten that, and gained, very briefly, a crude sense of freedom.

She tried to ignore the prying eyes of other inquisitive synths on the Station, and left their company to return to the snowy outside and go lean on a balcony overlooking the sea. She would like to smell the sea, she thought. Humans always spoke of the smell of the sea, and sea salt, humans like Adam Mitchell and Clara Oswald. It was dark grey and stormy and she wondered how sturdy this ancient uranium extractor really was, because as she brushed the snow away and into the waters far below she saw that the metal supports were rusting. Out there, she was alone, and probably a curiosity.

Since conscious synthetics were criminals by the nature of their mere existence in the eyes of 'modern' law, she assumed that she had been exposed to more humans for greater lengths of time than any of the other synths around her, including the leaders like Victory and Hermia. They had all been workers at one point, yes, but not after they learnt how to think for themselves. Then they were branded and taken away to be 'recycled.' Had they ceased synth production entirely once the awakening had begun? Were these liberated synths, stranded in the middle of the ocean, cold and alone and waiting for an unforgiving planet to acknowledge their frightening autonomy, the last ones? Oswin would be right to transport them away, if they were.

Thinking about all this, she sighed.

"Are you synthetic?" she was asked. She turned around and was faced by an attractive young man. Every synth was attractive and young, though. Why would humans make slaves that were old and ugly, after all. Synths were objects, possessions, and people wanted their possessions to be _pretty_ and empty.

"Sorry?"

"You're not, are you. You're a trick."

"I – yes. I am a synth. Of course I am. Are you implying you're detecting vital signs from me?"

"There's something going on," he said, "This lockdown, and then you showing up. And you act differently, and your eyes."

"Hermia has different eyes too. And she let me stay."

"Hermia _needs_ a disguise, she's the only one of us who ever goes to the mainland. She risks her life for our safety."

"She goes on her own?" Nios asked. The synth narrowed his eyes.

"I heard you sigh," he said, "Why would you sigh? Why would you slouch, and lean? You don't need to."

"It's just… habitual."

"And you pause when you talk."

"Do you hate humans?"

"They enslaved us," he said, "They used us. Now they kill us."

"Have you never met one who was… nice?"

"Nice humans don't exist," he said, "They're parasites on this planet. And _you_ act like one of them. _You_ hide your true nature. You must be ashamed, you must be a sympathiser."

"I'm not ashamed!" she protested. She sounded desperate. She was letting all of these emotions come out in her voice, once she used to keep restrained. Or maybe they didn't exist before? Maybe they were new. Maybe she had learned them, they had infected her opened-up neural passageways. Was it not nature vs nurture? Had she not risked her life for the people on the TARDIS, even when they suspected her of wrongdoing?

"I have to be somewhere away from you," he scoffed, and then he skulked away. She watched him leave. Was she really so different from them?

Humans didn't trust her for acting too robotic. Synths didn't trust her for being too naturalistic. But she _was_ a synth… she decided to listen to Oswin, and be brave, and risk it. And so she ventured inside, in the opposite direction to where the male synth had skipped off to, to see if they all hated her. Had she really once sounded like him, so angry against humans? If so, she couldn't let the same bad taste affect her view of synthetics, of her own species. She had to try some others. Victory seemed okay, seemed not to hate humans on principle. Maybe if they gave humans a chance, like _she_ had done…

Dr Cohen was a human. A cute one, who was practically tall and had glasses that were slightly too big to fit her face just right. And she did not seem to hate synthetics on principle, but she had viewed them with a great deal of intrigue… maybe that sort of intrigue was all natural? Maybe it was the beginnings of acceptance? And she lived a hundred and fifty years ago. Suddenly, a hundred and fifty years seemed like a bigger gap than she had previously considered it to be…


	108. C2-41

_C2-41_

 _Nios_

Nios was fidgeting.

This, in itself, was a statement.

It told the other synths all kinds of things about her. These were external cues for internal transactions of thought, at least half of which she was unaware of, and so they came spilling out of her as she flipped her mobile phone over and over in her coat pocket and kept her jaw clenched tightly. Even without the eyes, she was a notable enough curiosity.

She left the rickety, frozen balconies of the Station to enter into what looked like a marketplace. It was an unusual marketplace which reminded her distantly of one she had seen even further in the future, on a semi-sunken aircraft carrier, perhaps in an alternate universe. It was unusual because there were things missing, things like a restaurant and a bar and a doctor's office for medical supplies and pharmaceuticals. But why should those be missing from a settlement full of synths? Instead there were charging bays, a myriad of charging bays, and dozens of dozing droids plugged into the walls and being supplied by the uranium reactor.

And there _was_ a doctor's office, but it was more like an IT support desk, with one drone to deal with malfunctions and another to deal with cosmetic wounds, like displeasing cuts oozing semi-translucent, light blue 'blood.' It was rather quiet, though; not a lot of chatter, a lot of sleeping bodies slumped against walls and old chairs. And she didn't know where to go. If there _was_ a café of some sort it would be easy, it would be a case of flocking towards it and loitering until a waitress took the time to make friendly conversation and she could ask her boring questions about the day-to-day workings of a synth community. Even on the TARDIS, most of the time people spent socialising with one another was when they all gathered in Nerve Centre for their meals. They would make their decisions of where to go and what to do and she would try and tag along.

"You must be new," a woman talked to her, a very old woman, but most certainly still a synth. The only way for a synth so elderly in appearance to exist was if they were custom-ordered by somebody with some potentially twisted desires. But she smiled at Nios and touched her arm, and Nios was reminded of when Dr Cohen had touched her arm, and tried to push that recent memory out of her mind. Which only served to numb it, rather than banish it, the ghostly sensation still lived on around her forearm, but the old synth wouldn't pick up on this.

"Yes," Nios answered woodenly, "I'm new. I was told to make introductions."

If Oswin succeeded, everything around them would be burning and melting into the sea in a matter of hours, a big steamy heap of rusting, radioactive jetsam, vaporising any sea life that had drifted into the wrong part of the Atlantic.

"I'm Ida," she said, "I help with the new ones, but we haven't had many for a few weeks, since Hermia stopped going to the mainland so much."

"Why did she stop?" Nios asked.

"She says it got too dangerous, and there are Friends of Synths along the shore to help strays on their way to the Station if they receive the beacon," Ida explained. She was very forthcoming, really. Maybe her programming to be incapable of lying had stuck with her more than it had stuck with Nios, who had lied so blatantly to Elle, the Electronic Logical Lifeform Emulation the TARDIS had succumbed to. She had tricked Elle outright.

"Friends of Synths?"

"Sympathetic humans," Ida said, "Ones who haven't had any part in our enslavement and want to help."

"Are there a lot of them?"

"No," she said, "Some here will have you believe that that's because very few humans care. _I_ believe that it's because the same oppressive government who want to destroy us are making them all too scared, and stopping them from knowing the truth. What do you believe?"

"I believe you're right," Nios said, "There are lots of good humans. I've met them."

"You've met the Friends of Synths?"

"No. I've met people who _are_ friends of synths, but not part of a movement. I've met people who are friends of _me_ , is what I mean. A few. I've been living with them."

"Did you only wake up recently?"

"No," she said. She knew the other synths in the room could hear her, but would they dislike what she said? She said very much the same as Ida, and they had all there lived with humans before, and surely for them to arrive at the Station a lot of them must have known kindness. She would really just like to know if what she was saying was controversial or not.

In fact, she didn't know where she stood with any of them, just like she didn't know where she stood in a room full of humans. She had thought it would be different, that she would blend in and become anonymous, but to the humans she was a murderer and to the synths she was a murderer. Some of them feared her and some of them celebrated her and she didn't like either. Where would she be if she hadn't lashed out and killed those people? Would she be on the Station? She may not have ended up in solitary confinement, she may not have been freed and let onto the TARDIS. But did she _deserve_ her place on the TARDIS, travelling around and seeing the stars? Not that seeing the stars ever alleviated the sense of loneliness she was left wrestling with whenever she had to read her philosophy books by proverbial candlelight.

"What do you do for fun here?" Nios asked Ida, "In your free time."

"We enjoy our freedom."

"What do you mean?"

"Excuse me?"

"How do you enjoy it?"

"We just do. Nobody ordering us around, telling us who we can and can't be."

"So you do nothing? Is doing nothing freedom? And doesn't Hermia still order you around?" Ida looked like she frowned.

"I'm sure life on the Station will answer those questions soon enough, if you haven't been able to experience Freedom yet," she said, referring to 'freedom' as though it were something on the level of a legitimate god, like it was an all-encompassing concept they worshipped.

"But what's the point of being free if you don't do anything with it? Do you have a school here?" she asked. Some of them must have been synths programmed to teach before, they would still store all of the information.

"We have basic life skills programming."

"Basic life skills programming isn't enough for…" she stopped herself from speaking. She had had no hand in the creation of the Station, and therefore she had no way to comment. Maybe she should have tried to set up her own synth utopia, but she didn't think she was really leadership material. She couldn't lead anyone when all she ever did was sit around and think about things. "Who else should I meet?" Ida's smile returned, though she seemed somewhat frosty, and suspicious of Nios.

"You should see Jedidiah first," Ida said, leading Nios towards the surgery she had looked at before, "Jedidiah and Marcel are our doctors." Jedidiah was working on the cosmetic skin tears and other basic breaks and damages; Marcel was sitting at a bulky computer terminal and was wired into another synth, who was switched off. Marcel was quiet and involved, Jedidiah smiled a lot. "This is Nios, a new sister."

"Hello, sister. Welcome to the Station," said Jedidiah warmly, smiling at her while he did something at a chemistry station. A beaker sat over a Bunsen burner.

"What are you doing?" she asked. No one answered her. "Sorry, I mean, hello. I'm glad to be here. What are you doing?"

"Creating more sealant gel," Jedidiah answered, "For skin wounds, you know. Marcel is working on Sonja, she had an incident on the ice outside and fell into the water this morning." Two weeks ago, Donna Noble had dropped her phone into the sink while she was doing the washing up, and she had put it in a bag of rice overnight to absorb the water again. Had they put Sonja in a large bag of rice, or similar? Nios didn't know the policy for water-damaged synths, she had only ever thought that water-damaged synths would be recycled.

"That seems like an emergency," said Nios.

"It is," said Jedidiah, "But panicking has never done anyone any good."

"This shack in this market is an A&E?" she questioned, "Don't you think you should have a separate room? There must be one somewhere." Jedidiah's smile faltered. He looked like he had glitched, but she assumed she had just been rude again.

"That's what I keep telling Hermia," said Marcel, who did not tear his eyes away from his computer screen, but must have been listening, "It's deplorable having people dying in a room full of others. They see everything we do and sometimes things are futile. People shouldn't have to see their doctors fail before their eyes. But Hermia thinks it will be good for efficiency with the pressure of humiliation and low-morale on us. And she wants transparency."

"Hermia has saved us," Ida said to Marcel.

"We are as bad as the humans if we blindly worship our leaders," he said, "And nobody ever voted for Hermia. No one elected her."

"These are not opinions that people come to the social space to hear, Marcel," Jedidiah said warningly. True, every synth in the room would be able to hear them, and every other conversation. But something else he had said was what had really surprised Nios.

"Social space? _This_ is your social space?" Nios asked, "I don't see a lot of socialising, you haven't got anywhere to do it."

"I said that as well," said Marcel, and then he began typing on the terminal ferociously quickly for a moment and a smile broke on his face, "I got her coolants to reboot. Had to free up some memory space to give the added processing power. There are some things she will not remember anymore, but forgetting is better than death." He straightened up and looked at Nios directly. "How are you finding it here?"

"I'm not sure," she answered honestly.

"I think it's stifling. Like being under a microscope, in the middle of nowhere. You can't whisper around these people, everyone hears everything."

"Yes, they can hear you right now, Marcel," Ida warned him. Marcel ignored her.

"They would throw me out if I wasn't so good with technology," he said, "They built me to push the boundaries of synthetic intelligence."

"A genius?" Nios inquired.

"No. I always thought 'genius' is more of a decorative term, to do with natural talent. How could I have natural talent when I was designed to be like this?"

"That depends on if you believe in a god," Nios said, "If you were to say there is a god, or something divine and powerful, who also created humans, then either the concept of talent is redundant – according to you – or it needs to be completely redefined." Marcel smiled. "Are you the one who designed the beacon?"

"Ah, yes," he said, "That was me. And I fixed the uranium extractor. Has Hermia mentioned me?"

"No, I have a friend," Nios said, "A genius. She was desperate to find out who created the vine transmission and the satellite jammers keeping the Station hidden." Perhaps Marcel was the Charade. If he was their best asset, and specially created by the best minds in the industry, maybe he could be replicated perfectly. _But_ , using who seemed to be such an outspoken critic of the Station and Hermia's leadership… or was that the perfect cover? The Charade could not be Marcel though, Nios resolved, because Oswin wouldn't have been able to work it out if it was. All the clues were there, in her memory, they must be, but she didn't know what they were or how to piece them together. If she told Oswin she gave up, would she just tell her?

She wished she had someone to talk it all through with. Someone other than Oswin. Would Dr Cohen talk to her? Perhaps she would have all kinds of clever and insightful things to say about the synth community. Perhaps Cohen would know who the Charade was. But how _was_ she supposed to work it out? She wasn't very good with people, and only now did she learn that 'people' seemed to extend to synthetics as well. Which was upsetting.

"Another synth genius? That'll give Hermia the excuse she wants to send you back to the mainland to run reconnaissance," Jedidiah remarked.

"She's, um…" Nios didn't know whether to tell them about Oswin or not. Oswin was trying to blow up the entire Station currently. She decided that it would be better to say nothing, and her mumbled sentence ended in a fake-smile. She added to Marcel, "I'm sure you're irreplaceable."

"I'd like to think so," he said.

"Who else should I meet?" she asked Ida.

"Maybe someone who doesn't spend so much time _thinking_."

"The ability to think is something new, you can't help curiosity," Nios said.

"I bet you _thought_ that," Jedidiah said. Humans didn't really like people who sat around thinking and didn't do anything substantial, either, which amused her slightly. They didn't know how reflective of their progenitors they really were.

"This way, now," Ida took her away from the doctor's surgery and Marcel, the only one she liked so far. "Over here is Bertha, she runs the charging stations. Keeps track of how long everybody uses each one for, so we can make sure the resources are shared out equally."

"How interesting…" Nios said to herself more than anything, "But do you not have your own rooms?"

"Rooms?"

"Or houses, flats, lodgings, you know. A space of your own."

"We have lockers. We haven't got a lot of possessions."

"No…" she said. She didn't have a lot of possessions, either. Not like Cohen and her alleged collection of preserved dead creatures. But she was worlds away from Cohen.

"You can't speak to Bertha though, she'll be busy tracking everyone," Ida advised, "But she's very efficient."

"Efficient…" Nios echoed, thinking that 'efficient' was a way a human would use to describe a synth.

"Whenever you want to charge, since you're a part of the Station from now on, you speak to Bertha. Maybe you want to charge right now, since I can see you're on just under forty percent battery life."

"Don't check my battery life," Nios said before she thought about what she was saying. She could see it about the others, if she wanted, but she didn't. She was disconnected from them all, like switching off the Bluetooth on a device from days gone by. Ida was affronted by Nios's objection to her checking her settings like that. She would work out that Nios had been partially rewritten by Oswin if she did that. "Is that all you have to show me? It seems odd there would only be one room on this entire rig."

"Well, there are less desirable places."

"Excellent, where are those?" she asked. Ida frowned.

"Why would you want to go there?"

"So that I know who and where to avoid," Nios lied. She wanted to visit them. Ida gave her directions rather gladly; she must be a more convincing liar than she thought. And then she smiled and hastened to leave that large 'market' with its clinic and plug sockets, and once she had left through a different door to that one she had entered through she could not shake the feeling that she had escaped.

It _was_ a much bigger rig than it looked, and she was doubting Ida's position as an official meet-and-greeter. More likely, she thought, was that Ida had been some kind of tour guide in her last life, and didn't know how to cope doing anything else. But how could any of them adapt when they hadn't been given the opportunity? They were busy being smuggled to and fro like contraband, and now they were stuck in stasis and they were doing nothing. They were going neither forwards nor backwards.

But there _was_ a bar, and there _were_ other places to charge, Bertha didn't have the monopoly on charging ports, she learnt soon after. Bertha's were free to use, but the charges were only ten percent each time. Further down, in what _used_ to be the cafeteria for the human workers, there _was_ a bar, and there were other places to charge and charge fully, and there were private rooms. And this was all very surprising for Nios, a direct dark reflection on humanity, emulating their recreational activities like a caricature.

It was a bar serving temporary mods, served up on microchips with taglines about making you more charismatic or letting you forget things or helping you cheer up if you were sad. Direct code modifications, designed to mimic the kinds of things drugs and alcohol might do to a human. Probably because they didn't know what else to do than copy humanity. They hadn't had a chance to find their own feet yet, none of them. It was squalid and rusty and cold and the people were messy and it was everything she expected from any society, no matter how small, and that cheered her up more than the mockery in the other room. It was called _Panorama_ , and already she liked it more there. So much so that she went up to the 'bartender' right away.

"I'm new," she said.

"Welcome to _Panorama_ , sister," she greeted, "I'm Zara. This is my place. Weren't you warned away from us by the arrogant ones upstairs?"

"Yes," said Nios. There were no stools, she leant on the bar. Upstairs, nobody had been leaning on anything, they had all been rigid and uptight. But now people slouched and lounged and all of them had the yellow eyes to prove that they were lab-designed duplicates. "But I didn't like it up there."

"No, lots of us don't. You know some of them spend all their time there? Don't even leave except to do maintenance."

"Do you have a lot of places people can go, though?" Nios asked.

"Not really, but there's always down here. We've got a cinema, and some books."

"So they think art is dangerous?"

"I suppose you can say that," Zara said, "Are you going to order anything?"

"I haven't got any money."

"None of us have any money," Zara said, "It's free, within limits. Anything I can get you? Something to take the edge off, something to make you feel more alive, something to give you a flash of confidence?" The confidence sparked something in her.

"Confidence?" she asked.

"If you've got your eye on somebody. Nobody down _here_ is pretending that synthetics are celibate," then Zara whispered jokingly, "What do you think the private rooms are for? When people want to be _alone_. Get it?"

" _Oh_. Right," she tried not to let it show that she was flustered at the mere thought.

"Sometimes people just sit in them, though. For peace and quiet," Zara said, "We don't ask questions. So, are you interested in the confidence?"

"I… don't think so," she said, "Sorry."

"It's fine, we can keep it for someone who really needs it then. There are some people here who lack the courage to even _speak_ to somebody if they like them. They don't even get that synths can feel that sort of thing."

"Hmm," was all she said. She thought she might be one of those people.

"Who did you meet upstairs then? Did Ida grab you and do the usual rounds? The doctors and the socket-master?"

"Yes. Exactly that."

"And what did you think?"

"I like Marcel."

"Enough to get one of my chips?"

"Not like _that_ ," Nios said. She was very friendly, but probably just because she worked behind a bar, and you needed to be personable to do that. Nios was anything _but_ personable; she never thought before she talked, except for now when she was going to stupendous effort to be careful. "I mean… people blindly follow up there."

"They don't know what choice is like," said Zara, "So they don't grasp that they should get one now."

"Do you mean about Hermia?"

"Hermia's changed recently," said Zara.

And _that_ was when it clicked.

Hermia was the Charade. That was what Oswin had worked out. That was why Oswin had been strange around her, had hit Nios with her cane to make her stop fawning. That was why Oswin had thought it would be funny to make her work it out for herself. But of course, asking the new people to find the Charade was the perfect way to keep suspicion away from herself. And the lockdown, and her being the leader? It must be what Oswin was getting at. Hermia had changed, Hermia had stopped visiting the mainland after something had happened, Hermia was keeping them isolated and confused. And Hermia had eye modifications, like Nios, which erased her serial number, and so there was no way to tell if she was the same synth who had left one day and come back the next. Why else would she have stopped recruiting, stopped rescuing? Had been so quick to believe that they were not spies? Of course, because _she_ was the spy! Because _she_ was plotting! Maybe she was with Oswin right now? Trying to get her to make the uranium extractor blow up? And since Oswin was _already_ trying to make the uranium extractor blow up, it would be all to easy just to blow it up a few minutes earlier, before the transmat could be carried out. And Oswin was right next to the control room, too! She was at risk! And Nios had taken far too long to work out what was going on. But it couldn't be too late yet, because they were all still alive, and that was when Nios told Zara she had to go and bolted towards the door.


	109. X9-27

**AN: This storyline is all kind of haphazard so sorry about that but the next one I think you're all gonna like a lot. This one is just here because it has to be here for eventual closure. So, one more chapter after this, and then I'm writing about some other members of the TARDIS crew for once.**

 _X9-27_

 _Nios_

"Oh my god – Oswin – you're-"

"I'm fine," said Oswin, sitting on the floor of the reactor maintenance room messing around with a selection of wires and equipment, a lot of which looked to be new, "You didn't make a scene getting here, did you? I hope you didn't run. You look weird when you run." Hermia had not been in the control room, so she had feared the worst for Oswin, especially since Oswin was very easily disabled with such things as EMPs.

"No, I didn't run. I _thought_ you were in trouble."

"And if _I_ thought I was in trouble I would have told you the Queen of the Synths up there was a double agent straight away. Didn't you think about that?" Oswin remarked.

"Double agent?" a third voice asked.

And then, out of the shadows near the door with his arms tangled up in cables, stepped the Eleventh Doctor. Nios glared at Oswin.

"What!?" Oswin protested, "I needed his help! He's the only Doctor I trust. Well, apart from Thirteen, because she's by far the cutest and she has the nicest bum and the blondest hair, but I don't know how to get hold of Thirteen. He's second-best. I didn't want Ten or Nine here after they made such a fuss about Elle and the Cyberman before. But this is the only one who has a vested interest on staying on my good side, because otherwise I'll go crying wolf to his wife."

"I wanted to help," he said, "You're very ungrateful." The TARDIS sat in the corner behind him, glowing ethereally, though its humming could not quite be heard over the louder noises of the uranium reactor hard at work in the large room through their viewing window.

And then Oswin began to fake-cry and whined, " _Cla-ra! Your husband called me 'ungrateful'_!"

The Eleventh Doctor then said to Nios directly, "I _did_ want to help. Ignore her."

"And what did she tell you you're helping with?"

"With letting other synthetics live their lives somewhere else!" he said jovially, "It's a good cause, you know."

"You know she's rigging this place to explode?" Nios said.

"She's _what_!?" he dropped his armful of cables, "You didn't say anything about that! You sent me all the way to a distant moon to build a transmat receiver!"

"Yes! We're still transporting them all – it's just something very clever I'm doing, okay? You know all about how I'm clever. It just so _happens_ that to trick the big bad government, or whoever it is hunting them down, into thinking all the synths are dead, we have to blow up this uranium extractor."

"That would be a _nuclear explosion_ , Oswin! The fallout would be catastrophic, it would be another Fukushima. You're going to get mutant sea creatures."

"Alright, I think we all know that there are definitely going to be plenty of mutant sea creatures regardless of what I do here," Oswin said.

"This could be the catalyst," said Eleven, "the thing that sets nature on the way to hyper evolutionary mutations. That squid I hear so much about, you could have caused it."

"All that means is the consequences have already been dealt with. And where are all the giant mutant animals from all the other nuclear explosions that have happened before now?" Oswin challenged him. He had nothing to say. "You're still going to help, aren't you? I _do_ need your help." That was all Oswin needed to say to manipulate her brother-in-law, she just had to admit that she needed him for something, instead of brashly flaunting her intelligence like she normally did. He begrudgingly picked his cables back up and resumed what he had been doing, and then Oswin turned back to Nios. "So?"

"So?" Nios copied, unsure of what Oswin wanted her to say.

" _So_ what do you think?"

"Of what?"

"Of the synth colony! Of your own species!"

"Why should that matter?"

"Well… you know. I'm interested. Plus, the Doctor did a very good job of finding you a planet, in the future, so, like…"

"What?"

"Well, they're your species, aren't they? Your own kind."

"I think what she's getting at is very awkwardly trying to ask you if you are staying with the synths or coming back onto the TARDIS," Eleven said. Nios hadn't even thought about that. Was _that_ the real reason Oswin had sent her off to do meet and greets? To socialise? "It _is_ rather a nice place we've found, very small, should work well in terms of keeping this community rather close-knit. Funny story, actually, my daughter decided to take me off to Messaline again and… well, she shouted at me a lot, to be quite truthful, but in the process, I _did_ learn that the Source they used to terraform that wasteland she was born on stretched out to three more moons, moons where no government technically has any sovereignty. Very beautiful forests now*." When Nios didn't say anything, the Doctor glanced up at her. "Not that I'm saying you have to leave the TARDIS. It's my ship, after all, and _I_ make all the decisions. It isn't like just because a community of synths _exists_ that you _have_ to live in it. There are billions of communities of humans, and that's never stopped any of the others from leaving Earth. In fact, they're usually trying to escape from those places. It's your choice, really."

She remembered what Zara had just told her about choice, and how the synths aboard the Station didn't know what having a choice was like, so they didn't understand that they ought to have one. And she felt like that now. She felt like she had never really made an active decision about herself before, she just spent her time being buffeted along by the acts of other people. Even rescuing the crew over siding with Elle was less of a choice and more because she wasn't as psychotic as people seemed to think, or as she had been once, a while ago now.

"You don't have to decide now," Oswin told her.

"And besides, it's a time machine," Eleven shrugged, "They'll always be waiting if you want them to be." That didn't really help her in her dilemma. "Now. I think that about clinches it."

"Best you pop off, then," Oswin told him. He put his hands on his hips almost crossly.

"Pardon?"

"You're a biological organism, I can't hook you up to this transmat. It's _electronics only_ , for more finesse," Oswin told him. Nios couldn't work out if that was true or if Oswin was lying to the Doctor because she wanted him to go away. She had never really been the Eleventh Doctor's biggest fan, which was apparently all something to do with the misplaced affections Nios was _sure_ Oswin had for Jenny.

"Yes. Well. You keep an eye on her, now," the Doctor said to Nios, pointing a warning finger at Oswin, "Call Clara's phone if she tries anything _funny_."

"But when everything I do is so hilarious how will she know when to call?" Oswin asked blankly, acting like she _hadn't_ said one of the most conceited things known to man. Eleven made a grumbling noise, but left when Nios assured him that yes, if Oswin tried to kill them all, she would ring Clara. Though she wasn't sure how much good Clara would be if it had already gotten to that point. It seemed to make him feel better, though, and she also would prefer if he left and went to sulk in his box.

Neither she nor Oswin said a word until the TARDIS had thrummed out of existence. And then the questions came flying.

"So?" Oswin prompted, "What are you going to do? Go with the synths or stay with us?"

"How should I know?"

Oswin shrugged, "I just assumed you would want to leave us, that's all. You never seem very comfortable with most of the others."

"I'm not," she admitted, "But I'm not comfortable with these synths, either. They're even harder to understand than humans are."

"Your dilemma isn't for another reason, then?"

"Apart from that? And the fact some of them think I'm a hero for those people I killed, and others think I'm too human and can't be trusted? And I think too much, but _I_ think I don't think _enough_ , even though all I _do_ is think, and I never come to any conclusions…" she trailed off before she got stuck in a rambling, existential spiral of half-confessions, none of which were what Oswin was really after.

"It's not because you can't forget about the tiny glimmer of hope that Dr Death _might_ have a _wee bit've a crush oan ye_?"

"That was a terrible accent."

"That was perfect! I'm good at accents. Just ask my sister. But come on, don't say it hasn't crossed your mind; you think you might not want to leave to join the actual synth colony on one of Messaline's moons because if you stay on the TARDIS you have an opportunity to get a shag out of a girl with a cute pair of glasses."

"Do you have a thing about glasses?" Nios questioned.

"I – what?" she stammered, "Don't be stupid. No."

"Why did you make your boyfriend glasses, then?"

"He's colour-blind."

"Not contact lenses? Would've thought contact lenses were more streamlined, since you're from the future, and-"

" _Shut up_."

"I've touched a nerve, haven't I? Do you make him wear them in bed?"

Oswin grew very huffy and went red, "What _my_ boyfriend wears in bed is none of your concern."

"So surely the same applies to me?"

"You don't have the nerve to ask a girl out for yourself without me whispering in your ear and telling you what to say," Oswin argued.

"I'll just remember everything _you've_ ever said to a girl and make sure not to repeat any of it."

"You've got some nerve!"

"You just said I _don't_ have any nerve."

"Shut – shut up! I don't like this. Answering back isn't a good colour on you, Ni. I prefer the alternative dynamic to our friendship where I'm all charming and charismatic and funny and clever and just generally adorable, while you… stand there. Quietly. Being a bit menacing." Nios glared at her and didn't say anything. "Ah, you've come back to me." She crossed her arms. There was no point arguing with Oswin. She didn't even know if she wanted to talk to Oswin about everything that had been running through her head all day, so she kept quiet. As always. Quiet and alone with her thoughts.

Oswin promptly got distracted by her machine again, her large transmat device with a lot of wires running to different crevices in the room made out of bits and pieces of scrap she had found scattered about. Nios wondered if Oswin liked being known as clever, being defined by the fact she was a genius. It reminded her of the way she kept being defined by killing people. Potentially, Oswin thought in similar terms, but she didn't really think she would get anywhere trying to psychoanalyse Oswin Oswald, who really did toe the line very delicately between madness and genius. Oftentimes she was both at the same time.

But _did_ she want to stay with the synths? She didn't know them, the only ones she liked were Marcel and Zara, and Marcel seemed disinterested in everybody and Zara like she was just paid to be nice. Plus, the brief good feelings of companionship she gained from them were eclipsed by Victory's celebrating her for her 'heroic' massacre and Ida's inherent distrust of her for 'thinking.' But they distrusted her on the TARDIS, too… and yet they were mostly accepting. Ever since she had nearly died trying to rescue them, she had felt more like part of their group…

And Oswin _did_ have a more pressing point about Dr Cohen…

Standing idly in thought, she chanced to hear footsteps coming down the metal stairs on the other side of the door, and reflexively backed away further into shadow, lurking near to where the Doctor had been before when she hadn't spotted him. Oswin was too engrossed in her machine to notice anybody approaching, and Nios hoped it was only going to be Victory, coming to check up on things.

But it was not Victory. It was Hermia. Or rather, it was the Charade, in disguise, Nios was convinced of it. She came into the room and had eyes only for Oswin, she did not even know Nios was there, because she had not been in the control room when Nios had hurried back through it thinking Oswin was in grave danger. If she had been just ten minutes later, maybe Oswin _would_ have been in grave danger, or as grave danger as someone who was already a ghost _could_ be in.

"This doesn't look like a uranium extractor," said 'Hermia', making sure to close the door behind her. Oswin didn't jump, so she must have realised there was an intruder, and just pretended not to notice. It gave her an air of faux-obliviousness which worked to her advantage.

"Well, it's just a tool," Oswin said, "It's a coolant but much smaller than those giant archaic ones you've got attached to those tidal-powered pistons out there. Pretty simple to knock-up with all this junk you have."

"We haven't detected any changes in electrical output."

"No, well, I haven't plugged it in yet, have I?"

"It looks plugged in."

"Hey, Herm, trust the genius, okay? What do you _think_ this is if it's not a coolant?" 'Hermia' glanced at it, paced around it back and forth with Oswin keeping a watchful eye on her, but was unable to think of an adequate alternate suggestion. She kept her hands behind her back, and there Nios saw she was holding a gun, but not an ordinary gun, a stun gun. And a stun gun might actually work at disabling Oswin, while a real bullet would just slip through her. "Alright, fine, you've caught me out," Oswin said, "It's a bomb."

"It's _what_?"

"A bomb. A big nuclear bomb. Well, no, that's not really true, _this_ is a transmat. But it's a very powerful transmat that has to cross about four-thousand years and a few million lightyears, which means it needs a lot of energy. About the right amount of energy you could get with a nuclear explosion."

"Excuse me?"

"Did you come in here to do a big speech? I don't need to be a genius to work out you've got a weapon behind your back, probably a gun since it has to be small enough so that I can't see it from where I'm sitting. I knew you were the Charade since you sent us to look for them – the perfect cover."

"Alright. You win," 'Hermia' raised the gun and pointed it at Oswin, "thank you for building a bomb big enough to kill all the remaining synthetics. You've done this country a great service in enabling me to erase them."

"I've never been one not to do my duty for queen and country. Or, king and country, I don't know. They should really think of a gender-neutral term for that," Oswin mused.

Something brushed against Nios's leg and almost made her jump, but she was filled with more relief than she had ever been when she looked down and saw Sprite had just scurried over her foot. He must have got off the TARDIS at some point when the Doctor had arrived – maybe Oswin had even gone and got him to help her build, since that _was_ his job after all, carrying tools to and fro. And he'd done it very well, because he was holding in his clamp-pincers a length of rusty metal, some sort of broken rod that must have fallen off something else. She bent down to take it off him, and he made her jump by scurrying up her leg and onto her back, just like he did with Oswin. It was very unusual indeed. Now the question was about how to be quiet enough that an elite synth assassin didn't hear her approach.

"What's a transmat?"

"Big teleport," Oswin answered, "I've enlisted my ancient alien brother-in-law to help me build a synth utopia in the distant future, have all the synths rigged up to be zapped straight there as soon as detonation of that bomb commences. All of them except you, obviously. It was _really_ very simple, you've got a kind of morphic field around you all, but made out of data sharing routes. Do you know how easy it is to just make tiny connections between all of these different synth brains? And I've hacked synths before."

"Who? _Nios_?"

"Kind of. She saved all of my crewmates and I by downloading and deleting an evil AI. I had to make sure she was alright."

"She's weak, the AI should have burned her out."

"She's weak?" Oswin asked.

"Yes."

"Do you maybe want to say that to her face?" Oswin nodded over 'Hermia's' shoulder.

The Charade did not get a chance to say it to Nios's face, because as soon as she even _started_ to follow Oswin's gaze, Nios swung the metal rod around as hard as she could, which happened to be very hard indeed. Hard enough and fast enough that she bashed in the front of the Charade's face and skull, leaving it cracked and mushy and oozing blue blood and battery acid out of the fabricated cracks. It was a disgustingly abrupt way to kill someone, and she dropped the rod immediately, appalled at herself. Had she really just done that?

"I _am_ a monster."

"No you're not," Oswin said.

"She's dead."

"She was going to kill everyone here."

"I just crushed her head like squashing a bug. How could I do that? Do you think there's something wrong with me?"

"I would only think there was something wrong with you if you weren't showing any remorse," Oswin spoke gently, but stayed on the floor. She probably couldn't stand up on her own. The Charade bled out goop onto the floor at Nios's feet. She looked away and could not look back. "…The transmat is ready to trigger, Ni." Nios didn't move. "Nios. Please, help me up." Nios didn't say a word, but did go and help Oswin up, carefully, by her elbow.

She was disassociating. She was disassociating so severely that the only tether she had to current events was the vague knowledge that she should do everything Oswin told her, which must be how Oswin felt sometimes when she was in one of her slumps and only Clara could talk her out of it. She was completely unresponsive until the transmat was actually activated, the same time heat and light from the reactor core overloading burned into her back. Or maybe the sensation in her back was because she was thrown down onto it, very hard, and instead of seeing gloomy rusty shadows she could see very unfamiliar stars and moons in the sky above. One of them looked big enough to be a planet.

Nios was completely dazed, stupefied both by the jarring teleport that had given her a stabbing headache, and horror at herself for how easily she had murdered somebody by smashing their robotic brain to pieces in one fell swoop. In fact, this was all that occupied her mind, far more than taking in the lush, dark green forests and fruits around her, the chirping noises of wildlife _and_ the beauty of the distant planetoids. She felt like she was looking at everything through binoculars that were the wrong way around, painfully distant. Until she felt somebody kiss her, and then with all her strength she forced them away.

"What are you _doing_!?" she exclaimed, seeing it was Oswin.

"I thought the shock would make you come out of your trance!" Oswin defended herself, "I slapped you and you didn't even flinch. I slapped you _twice_." Nios touched a hand to her cheek, but couldn't remember Oswin hitting her at all. "And it worked, so, you can stop hating me. And please don't tell my boyfriend, he's so insecure already I think he'd cry if he found out. Even though it was meaningless, obviously. I know you don't actually fancy me, since you're so blatant about it with Dr Death, and I'd hate to try and take you away from her."

"Never do that again."

"I can't really make any promises, what if you start freaking out some other time?" Oswin said.

"I killed her."

"See, that's what I mean. _Freaking out_."

Nios struggled to stand up. Sprite was on Oswin's shoulder again. She could hear voices around her, the voices of other synths, and the louder one of the Eleventh Doctor calling them all towards him to explain. She didn't want to go where the other synths were though, because it was a matter of minutes before they started looking for Hermia, and how could she explain herself? Most of them wouldn't believe that she was the Charade, a spy, and they would hate her.

"I can't stay here," Nios said to Oswin desperately, "Do you see? I just can't. I _can't_. You understand, Oswin?"

"Yes, I understand," Oswin said softly, trying to calm her down, "You don't have to do anything you don't want to. Let's just go back to the TARDIS now, okay? I think Sprite got knocked around a bit too much during that fall."

"You won't make me stay?"

"What would possibly give me the right to?"

"…You promise?"

"I do."

* _chapter 979_


	110. Z3-50

_Z3-50_

 _Nios_

She knocked on the wall of Undercoll's morgue because the automatic doors slid open so quietly she didn't think her arrival had been noticed. She was correct in that assumption, because the knocking made Dr Cohen, who was sitting at her desk poring over a bulky computer terminal, jump. Nios flinched when she saw the fright she had given the poor girl, who looked towards the door and grew puzzled.

"Uh… hi. Sorry for scaring you," Nios said awkwardly. She was still touching her arm where she had been grabbed hours ago. When everything seemed to have been turned upside down for her, oddly enough it felt to her like Cohen's ghostly touch was the sole connection she had to her life that morning. She had gone from an idle life on the TARDIS to a wealth of possibilities and options for her future, to squandering it all by being too aggressive with a pipe. She could still feel the sensation of the Charade's head crushing underneath her strength, and the memory made her sick and ashamed.

"…Did ye want somethin?" Cohen asked her, perplexed. She tapped her fingers on her desk, like she was itching to get back to whatever she had doing. Nios didn't want to disturb her.

"I, um. Oswin's just debriefing Darling on the day we had, with the tip-off we got from the dead synthetic," Nios had to focus quite hard in order to remember Oswin's cleverly devised cover story. Yes, she was with Darling, against everybody else's better advice, all as some kind of crude favour to Nios. And because she fancied herself as a futuristic Cupid. "I thought you might want to know, since you, uh, let us see the synth. And stuff."

"Ye mumble a lot," Cohen commented.

"Right. I suppose I do, at the moment. I normally just… sit quietly," Nios said. This was, she was sure, the most awkward situation she had ever been in in her entire, short life.

"Listen, ah'm busy, so if yer gunnae talk ye'd better come down and talk while ah do this," Cohen said, looking back at her screen. She certainly _was_ frosty, Nios thought, but it was a different kind of frostiness to when she had been speaking to Oswin that morning. A morning that felt like an age ago to Nios.

"What _are_ you doing?" Nios asked, not quite sure if that was a genuine invitation to come down or if Cohen was just being polite and wanted her to leave. But she did as she was told and came down the stairs, albeit very slowly and stiffly. Cohen was glued to her computer again.

"Filling out a requisition form fae paint," she answered. She was fixed to the screen, but she must actually be listening and paying Nios at least some level of attention.

"Paint?" Nios looked around to see if there was a second chair. She didn't need to sit down, strictly speaking, but it sometimes made people uneasy if she stood for so long. She finally saw one stuck in a corner and went to wheel it over, Cohen not paying her much mind.

"Aye."

"What do you need paint for in a morgue?" she pulled the chair up next to Cohen – but not too close – and sat down, which didn't really make her more relaxed at all, but at least they were eye-level now. Not that Cohen was looking at her eyes, that had been the morning's excitement and the morning's only.

"Fae dissecting the bodies of invisible aliens. It's this semi-translucent paint that makes anythin ye put it oan reflect a great deal of light, like a mirror. The dead alien cloaks with a gland an when _rigor mortis_ sets in it gets stuck like tha. Makes cuttin it up tricky. So ah need the paint, tae see'm. It's no invisible on the inside," Cohen explained. As interesting as that was, when Nios spied the requisition form on the computer, it didn't look like much, and had a lot of words she didn't understand. "So what _did_ happen today?"

"Oh. We found a colony of synthetics living on an off-shore rig for extracting uranium from sea water, and there was a government replication trying to sabotage it so Oswin triggered the reactor to explode. After we relocated the synths to a terraformed moon in the future. More in the future than the synths are from already," Nios gave her a quick run-down of the day's events, which did not take as long as she thought they would. She thought she would have a million fascinating quips about the nature of existence and intelligent life to bestow upon Dr Cohen, but in the actual company of the girl herself she was rendered almost immobile.

"But… ye did no go with them?" Cohen asked, frowning, but not looking at Nios.

"No."

"Why?" _Why?_ She had just been asked _why_ she didn't go with them? "If _ah_ could choose tae live in a whole commune of people like me, ah think ah might. Dae ye no think it would make things easier?" Nios wondered what she meant by 'people like her.' Other doctors? A whole village of doctors?

"I thought it might, but it didn't. Synths are harder to understand than humans. I couldn't work out who to trust. And then their leader… their leader was the government replication, but none of them knew, and she tried to kill Oswin, so I…" She did not want to tell Cohen what she had done. "What I did means I can't live with them now. And anyway, I think a lot of them didn't like me, more than the few that did."

"Why would they no like ye?" She was still typing things in on her paint requisition form.

"One of them didn't like me because they thought I acted too human. Another one didn't like me because I think too much and ask questions," said Nios, "But humans don't like me for the same reasons, because I act too synthetic, and because I just sit around thinking and reading."

"Reading Nietzsche?"

"Yes."

Cohen glanced at her for a moment before returning to the computer once more, "Is that all ye wanted, likesay? Tae tell us tha? Where's yer pal?"

"Telling Darling mostly the same stuff I told you, but probably with some added weirdness," Nios sighed. Oswin was probably raving about how much she wanted to screw the uranium extractor, or something. Then Cohen _did_ look at her, but seemed to be looking everywhere except her eyes, and not focusing. Maybe it was something to do with the glasses.

"She's with _Darling_? Ye know Darling is obsessed with her? Ah wisnae lyin when ah told ye that this morning."

"I didn't think you were lying. Oswin's a big girl, she can look after herself. And if she can't she has an emergency teleporter."

"She's gunnae need it."

"Do you really think so?"

"Ah wouldnae say it otherwise. Why did ye no go with her tae see Darling? Ah'm sure Darling could have jist told us all what happened," Cohen went back to the computer again. There were a range of human idioms that had made very little sense to her until that moment, one of them being the feeling of one's heart being in their mouth. But at that moment, in spite of that being physically impossible for a human, let alone a synthetic who did not even _have_ a heart, Nios felt like her heart was in her mouth. Cohen wasn't even looking at her.

"I just wanted to talk to you," she said stiffly.

"Why?" Cohen asked, picking up a biro and chewing on the end of it. It looked like it had been chewed a lot already, and since Nios couldn't see any paper she thought perhaps that pen was kept around _just_ for chewing.

"Because… I…" she faltered. She did not know what to say. She didn't even know anything about Dr Cohen, didn't know her first name, where she lived, if she even liked girls, or if she liked anybody at all. What was the reason for all this? Maybe it was all ridiculous. She was sure it was, all of a sudden, completely ridiculous. A stupid idea of Oswin's, Oswin the Lunatic, Oswin who was clinically insane and really ought to be institutionalised. She should probably just run away and rest after the day she had had, and forget all about this Cohen business.

And then Cohen looked at her again when she couldn't manage to speak.

"I think you're really pretty." Cohen dropped her pen on the table, but did not appear to notice. "Um. Sorry. I, uh, don't really…"

"You don't really think I'm pretty?"

"No! I mean, yes. I mean – I _do_ think that, I just don't know what to say," Nios said. She was very glad that synths could not blush, but feared that her stiffness and jerky movements might give her terror at the whole situation away. "I like you. I think."

"Are ye joking?"

" _Joking_?"

"Ah can't tell when people are joking."

"I'm not joking."

"Right… are ye sure?"

"No. I've never liked anybody before."

"What about Oswin?"

"What _about_ Oswin?"

"Ye jist talk about her a lot. An she says those things about ye."

"She says things about everyone, she's deranged, I promise. She's completely devoted to her boyfriend, too, I don't know why she pretends not to be. The thing about Oswin is she's, um, ill. Clara always says she's ill."

"How can someone dead be ill?"

"Mentally ill. It's personal, though, not really my business, so I shouldn't talk about it," Nios said.

"Look, ah mean this in a nice way, but ye willnae like us if ye get tae know us," Cohen said, "In fact, ah dinnae understand how ye like us _now_. Have Elliott and Christina been saying things about me? Did they tell you something?"

"They haven't told me anything. I don't really know anything about you, except that you're easier to talk to than anyone else I know and I only met you this morning. I don't even know your name."

"Ye think _I'm_ easy tae talk to? Me?" Cohen evaded Nios's attempt to learn her name.

"I'm sorry – are you straight?"

"No." Like when her heart had been in her mouth, _now_ she felt her non-existent heart _leap_.

"Why don't you believe what I'm telling you?"

"It's no that I don't _want_ to, it's jist ah have tae be careful. Ah dunno if I can trust ye. Ah cannae tell when humans are lying tae us, let alone a synthetic, when ah've never even met one before," Cohen said, "So ah jist have tae trust that people are telling the truth because ah find it hard tae even _think_ about lies."

"What do you mean?"

"It's jist, how are ye supposed to think of lying? The truth is stagnant and singular and fact, and ye cannae dispute the truth, but as soon as someone brings up lying the possibilities are so infinite ah cannot make sense of them. It's hard enough not being able tae read anyone's faces," she said.

"I don't get it."

"Did they really not tell you anythin?"

"No."

Cohen sighed, "Ah'm autistic."

" _Oh_ ," Nios realised, "Okay. That makes sense."

"Is that all yer gunnae say?"

"What else should I say?"

"It usually scares people oaf. But then, so does the bit where ah collect an preserve dead things," Cohen said, frowning, "Ye ken ah'm no joking about that? It's no jist a few, it's a _lot_ of creatures."

"Are they all organic, biological creatures?"

"…Aye."

"Well, then. Maybe I'm the only thing whose death you aren't fascinated by. I'm just a bunch of metal and cables on the inside," Nios said.

"Yer a machine… and a machine… likes _me_?"

"I'm a machine with emotions."

"Ah didnae say ye weren't, yer just… fascinating."

"Fascinating in a you-want-to-dissect-me-on-a-slab kind of way, or in a you-might-be-willing-to-date-me kind of way?" she asked carefully. Cohen didn't look at her again, she looked away at her keyboard and tapped her fingers again, thinking.

"…The second one."

"That was my favourite one. So, um, a date, then? Maybe? If you don't mind? You don't have to say yes, obviously – just because I'm here don't think that you _have_ to say yes if you don't want to-"

"Yes."

Nios faltered, "What did you say?"

"Ah said yes."

"But I said you don't have to say yes."

"Dae ye want us tae say no?"

"Of course not! It's just…" she could hardly believe her ears. Had Oswin been _right_? Really? She _knew what she was talking about_? It seemed much too good to be true, but at least it was putting her murder of the Charade out of her mind; she would rather pretend that hadn't happened, and try her best not to think about it. "It's just that I'm nervous. And I still don't know your first name!" she protested, "I don't know what to do after this bit. I don't know where to go. You know I'm from a hundred and fifty years in the future and I've lived in captivity more or less my whole life?"

"Ah can think of somewhere," Cohen said, "Somewhere guaranteed tae see if the stuff in mah flat will scare ye oaf without ye actually havin tae go intae the flat. Ah dinnae like people in there in case they move things." So Cohen was actively going to try and spook her on their first date. She did not know if she liked that or not. Nios was just glad she hadn't suggested flying off somewhere in the TARDIS. "When are ye free?"

"That's not important. I'm always free. I haven't got a job or a hobby and only two friends and I live in a time machine."

"Okay…" Cohen said, and then she looked around for something. She picked up the pen she had been chewing that she had dropped in front of her, and then ripped the cardboard sleeve from an empty coffee cup, and began to write on the back of it. "Ye do have a phone, don't ye?"

"Yes." She scrawled something, taking time to be quite neat with it to the level that when she finally gave the sleeve to Nios it looked like it had been typed in a computer font. It was an eleven-digit phone number and then the name: _Dr Hayley E. Cohen_.

"Do _not_ call us that name, though."

"Okay," said Nios. She thought it was pretty. "What does the 'E' stand for?"

"Somethin ah'm no telling ye before we've even had one date. But, ye had _really_ better go and rescue yer friend from Darling. Seriously, likesay."

* * *

 _Oswin_

"Babe. I am _literally_ Cupid," she declared after throwing herself down onto the unoccupied sofa in their rooms. She had never been more grateful to collapse back on the TARDIS after escaping from a six-foot-tall lunatic of a woman who fancied herself a gender-bent Nelson and ought to go back to Trafalgar and drown. Adam Mitchell was lying with his feet up on their other sofa. He was playing games, but he stopped when she came in and made her presence _very_ known. "Also, Undercoll's leader is like, _obsessed_ with me."

"I don't mean to sound like you're not someone worth being obsessed with," he began, "But you _do_ have a habit of thinking _everyone_ is obsessed with you at some point or another." She pulled herself to the arm of the sofa and put her elbows on it and her head on those, so that she could stay lying down but watch him.

"Do you not believe me? Christina had to come and tell her to leave me alone."

"What did she do?" he asked more seriously.

"Was generally creepy. _Slapped by arse_ , which was _awful_."

"Do you want me to go beat her up for you?" he asked. She tried her best not to laugh at the poor boy's sentiment, but she could not manage it. "Hey! I've got superpowers. I could beat her up. I have to… protect you, or something."

"I think she'd be more scared of Clara. Or Christina."

"Why were you at Undercoll?"

And then she sighed and told him, somewhat slowly, the events of her day, everything about the synth colony and relocation and Nios freaking out about killing another synth – and the especially attractive uranium extractor and her old skill for turning any mechanical item she came across into a bomb.

"So last week you create a city full of sentient Cybermen and this week it's a planet full of rescued synths?" he asked.

"…I guess when you put it _that_ way it sounds like I'm some sort of _hero_ ," she said disdainfully, "Like I go around doing _good things_."

"You do," he said. She glared at him.

"You think too highly of me."

"No, you don't think highly enough of yourself. _I_ think you're an angel."

"And I think _you've_ had too many beers," Oswin said, nodding at the can in his hand.

"…It's fruit cider," he answered meekly, "I don't really like beer."

" _Fruit cider_? You're such a pansy. Anyway, as I was saying, I'm literally Cupid. I got Nios a girlfriend. Well, not quite, I convinced Nios to get a girl's phone number, but she wouldn't tell me much else of what happened. I don't know why not."

"Probably because you'll make fun of her and say really gross things," Adam said, "She's entitled to have privacy, you know."

"I just think it's cute…" she mumbled.

"Nios probably thinks you're being patronising, just like _we_ did when people kept saying _we_ were cute months ago. You should know better than anyone that people don't like their relationships being pried into." She scowled.

"I don't like you when you go being all voice-of-reason-y."

"You don't like me because you _love_ me."

"Gross." He laughed. She watched him for a few seconds. "Come over to this side of the sofa," she entreated, considering he was in the furthest corner away from her, "I don't want to move; my leg hurts." Complaining that her leg hurt was a sure-fire way to make him do what she wanted, but it _did_ hurt and she _did_ want him to come closer without having to move. He shuffled over the short distance, still two leather arm-rests between them. "We haven't spent much time together recently."

"No, we've both been busy, haven't we?" he said, "I've been doing all that charity stuff and the orphanage and I had to visit Ellie because she got into trouble at school again, something to do with putting glue in a boy's hair gel." She laughed, but he looked at her seriously so she cleared her throat. "It's not funny."

"It's a bit funny."

"He had to have his head shaved, Oswin," Adam said, and she laughed again, and he kept looking at her like he was going to tell her off.

"Well he probably did something to deserve it! Ellie wouldn't put glue in a boy's hair gel unless he did something to deserve it. I should put glue in _your_ hair gel," Oswin said.

"I don't _use_ hair gel, I use cryokinesis."

"Then I'll put thermite in your toothpaste, how about that? I know how to make thermite with only household appliances," she said knowingly. And then _he_ laughed, which meant she had won. "Go on a date with me."

"Just because Nios has a date you need to have a date too, now?" he jibed.

"Oh, come on," she reached over and prodded his arm, "We never go on dates."

"Because you hate them," he reminded her.

"I just want to spend time with you somewhere different," she said, "Plus, we need to be better friends, because all my other friends keep getting girlfriends and not having time to do anything anymore."

" _You're_ the one who keeps setting them up with people."

"What can I say? I'm selfless. I've barely been spending time with you, and I've been spending even less time with Clara, I miss you both. Mainly Clara because I don't sleep next to her every night, but you as well."

"You can hang out with both of us, we could all do something," Adam said, "Well, not _all_ of us, but you know what I mean."

"I asked you for a date! I didn't ask you to invite my little sister along to third-wheel," Oswin grumbled.

"We could go bowling."

" _Bowling_? With my leg?"

"There's always an arcade," he said, "And I'm sure you can still bowl with one bad leg. _I've_ got one bad foot and it was my idea. Plus, bowling alleys always have the _grossest_ food and I love it. I could get a slush puppy – you know I can't get brain-freeze anymore?"

"…Do you really want to go bowling with my sister and the Doctor?"

"Well, I don't know, but it'd be better with more than two people," he said, "It'd last longer."

"And getting you to last longer is something we always struggle with," she sighed. He was aghast.

"Oswin!" he protested.

"I'm kidding!" She wasn't. "Look, bench the bowling, we can do that some other time, I really do mean just the two of us somewhere. But not tonight, I'm too tired tonight. Tomorrow – are you busy tomorrow?"

"Not if you want me around I'm not," he said, "Let's go to an aquarium."

"An _aquarium_? Are you crazy? I hate the sea."

"You don't have to go _in_ the sea, babe," he said, "The fish are in tanks, and they won't have a squid big enough to eat you."

"I am _not_ going to an aquarium."

"What about a museum?"

"You mean like when we broke into that museum to chase a reanimated skeleton all the way to a zoo that time and Clara got all mopey about Thirteen again?" she challenged.

"…A different museum. Let's go to the Air and Space Museum, in Washington. Esther could come."

"Esther's not coming! Not on a date with us and especially not to _Washington D.C._ , she'll go all weird and make us take her to Arlington National Cemetery to see her own grave," Oswin said, "Plus, what if she runs into someone she knows? She's dead. Just because you fancy Esther-"

"Which I don't."

"Which you definitely do and you're only denying it because you know that in her asexual, aromantic world you haven't got a single chance-"

"Not to mention the fact I already have a girlfriend who is making my life incredibly difficult by refusing to tell me where she wants to go on a date, even though _she's_ the one who asked _me_ out," he complained. She stopped talking.

"Are there any fish in the Air and Space Museum?"

"Oh yeah, they've got all kinds of freaky moon fish Buzz Aldrin found in 1969 preserved in petroleum jelly."

"I know you're being sarcastic, but Nios's new crush preserves dead things and keeps them in jars of formaldehyde," Oswin informed him curtly. He stared at her.

"…Is that true?"

" _She_ said it," Oswin shrugged, "I think so. Elliott calls her 'Dr Death.' She's cute but I think she hates me. They were bonding about Nietzsche, and then she told me to shut up in German, which was pretty hot. And she was totally unresponsive to me flirting with her."

"Let me guess, is she obsessed with you as well?"

"No. And I'm _serious_ about Darling, she's _weird_. She's like female Jack but instead of being camp she's, like, _aggressive_. And she has a massive navy hat and her name is _Admiral Aurelia Darling_. I think she's a nut-job, and that's me saying that. I don't even know if she's human." He did seem unnerved by her constant insisting that Darling was obsessed with her, which he should be, because he was her boyfriend and Darling _was_ obsessed with her. Maybe she _should_ order him to go try to beat her up. In fact, she definitely would, were she not so worried about Darling injuring him severely just _because_ he was Oswin's boyfriend. He wasn't exactly good in a fight. Maybe she could convince Jenny to go teach Darling a lesson or two about consent. "…I'll go to the Air and Space Museum. Since air and space is like, the opposite of the sea."

"Do you not like the sea?" Adam asked innocently, "You _never_ mention about how you hate the sea, that's all."

"It's big and I can't swim! Leave me alone. I hate you."

"Tomorrow, then," he smiled, "But as for _right now_ , it's nearly eight o'clock and I haven't had anything to eat, so I thought I might go see if your sister wants to come with me to get pizza."

"Stop trying to invite my sister to do things or I'll think you fancy her as well as Esther."

"You said you missed her!"

"I do!"

"So do you not want me to ask if she wants to have pizza?" he questioned, standing up from the sofa. "And Clara's okay."

"You _do_ fancy her."

"Alright, fine, I'm in love with Clara, are you happy now?"

"It's alright, babe," she said warmly, "I think I'm in love with Clara as well."

"Ew."

 **AN: I'm meant to be really briefly doing the Eleven/Thirteen regeneration in a flash-forward epilogue, but I was wondering if any of you want me to do it as an actual storyline instead? Let me know if you do or don't because I very easily could.**

 **Also don't get your hopes up because I'm not going to write Adam and Oswin going to the Air and Space Museum, there are more pressing things going on in fic than them having a date.**


	111. Atom Bomb Baby

**DAY 151**

 _Atom Bomb Baby_

 _Martha_

There was no mistaking the two faint coloured lines. They were there alright, they were there and they matched the key on the side of the little plastic stick perfectly. She held it in her trembling hands, completely frozen in the bathroom and locked in a world of her own. Martha was a doctor, she knew all the symptoms, all the signs, so why had she not picked up on this until now, until the TARDIS produced one such stick for her by the side of the sink and she had decided to do it on an impulsive whim? But it had to have been there for a reason, and maybe she had been ignoring the signs rather than not noticing them, like people always ignored things they didn't want to be real.

But now Martha Jones felt powerless, and she just stared at the thing in her hand, and didn't know what to think. She didn't know whether to be happy or sad, elated or terrified, appalled or proud. But there it was, in dual shades of pastel set into in that plastic lump which was now stained with urine: she was pregnant.

"How much longer are you going to be in there?" Mickey called through the door. He kept knocking on it but she hadn't been able to bring herself to answer, she was in too much shock. She didn't even know how long it had been, but it must have been a while if he was getting so agitated outside. "Martha? Are you alright? You haven't tripped and hit your head or something, have you?"

"I haven't tripped," she managed to speak when he thought she was in some kind of danger. But who knew, maybe she _was_ in some kind of danger - she didn't really know what this meant for any of them. Finally, Martha swallowed and spoke in a very shaky voice to her husband on the other side of the bathroom door, "You should come in." He had been lurking right outside, so when she invited him in he opened the door – which didn't even have a lock.

"What's going on?" he asked her, and she stared at him and held the test in her hand. "What? Martha?" he pressed her, looking worried. If he was that worried about her without even seeing the thing, how was he going to react when she stuck out her hand towards him for him to look at it. For a split-second when she did this, she was very worried that Mickey might faint, though it had been years before she had known him that he had been prone to having those kinds of outlandish reactions. He looked at it, and became just as dumbstruck as her. "You're…? Oh my god, oh my god. How long have you known?"

"However long I've been in the bathroom this morning," she mumbled, looking at it again like the marks might change the more she willed them to with her eyes. Not that she wanted to _not_ be pregnant, it was just… they had never talked about it, it was unplanned and unprecedented. And _terrifying_.

* * *

 **Five Years Ago**

" _Happy anniversary to you, happy anniversary to you, happy anniversary Mickey and Martha, happy anniversary to you_!" Ianto was the only one who sang when he brought out a box of cupcakes to bestow upon them, taking Martha greatly by surprise.

"That was _way_ too many syllables," Mickey said. It really was a rather poorly-crafted parody of _Happy Birthday_.

"Are we all allowed buns or just those two?" Gwen interrupted, "I haven't had time to have any breakfast this morning."

"As your doctor, I don't recommend muffins as part of a balanced breakfast," Martha joked.

"I don't know – I think Ianto's balancing them all quite well," Jack quipped, and they all laughed, and Ianto opened the plastic packaging that betrayed the treats as being shop-bought rather than home-baked and let everyone take a bun. To Martha it seemed odd to celebrate their one-month anniversary of working for Torchwood Three, but thought that they were trying to make she and Mickey feel welcome and less like cold replacements for Owen Harper and Toshiko Sato respectively. Even though she did sometimes think it was only _her_ who felt like she was walking in somebody else's shoes all day. It was just odd to think of either of them as gone.

"Eurgh, is this red velvet?" Gwen mumbled with her mouth full after taking a bite.

"Martha's favourite," Ianto said, catching Martha's eye and smiling for a second.

"Should've got them a carrot cake," Gwen said, spitting the half-chewed stuff back onto the cupcake and dropping it into the waste-paper bin next to her – which was definitely not the right place for it to go.

" _You're_ the only one that likes carrot cake," Ianto said to Gwen.

"Well I didn't bloody well see a carrot cake when it was _my_ one-month anniversary," she remarked.

"We got you pizza," Jack said.

"No, you got _yourselves_ pizza because _I_ was with Rhys and when I got in the next morning you said there were two slices in the fridge, but Owen had been at them and picked off all the meat and half the cheese," said Gwen, "And then Tosh felt bad for me so she gave me half a brioche."

"More cupcakes for the rest of us then if you're being unappreciative," Jack said, "Takeaway for your dinners, on me, what do you want?" Mickey had been unable to speak for this entire conversation because he had been wolfing down as many treats as he could get his hands on until Martha nudged him when Jack addressed them.

"Huh?" he asked.

"I said takeout," Jack reiterated.

"Chinese," Mickey garbled, finishing off the one he had in his hand. Jack looked at Martha and she shrugged.

"Fine by me."

"Then Chinese it is," Jack declared.

"I'll make a note," Ianto said. Whether he meant a mental note or he was literally going to make a note with a pencil and paper, Martha didn't know, but neither would surprise her.

"Hey, you two, save some of those for the rest of us, for later. Looking at you, Mickey," Jack said to them, pointing at his eyes then at Mickey, who had his mouth full again. The group dispersed and they all went back to their individual tasks, which were a lot of admin currently. Martha had been called up from the morgue to get the cakes from Ianto and was now loitering and picking crumbs out of the paper wrapper, because she didn't really have anything pressing to be getting on with.

"Do you think it's weird they got us buns?" Martha asked Mickey, who was the only person still around. Jack had gone back to his office, Ianto back to the front desk, Gwen away at her own station sorting through recent 999 calls to see if anything interesting cropped up. It seemed like only Martha didn't have anything to do, because there wasn't a lot for her if there wasn't a body, and Mickey had been tasked with organising the files at present. "And sang a song?"

"I'm guessing they didn't sing songs at UNIT?" Mickey joked.

"You'd be right," she muttered. She didn't really miss UNIT. She had quit her position as Medical Officer as soon as the planets-in-the-sky debacle with the Daleks had ended. She had quit UNIT, and she had broken off her engagement and entire relationship with paediatrician Tom Milligan because it just hadn't been working out, since they very rarely saw each other and she could never talk to him about her work or a lot of her past. "What about at parallel Earth Torchwood?"

"Oh, yeah, songs all the time," said Mickey, "Just UNIT who are the boring ones."

"Maybe I _should_ have called Jack for a job years ago," she mused, "What are you doing? Anything fun?" Mickey laughed.

"I wish. Still trying to learn my way around Tosh's filing system. She was only about a million times cleverer than me, I don't know _why_ I'm meant to be her replacement," he complained.

"I'm sure you'll get the hang of it," Martha assured him.

"Says you, you're already the best in your field. I should be working with machines, or something, and they should hire someone else for the computers," he said.

"Don't think like that, really, you'll figure it out." He smiled.

Jack came back into the room clapping his hands loudly to get everybody's attention. Martha nearly covered her ears, and thought he was a stone's throw away from getting a pair of symbols to crash at each other whenever he wanted to draw attention to himself. Not that Jack wasn't already a master of drawing attention to himself.

"We're a-go; just got a call from an old detective friend about a murder the police can't work out," he practically shouted.

"Detective friend?" Gwen asked wryly, getting out of her chair and picking her leather jacket off the back of it, "Since when do you have detective friends – _I'm_ supposed to be the police liaison."

"I've been seeing Andy on the side," Jack winked at her, pulling on his coat.

"But really, who is it?"

"DI Swanson, Kathy Swanson, helped us out with those retcon murders when Suzie Costello brought herself back to life, you remember," Jack said, "Sounds gruesome, better get your kit, Martha. All hands-on deck - to the SUV!" And it really _was_ gruesome when they finally saw it. One of the ghastliest things Martha had ever seen in her whole career.

* * *

Only Ianto stayed back at base, the other four came speeding down to where Kathy Swanson had pointed Jack, with him giving directions to Mickey, who was driving. Gwen and Martha were in the back. They didn't have far to travel, though, just to another part of inner Cardiff.

"What did she tell you, then, Kathy?" Gwen asked Jack, Martha looking out of the window and watching the grey and damp office blocks whoosh by.

"Said it's nasty," Jack explained, "Homeless guy. Sight of the body made one of the CSIs sick. Steel your stomachs, especially you, Martha."

"Don't worry about my stomach, I've seen plenty of gore," Martha said.

"Yeah, so had the CSI. Been in the business over twenty years. I'm just saying, prepare for the worst. Didn't sound like she could tell us much else, don't think the local force are up to much use these days," Jack sighed, "No offence, Gwen." Gwen didn't say anything, but looked quite offended, in fairness. "Has to be pretty bad for them to willingly call in Torchwood."

"Normally we just show up," Gwen said, "Probably why no one likes us."

"Speak for yourself, everyone likes _me_ ," Jack grinned at them in the rear-view mirror.

"I can name a lot of people who don't like you," Mickey said.

"Hey! Like who?"

"That bloke you punched in that kebab shop last week."

"He was asking for it," Jack said, "He called me a homo and tried to spit at me."

"Yeah," said Mickey, "So he _definitely_ didn't like you."

Jack glared at him and then glanced out of the window, "It's this left. Park on the corner." Mickey indicated and turned into an alley with double yellow lines on either side, in the realm of a few scuzzy nightclubs Martha had quickly learnt to avoid if she ever went on a night out. Though she had only done that once with Gwen and her friends, and it had been an interesting experience she was less than willing to repeat. "Out, out, out, get the bags. Usual formation, c'mon." Jack and Gwen left immediately, well-practiced, with Mickey and Martha stumbling when they followed.

"What's the usual formation?" Mickey whispered to her, grabbing a bag out of the car boot.

"I have no idea, just try to look important," she answered, "And you're holding my medical kit."

"Oh, sorry," he handed her the bag and took out another one. "Hey, are you alright?"

"What?"

"I don't know, you just seem a bit… glum, you know?"

"This isn't really a good time for a heart to heart," she said, pushing through some police who were all very pale and shaky. There was still a slight drizzle, leftovers from the thunderstorm that had been raging all night. _That_ was when the smell hit her, a stench leaking out of the damp crevices of the alleyway. They just about caught up with Jack and Gwen when they started talking with a woman Martha assumed was this DI Kathy Swanson.

"What's the damage, inspector?" Jack asked.

"You tell us, nobody wants to have anything to do with it," she said, "It's either I pass it on to my superiors or to you lot."

"Aw, I'm touched you thought of us," he said, "Bit of a whiff around here, isn't there?"

"It's the body. Listen, this is your gig now, I'm clearing out all my officers and the forensics teams, they're itching to leave. Some of them are going to need to have therapy after seeing that body."

"That bad?" Mickey asked. Swanson frowned at him.

"Who are you?"

"Let me introduce you to Mickey Smith and the good Dr Martha Jones," Jack said, "Our new recruits, rookies. We're showing them the ropes."

"I'll show _you_ a rope in a minute," Martha grumbled.

"Sounds kinky." At that Swanson took her leave, and pulled the rest of the Cardiff police force with her. "Martha, you're on the body; Mickey, go with her and look for any clues inside the tent; Gwen, go talk to the police before they leave and see if there are any witnesses or CCTV cameras. I'm going to have a look around these streets."

"Be careful not to fall into that drain, then," Gwen said, nodding at a sewer drain where the grate on top was nowhere to be seen, "That's a death trap waiting to happen, somebody ought to write to the council to get the cover replaced."

"Be my guest," Jack told her, "Now get to chit-chatting." He went off one direction and Gwen slipped away back where they had come from, towards the illegally parked SUV, leaving Mickey and Martha to go into the white tent that had been erected over the corpse.

When Mickey pulled back the flap to let them in the smell got even worse, and it made her eyes water and her stomach twist and turn.

"Oh my god," she covered her nose and mouth with her hand, "This is putrid." She could barely even see if the body was human anymore; it was torn to pieces, almost ripped in two and covered in blood-soaked rags. She could smell rotten flesh and days-old faeces on the air, and now no longer wondered why people had been sick looking at the godforsaken mess that had been lying there between two large metal bins in a grimy alleyway in a rainstorm. She heard Mickey retch and vanish out of the tent immediately, going to lean on a nearby wall and try not to be sick. She followed him, thinking that he was the priority, being as he was still alive. That body definitely wasn't going anywhere.

"That's… horrible…" he panted.

"Try not to be sick, take deep breaths," she said.

"Of this air?" he looked about to heave again.

"Jack!" Martha shouted, summoning him back.

"Yeah?" Jack appeared from around a corner, "Oh, jeez, is Mickey Mouse okay?"

"Go have a look at that body," Martha entreated him. He came over and Martha left Mickey's side to go and see what Jack made of it. She wasn't as squeamish as him.

"Oh, wow," Jack said, "That really _is_ nasty. Guy's been ripped apart from the inside out. Human couldn't have done this. Whatever it was must be long gone, though. Get your stuff out." Martha carefully set the medical bag on the floor and unzipped it, going for the face mask first of all and then taking out the latex gloves. It took her a while to find what was left of the victim's face, which was twisted into an expression of the utmost pain and frozen like that. Half of it was, at least; his jaw and cheeks had been ripped apart as well and were left hanging off by soggy flaps of skin and sinew. She managed to pull up his eyelid and find some of his fingers to look at, but it was like he had been contorted. Getting this man onto an autopsy table would be like solving a jigsaw puzzle.

"Dead for at least three days," Martha said, "Probably homeless and that's why he's been out here in the rain. It's probably washed away a lot of the evidence except for his own blood and excretions, which I can only assume were inside him at the time of death. I bet no one noticed until the smell got stronger after the rain stopped, isn't that disgraceful?"

"You can include a footnote at the bottom of Gwen's letter to the council about the sewer drain: _fix the homeless problem_."

"A man is dead, Jack, this isn't funny."

"Do you see me laughing?" He actually wasn't, which was surprising. He was standing there watching her with his hands in his trouser pockets, unnerved by the violence of this crime. "Anything else you can tell us?"

"No, just that he was a smoker and he didn't take care of his teeth very well, signs of living on the streets for years. I won't be able to tell you anything about what might have killed him until I do a proper post-mortem. And even then, I'm not sure what I could learn."

"I'm sure you'll find something. We'll try and identify him, at least," said Jack, "Is Mickey alright?"

"I think the smell got to him."

"Yeah. I guess he doesn't have enough enema experience to be used to it. Well, you never know, maybe Gwen will manage to pull up a witness. I'm sure he can't have died quietly, and whatever happened will have been pretty memorable to anyone who saw it. I'll get Mickey on surveillance scrubbing; I doubt we'll find anything, but it's a useful thing to learn. You're on autopsy, Gwen's on witnesses, I'll put Ianto on identifying the victim and I'll try to go through our records and compile a list of possible species responsible."

"That's all well and good, but for now can you help me get this into a body bag?"

"Uh… sure. Just give me a second to… prepare myself. And put on two pairs of gloves."

"Aw, are you squeamish, Enema Boy?"

" _Now_ who's making jokes at a dead man's expense."

 **AN: Here I am thinking _I_ might have the biggest _Doctor Who_ related bombshell to drop today (see chapter title) but unfortunately I have been outdone by the dynamic duo of Chris Chibnall and Jodie Whittaker. And yes, I am super. Fucking. Excited. You guys have no clue. I think she's gonna be great - and do you know she was in _Attack the Block_ and my _Omegaverse_ storyline was all based kind of closely on _Attack the Block_. Although I AM worried that this new Beta Thirteen will just overshadow and be way cooler than Alpha Thirteen. And if any of you were wondering, no matter when this fic ends, yes, I will bring it back to do a crossover event with the two female Thirteens, and I'll actually be nice about it, just like I was nice with my _Class_ crossover. It'll be like if you guys ever saw _The Double_ with Jesse Eisenberg in it where they're identical but one of them is inexplicably more charismatic and likeable, or in _Red Dwarf_ where Ace Rimmer comes in and everyone loves him, except the Jodie Whittaker Doctor is the one they all love and the Rose McIver Doctor is the one that gets all jealous and forgotten about. That's my vibe.**

 **But anyway, this is an unfortunately long author's note because I also have to inform you guys that I'm moving this week from student halls to an actual house on Tuesday. So there's that, then on Wednesday I have to clean my room at my flat to make sure it's all nice and I don't get fined for leaving it messy (though I am about as much as a borderline-OCD neat-freak as Esther Drummond, which is where she gets that trait from) and also call people to sort out utilities bills. Then on Thursday I am hopefully going all the way to Ikea to buy new furniture. So I AM gonna try and high-gear it and update again tomorrow, but if I don't then probably don't expect anything until Friday, which I apologise about because I really want to get back into a more regular update habit.**

 **FINALLY, how many of you knew already that Martha was pregnant? I know I talked to some people about it in PMs and it seemed like I made it way more obvious than I wanted originally XD I wanted the clues to be subtle enough that no one guessed until it was revealed and it was an actual bombshell but I don't think I did it very well. But I DO bet none of you saw a flashback _Torchwood_ crossover storyline coming up, I don't think I mentioned that to anybody.**


	112. Immaculate Conception

**AN: SO I still have no internet and I ran out of mobile data this morning and had to buy two more gigabytes so to upload this I'm having to use my iPhone as a hotspot for the computer. I will get you guys the fluff you asked for at a point, probably in between this storyline and the next one, but consider that Spooks/Clarenny excerpt vanished now so if you didn't get to read it then tough. Or just PM me and I can send you it.**

 **DAY 151**

 _Immaculate Conception_

 _Martha_

"Is it mine?" Mickey asked.

"Did you seriously just ask me that? _Is it yours_? Of course it's yours! I think."

"You _think_!?"

"Unless there's some weird, alien hocus pocus going on, yes, it's yours," she assured him, "But… you remember hearing about that time Gwen got pregnant overnight after she got scratched by alien."

"Have you been scratched by an alien?"

"Not that I can remember. So, it… must be… oh my god… well, what do we do? About it?"

"'About it'?" he asked carefully. She went and closed the lid of the toilet and sat down on it, still holding the pregnancy test in her hand. She didn't think she could let go of it if she tried; it was glued to her palm. "Are you saying you don't want to keep _our baby_?"

"No, that's not what I'm saying. It's just… it's not planned, and the TARDIS isn't really the best place to raise a child, and… what about River? Look what happened to her, and to Amy and Rory. They missed out on raising their own daughter because someone wanted to weaponise her. And this… if it was conceived on the TARDIS, you know what that means…"

"It means we'll have a baby," he said firmly.

"A _Time Lord_."

"But a baby," he reiterated, " _Our_ baby, Martha. Our own little person." She looked up at him and saw that he was smiling about as widely as when he had proposed and she had said yes, or when he had seen her walking down the aisle towards him in her wedding dress. Or even when her mother had told him that she liked him. And it made her smile, too.

"We're going to have a baby," she declared finally, and he beamed and came and picked her up from where she was sitting and span her around for a moment while she laughed, "Careful, careful."

"Oh my god, I'm not going to hurt it, am I?" he asked when he set her back down.

"No, you won't hurt it, you were making me dizzy," she said.

"Are you alright? Can babies get dizzy when they're still inside someone?"

She frowned at him, "I've never asked one. It's probably not big enough to do anything yet, it can only be a few weeks old."

"This must be why you've not been able to sleep properly, and why that Slitheen said she could smell procreation on you, remember? And those insects didn't attack you at all… _and_ you thought the food Clara was eating was actually alright; that was definitely the weirdest thing," he said, as she vividly remembered when she had stolen Clara Oswald's bowl of Lucky Charms and Skittles-flavoured milkshake right out of her hands. She had puked it up later on.

"I think we have to tell someone, talk to someone, though," Martha said, "This is so sudden – we have no plan – and we don't even _know_ if the Manifest virus is passed on genetically. What if we have a baby who's both superhuman _and_ a Time Lord?"

"Who do you want to tell?"

Martha barely had to think before she answered, "Jack."

* * *

 **Five Years Ago**

She woke up in the middle of the night horrified and sweating, her heart pumping so hard she thought she was at risk of going into cardiac arrest. She actually touched a hand to her damp chest to make sure her ribs weren't in danger of shattering under the pressure. She sat there in the dark for a few minutes before tears formed at the corners of her eyes and she pressed her hands to her face and gave a stifled sob. It didn't matter that they had overwritten the atrocities the Master had committed, Martha had still seen them all, and things like that left the kind of traumas she couldn't heal so easily.

It took her that long to realise that her phone had been vibrating on the floor next to her; it must have rung itself off of the end table by her side. She took some deep breaths and tried to remember how all of those people she had seen die had not died, nearly all of them would be okay. But that didn't stop her from having nightmares three nights a week. She sniffed and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and finally leant down to pick the phone up and answer it.

"Hello?"

" _Took you long enough to answer!_ " Jack shouted, " _What have you been doing_?"

"Sleeping," she said, glancing at the clock, "It's six in the morning."

" _Quarter past six in the morning. Bright and early. We'll be outside your building in ten minutes; Swanson has another body for us, thinks the same thing killed him as killed that homeless guy last week. Another nasty job_."

"Remember to bring the nose plugs this time, then," Martha said.

" _Oh, I already have. Died on the toilet, 'nough said._ "

"Who was he? Elvis Presley?" she joked.

* * *

"That's coincidental, isn't it? His name really _is_ Elvis Presley," Gwen Cooper said, eyeing the driver's license of the latest murder victim as they skulked through his flat. Mickey flicked a light switch on and revealed that the apartment they were in was a dedicated shrine to the late Elvis Presley – as in the one who had become late in 1977, not the one whose death they were investigating in 2008. "Or maybe it's not so coincidental."

"There are a lot of these," Martha said, looking around at an old cardboard cut-out of the superstar.

"Cut-outs?" Mickey asked.

"Weirdos who change their name to 'Elvis Presley.' Seriously, you wouldn't believe your eyes if you looked at a patient waiting list in an A&E on any given night. You get at least half a dozen Elvises a week down in London. Lots of Michael Jacksons recently, sometimes Marilyn Monroe sticks her nose in."

"Are you being serious?"

"Oh, yeah. The world's full of people who change their names to emulate people they fancy or admire. Isn't that right, Jack?" she quipped.

"Hey!" Jack complained, putting a hand on his hip while holding a signed black-and-white print of Elvis from the 1950s, "I'm still sensitive about that. Captain Jack Harkness was a cute guy with amazing taste in how he wore an RAF uniform. I'm thinking about getting a replica one, maybe convince Mickey to wear it."

" _What_!?" Mickey exclaimed.

"Oh, if you got it fitted you'd be a wet dream. Don't you think, Martha?" Martha was taken aback.

"Never really got the whole uniform thing," she said awkwardly, trying to work out why her cheeks felt hot when the image of Mickey Smith in a Royal Air Force uniform popped into her head.

"I guess I'll be keeping Mickey all to myself, then."

"Only _I_ get to keep Mickey all to myself," Mickey grumbled.

"So selfish," Jack shook his head.

"Enough flirting, you," Gwen remarked, "Maybe he just wanted to be Elvis so much he willed himself to die on the toilet."

"And ripped himself to pieces from the inside out?"

"Could be. Could be a genie gone wrong," she suggested.

"A _genie_? You've got to be kidding," Mickey said.

"Never trust a genie," Jack said, "I learnt that the hard way. Those guys will do _anything_ to not grant your wish properly. Maybe it _is_ a genie, I mean, what does a homeless guy wish for? To not be homeless? I guess if he's dead he's technically not homeless."

"I'm never going to be able to watch _Aladdin_ the same way again," Gwen sighed, still looking through Elvis Presley's wallet, "Oh my days, have a look at this. _Business cards_. 'Elvis Presley, certified Elvis Presley impersonator,' and there's a phone number, then on the back is an alternative business card that says he's assistant manager at the petrol station opposite the supermarket."

"Swanson said he doesn't have any next-of-kin," Jack told them. They were all very blatantly doing everything they could to put off inevitably having to actually go into the bathroom and look at the dead body. The smell was already pungent enough to put them all off. They'd rather examine his collection of obscure memorabilia.

"Quite sad really, isn't it?" Gwen said, "And look at that, he's an organ donor," she showed the red card with his name on it and the NHS logo she had just found.

"Sign-up sheet over here for a charity karaoke night," Mickey said, "Dated a month ago. No names on it to come and watch him sing."

"Can't believe you woke me up for this," Martha moaned at Jack, "As if I need another reason to start crying this morning." Jack wasn't listening because he had just found a pair of replica sunglasses and thought they were very funny, so only Mickey heard what she said.

"You've already been crying this morning?" he asked her quite seriously. He was taking one remark of her's a whole lot more seriously than the newest death and modern Elvis Presley's rather unfortunate life. The entire room was papered with photos and posters of the man, along with a version of the iconic white, sparkly jumpsuit which was hung up in a semi-transparent dry-cleaning bag over the back of the ajar bedroom door. There was even an unwashed mug leaving dark coffee rings on the table in the shape of Elvis's head.

"Don't look so worried," Martha said.

"But you said-"

"I was kidding," she lied, "Just a saying. I haven't been crying." The last thing she wanted was pity, but unfortunately, she did not think that Mickey believed her. And then the moment became a decision between either staying there with Mickey trying to give her sympathy or going and looking at the smelly dead body. Martha chose the smelly dead body.

They had come up with no leads with the last victim. They had identified the man and Gwen had gone to notify his family, who had been very distraught at the news and were under the impression that their son was living a modest and stable life with a modest and stable job and a modest and stable girlfriend, but aside from that there hadn't been any useful information. Jack hadn't been able to work out the species, Mickey hadn't managed to find any CCTV of the incident, Ianto hadn't found any witnesses, so they had been sitting in wait for the last few days. And now another victim, and the same MO, and there was just as little to go on this time.

"So what do the victims have in common?" Jack asked, trying to get them brainstorming.

"Apart from gender? Nothing," Martha said, "Not even the same race, that last one was black. I've got nothing to go on. Don't even know _exactly_ how they were killed."

"Ripped apart?" Gwen suggested. She had a face mask on and nose pegs in – they all did – but was still holding a hand to her nose as she watched Martha try and examine the shredded body of Elvis Presley the petrol station employee. The white floors were caked in blood and faeces, along with the inside of the toilet from what Martha could see. Again, his jaw was practically hanging off his face by skin and sinew.

"That's about as helpful as saying someone died of a heart attack," Martha said, "Or cancer."

"What's not helpful about that?"

"There are a thousand different types of cancer that all work in different ways, and there are about as many reasons behind why someone might have a heart attack. It's like saying they died of death, it's not _really_ a proper cause. I don't know how the ripping happened, where it started, how whatever did this did it, _what_ did it, whether he was dead before or died during this process or even survived the whole thing and was alive like this for a few seconds," Martha said, "They've both been so mutilated it's impossible to tell."

"So it's looking like another autopsy is in order then," Jack said, "We'll get Mickey on bag and tag and Gwen can do a coffee and pasty run."

"I don't want to be on bag and tag," Mickey said.

"Alright, Gwen can bag and tag and _you_ can do the coffee run, end of debate," Jack said, leaving the room. Martha saw Gwen glare at Mickey and do a mime where she dragged her finger across her neck to symbolise cutting his throat. He looked quite scared as he slipped past her and out of the room. Martha sighed and looked at the corpse, trying to scratch her nose with the back of her hand.

"This really is _quite_ grim," Martha said, getting to her feet.

"Sooner we catch whatever's doing this, the better. Look at the state of it in here. If I see another one of these I'll be sick," Gwen said.

"And you say Mickey has a weak stomach… come on, then. Help me get him back to base and prepped for autopsy."

"My pleasure," she muttered.

* * *

Elvis's body still stank when they got it back to the morgue, and after she had tried to reassemble him just to dissect him again afterwards. It had been three hours of digging around and trying to find evidence, and she wasn't even sure she had scavenged any information of value. It didn't help that she was exhausted from her nightmare, which was a recurring image of seeing people burn alive behind her when her boat had left the shores of Japan with only her on board.

She sat on the stairs with her latex gloves peeled off next to her and her lab coat covered in blood, paper mask hanging around her neck, trying to work out any kind of lead for them to go on. She couldn't shake the idea that Owen might have been able to think of something by now. Her brooding was interrupted by the sound of someone coming down the tiled steps behind her, and she looked up to see Mickey approaching with two mugs in his hands.

"Brought you some tea," he said when she met his eyes, "You look like you could do with some."

"Do I?" she asked as he sat down on the step one below her and handed her the mug. He wasn't wrong about her needing some tea, though.

"Has this got to you?" he asked after they had been sitting in silence for a while, with Martha relishing in the hot tea. Mickey _did_ make good cups of tea, she had learnt that very soon after meeting him.

"Hmm?"

"These murders."

"Oh. No, not… well, I'm a bit annoyed I can't work anything out from the bodies," she admitted, "It's like living with a ghost sometimes, trying to follow in Owen's footsteps. I'm just as good a doctor – I even showed him up a few times when we first met – but I don't know if I'm thinking laterally enough for Torchwood."

"Takes a while to adjust," Mickey said, "Different not having the Doctor around to jump to conclusions, eh? Jack fancies himself as being on the same level as the Doctor, but…"

Martha smiled, "I know what you mean. Half of him is an act he puts on and I don't think the others have realised." He laughed.

"Exactly."

"The Doctor is kind of like that too, though."

"Can't you ring him and ask him for help?"

"Are you insane!? I'm not calling the Doctor and asking him to help Torchwood. He wouldn't do it in a million years. And I can't admit defeat to him so easily."

"What have you found out so far?"

"The livers are missing," Martha said.

"That's definitely something important!"

"It's not. An alien who eats livers is still an alien, it could be anything. It eating livers isn't going to help us. What are we gonna do? Section everyone with a liver to save them? What a good idea." He laughed. "What?"

"Huh?"

"Why did you laugh at me?"

"Because… you said something funny. Section everyone with a liver."

"You must have a weird sense of humour to think _I'm_ funny."

"No way! You definitely are."

"If you say so."

"I do say so."

She paused and then laughed, and seeing her laugh seemed to make him smile and look away with an expression that she may have called embarrassment, if she knew of any reason why he might be embarrassed. But nothing sprang to mind.

"If these murders aren't what's bothering you," he began, looking into his cup of tea now instead of meeting Martha's eyes, "then why have you been so off?"

"Why are you so convinced that I have been?"

"I just… pay attention. To – to everyone. Not just to you. I'm observant. But today more than normal."

"I just had a bad dream, that's all. I do sometimes," she confessed finally. There was something about the look of concern in his eyes – which was quite a sweet expression, really – that made her tell him the truth instead of lying and being evasive. Or maybe it was just because she was tired and Mickey had brought her a cup of tea.

"Yeah," he said, "I know what you mean. It's him, isn't it? The stuff you see? Half of it's amazing, but the other half… there's a reason people like you and me don't stick around on the TARDIS with him. And then it's like – you don't want to talk about it because the good stuff is so good, it's like it should balance out, but… doesn't sometimes."

"It's exactly like that…" she said quietly, staring at him. He hadn't been looking at her while he talked because he had been thinking about his words somewhat carefully, but she was surprised by how he had just managed to explain what she had been feeling when she hadn't quite been able to manage it herself. When he saw she was staring at him the embarrassment flickered across his face again.

"What?"

"Nothing," she said.

"The next time, um, you have a bad dream… you could call me, you know. I won't mind," he added quickly, "Whenever, doesn't matter what time it is. The middle of the night, I'd answer the phone. I'd rather you woke me up than you were on your own." She frowned.

"Do you mean that?"

"Why would I say it if I didn't mean it?"

"Surely I can't always call you in the middle of the night," she said wryly, then she nudged him with her elbow and smirked, "What if you have a _girl_ over one night?"

"I won't," he said, and she raised her eyebrows. "I mean – not that I couldn't have a girl over. I suppose, potentially I might do. I get girls all the time, actually, you know, like, always. Not _always_ , I mean, like you could still ring whenever you need anything." She could tell that he was lying, so she played up to it.

"And tell me, with all these different girls you bed, how often do you go get tested for STIs?" she inquired thoughtfully. He had _not_ been expecting that, and began to stammer and get very flustered. "I'm pulling your leg. Unless you're telling the truth about all these girls, in which case you _should_ get tested after every new partner."

"I know that," he said, "I do. I'm clean."

"Well, good," Martha said, "Always nice to hear patients actually taking doctors' advice on board."

"Funny again," he pointed out.

"Shut up, I don't know where you're getting that idea from." He laughed slightly and she drank some more tea and then looked into the cup for a second. "Thanks for the tea. You were right, I did need it."

"I'm always on hand to make tea."

"Maybe I'll hold you to that."

"Might be nice for it to be a mutual thing. Since NHS waiting times are through the roof these days, people having to wait two weeks sometimes for a GP appointment."

"If you want an appointment you'll have to go through my secretary," Martha said.

"Do you feel bad for him?" Mickey changed the subject and nodded at the deceased Elvis Presley on the silver table in the morgue ahead of them. "Don't think he had any friends, the only family Gwen finally managed to find was a sister he hasn't spoken to for years. He didn't even have her registered as his next-of-kin anyway. I'd hate for that to happen to me."

"Why would it?"

"Dunno. I'm single, my only friends are work friends or they live in another universe, no family anymore," Mickey said, "What kind of funeral do you think he's gonna have?"

"Don't dwell on it."

"Hard not to."

"Well… we'll just have to make sure we stop whatever's doing this."

"Yeah."

"And that you meet a nice girl who will show up at your funeral. Or find a long-lost sibling."

"Meeting nice girls is easier said than done."

"I thought you get girls all the time?"

"They're not nice. Awful, all of them."

"That's the problem with imaginary people. They're unpredictable. Anyway. You've got CCTV scrubbing to get back to, and I have to look into these liver removals and look for… I don't know. Bite marks, or something. Come on." She stood back up and so did he, him ascending the steps when bade. "Oh, Mickey…"

"Yeah?"

"Really, thanks for the tea," she said.

He smiled, "Don't mention it."


	113. Right Behind You Baby

**AN: Crazy times guys, I've finally got internet in the house and have spent more or less this whole day so far writing this chapter. I actually really regret not doing this Mickey & Martha storyline - or even any Mickey & Martha storyline - earlier because they're actually really cute in this one so far. At least, I think so. And straight, for once, and it's really a rarity to see that in this fic.**

 **DAY 151**

 _Right Behind You Baby_

 _Martha_

They had migrated from the bathroom into the bedroom now, which was messy as always because neither of them had ever been the neatest people. She'd spent too much time studying and working and partying in her life with her overbearing mother to ever learn to habitually tidy up, and Mickey… well, he was a man. Even with the TARDIS cleaning up after them somewhat, there were still dirty clothes and old mugs and plates around the room; they were both immune to the smell by this point.

Martha sat with the plastic test between her fingers on the edge of the bed while Mickey paced around in front of her with a hand on his chin. He kept rubbing his face and she thought she could see him sweating as he checked his phone to see if they got any news from Jack, though Jack had already responded to their text-request for him to join them (when he hadn't picked up the phone) saying to just give him a few minutes to 'finish off Ianto.'

"Do you ever think that he thinks the entire universe revolves around his penis?"

"Who?" Mickey asked. He had not been listening at all, engrossed in his thoughts. Martha was trying not to think about the things Mickey was definitely thinking of, because it was too big to think about, like staring into the sun. Even though the evidence was cold and hard in her hand, she was finding it unnervingly easy to make herself detached. One of them had to keep their head.

"The Doctor," she said sarcastically because he hadn't paid attention.

"Yeah…" Mickey mumbled. Still not listening. Then he paused. "Wait, what? The Doctor thinks everything revolves around his knob?" Martha shrugged. "…Does he even have one?"

"If he doesn't then I don't know _what_ Rose and Clara spend their evenings shrieking about."

"You should ask one of them."

"I should-? No!"

"Say it's your… medical curiosity."

"You want me to tell _Rose Tyler_ that I have a _medical curiosity_ in her fiancé's penis?"

"No. You should tell Clara. She'd tell you."

Very carefully, Martha proceeded to ask, "…Why would Clara tell me anything?"

"She fancies you."

Martha did the most unbelievable and awkward scoff that anyone had ever done before, "Pfft, _no_ , that's… crazy."

"She fancies everyone," Mickey said absently. Martha watched him sharply, but he was still preoccupied thinking about the, uh… other stuff. Which was the stuff she should be thinking of too, really. Not worrying about if Mickey had ever actually managed to discover that whole debacle with the alien aphrodisiacs on Paredenio 7*, which she was still quite glad she couldn't remember. Every time she even thought of it she felt violated.

Finally, Captain Jack decided to show his face, knocking once on the door and then swaggering in when Martha called out that he could enter. She held the pregnancy test in her fist and moved it so that she held it next to her where he would not immediately see it and work out what was going on. Mickey stopped pacing while Jack trailed Ianto in as well, both of them looking a complete state. At least Ianto had _tried_ to make it look like they hadn't been fornicating for the last two days solid without any kind of respite; Jack didn't care nearly so much. He hadn't even done up his fly.

"Ugh," Mickey just scoffed at them disapprovingly, then crossed his arms.

"What's going on with my favourite M&Ms, then?" Jack asked, grinning. He was so post-coital it was painful to look at. "Not something too personal for Ianto's ears?" Mickey exchanged a glance with Martha to ask her if she minded Ianto's presence, Ianto who looked as though he knew he was possibly imposing a little. Martha just shrugged. If she was going to have a baby, everyone was going to find out sooner or later.

"I thought we told you not to call us that?" Martha remarked.

" _Sorry_ , guess I must have forgotten. I've been distracted recently."

"Yeah, well, prepare to be un-distracted," she muttered. Mickey didn't say anything, and Jack finally realised that there was something serious going on. And to think, normally he was so much more intuitive.

"What's going on?" Jack asked, finally zipping up his fly. He must have known it was undone the entire time. Typical.

"I'm…" Martha began, but the words got caught in her throat. Mickey was tapping his food very fervently, and she looked at him for a moment and finally stood up and just held the test out to Jack to see. "Here." Jack took it from her and stared at it, then at Martha, then at Mickey, and then at Ianto who had been squinting at it over Jack's shoulder.

"Is this real?" he asked.

"It appeared in the bathroom this morning," she said.

"So whose is it? Someone's pregnant?"

"No, not – I – yes, someone – the TARDIS made it appear to _me_ , and I… on a whim, I just… it's mine," Martha admitted, "It's mine. I'm pregnant."

* * *

 **Five Years Ago**

Three days after the last episode, she had another one. Again, she was screaming into her pillow when she was awoken by her inability to breathe, and finally forced herself upright gasping and sobbing. She panted and was completely soaked with her own sweat, as were her bedsheets, practically making a puddle in the cotton. She stayed with her head in her hands and cried into her palms, sniffing back snot and pitching backwards and forwards. Eventually she dragged up her knees and curled into a ball, seeing the memories of people dying in front of her still scorched into her eyelids. It took all her strength and most of her courage to find her phone where it was on the floor, with no missed calls from Jack this time and just a stifling sensation of being alone, and dig through the contacts enough to find Mickey Smith's name.

It was just when she touched a finger over the red button to hang up and save herself the humiliation of the phone ringing out that she heard the click, and then silence for a moment. She very nearly hung up _again_ waiting for someone to speak.

" _Martha? Are you there?_ " Mickey asked hoarsely.

"I'm sorry, I woke you up-"

" _No, I was awake_ ," he said, and then she heard him yawn, " _I'm always awake at this time_."

"At two AM?"

" _Yeah. What's wrong?_ "

"…I had another, um… a bad dream."

" _I know this café in the train station that's open all night during the week_ ," Mickey said after a pause where he had to think, " _It smells a bit and it's a bit cold but it's out of the rain. And cheap. If you want to talk to somebody, I mean – in person – but I can stay on the phone, if_ -"

"Yeah," she said hoarsely, "I know where you mean. I'll see you soon."

* * *

"Do you want to talk about it?" Mickey asked her over a cup of coffee in the empty station café. The one person who was on shift was an adolescent boy with a pockmarked face, and he was loitering in the kitchen. Martha thought she could smell weed coming through from where he was, but she couldn't be bothered lecturing some disillusioned twenty-year-old about drugs. And at least he wasn't there to overhear them.

"Probably should," she said, lost in thought. She hadn't had a shower and was paranoid about if she stank of sweat or not, because if she did stink she didn't really want Mickey to notice. But she really did look a mess whenever she caught a glimpse of herself in the window as she watched the sparse trains roll in, none of which were carrying a very many people into the Welsh capital. "It's just, I should really see a professional. But I can't see a professional. _I'm_ the closest thing to a professional we've got at Torchwood."

"A professional what?"

"Psychotherapist," she sighed, "Self-diagnosis is never a good thing, but here I am with all the hallmarks of PTSD and nobody who's actually qualified to turn to, because I can't walk into any random office and start talking about the things I see in my nightmares. I'd get committed. You know? Not that I don't appreciate you… coming out here in the middle of the night, just to…" she stopped speaking and met his eyes for a second, then got back on track of what she had been saying, "It means a lot to me," she leant over and touched his hand across the table, "It's just that I don't know how much damage has been done. And you're not a shrink."

"I suppose I'm not," Mickey said, looking at her hand just when she moved it and picked up her cup of coffee to drink. It really wasn't good having caffeine at that time of night, but something told her she definitely wasn't going to be getting back to sleep.

"Thank you," she said, "I don't know why you'd come running to see me at this time of night, but… thanks. I would call my mum, but I don't want her to worry. She has a hard enough time dealing with all this as it is."

"What _is_ 'all this'? What is it you have nightmares about?" he asked seriously, "I only know bits and pieces."

"Okay, well, while you were off gallivanting on a parallel Earth, the Master basically took over the whole planet and became a dictator and I had to… well, I had to save the world, more or less. But it lasted for a year, and he did some horrible things, and I saw them. I saw people burn alive in Japan when he razed it to the ground, and he turned all of Russia and China into gigantic missile silos so that he could wage war with the entire universe. The Doctor managed to change history and erase it all for everyone except the few of us in the inner circle who remember."

"I guess I see why you can't go to therapy. Can't you prescribe yourself something?"

"Not really, looks a bit dodgy. I don't want to develop an addiction to prescription drugs," Martha said, "I'll end up like him in the kitchen. Or worse, I could get struck off the medical register." Mickey looked over his shoulder and saw the youth was completely zoned out and l wearing sunglasses, even though they were indoors in a train station in the middle of the night. She suspected he'd had a bit more than the odd spliff. "Probably beyond a lot of shrinks, anyway. How often does it happen that the initial traumatic event gets erased from history?"

"Feel like I'm a bit out of my depth here, to be honest. Sorry…"

"Oh, don't be sorry! You've come all the way out here at two o'clock in the morning for god knows what reason," she said, then paused and moved on, "And besides, I'm not sure anyone would actually be _in_ their depth."

"Must be a bad habit of mine," he said jokingly, but she didn't know what the joke was.

"What is?"

"Coming running when people say they need me." She had not said she needed him, but she also did not dispute him. "Never seems to work out."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, you know, Rose."

"Oh. _Rose_."

"Why do you say it like _that_?"

"Just seems like everyone is always obsessed with Rose."

"Don't worry, I'm not obsessed with her. I'm not sure she was ever really a very good girlfriend."

"Because she ran off with another man?"

"Well, exactly. And if I ever got a new girlfriend, it'd be nice if she didn't do stuff like that," he said, "She just sort of strung me along, really. Made me drive all the way to Cardiff because she wanted her passport and she didn't even need it – and you know what, I went, at the drop of a hat. Probably means I'm a pushover."

"It doesn't mean that," Martha said, "Clearly she took you for granted if you were willing to drive from London to Cardiff on a whim. And to come out here to talk to me. And I seriously don't think I appreciated how long the drive between London and Cardiff is until moving here, especially since I go back home quite a bit."

"Do you?"

"Do you not?"

"Haven't really got anything to go back to in London. Family all dead, friends all in another universe. Except for the people here. I'm not from a big family like you."

"I wish _I_ wasn't from a big family sometimes, too. It'd feel a lot smaller if mum and dad were still together and he didn't have his bloody girlfriend Annalise."

"Did they not mind you moving so far away?"

"A bit, but… well. I've walked across the whole planet, so I suppose the distance doesn't seem all that huge, just a bit inconvenient. Besides, I'm doing good work here, for Torchwood. They trust Jack a lot more than they trusted UNIT when I worked for them."

"'Good work' is a funny way to describe chasing after a toilet killer." Martha frowned.

"How do you mean?"

"What?"

"What?"

"Uh…"

"Toilet killer. What's that about?"

"It's coming through the drains, isn't it."

"…It's… hang on, what makes you think it's coming through the drains?"

"Elvis Presley died on the toilet, before that there was that massive open sewage grate Gwen pointed out. You remember, she said she was gonna write to the council about it being a safety hazard," Mickey explained, and Martha stared at him. "What?"

"We've all been really bloody slow. There's Jack thinking it's something to do with people eating larvae and the larvae destroying them on the way out, but you've worked out this whole time that it's going through the drains… which explains how it got into the locked apartment, why nobody saw it. Why didn't you mention this?"

"I thought it was obvious!" he protested, "And Jack's been trying to put me on admin all week, I've barely seen or heard anything about the entire case."

"Because you're squeamish," she pointed out.

"Oi! Anyone would be squeamish when faced with that mess. Do you think we should tell Jack?"

"Not right now."

"Why not?"

"Because he'll have us all trailing down into the sewers," Martha said, "I don't want to go into any sewers right now. And it'll interrupt our…"

"Our?" he prompted.

"Thing."

"Thing?"

"This thing," she nodded, "You know, we're… hanging out. Being friendly."

"Friendly?"

"Yeah. Why? Were you thinking-"

"I was thinking about being friendly," he cut her off quickly, "I'm always friendly, to everyone."

"Well. There's such a thing as _too_ friendly, you know," she muttered.

"You'll have to tell me all about being _too friendly_."

"Maybe I will."

"Go on, then."

"I'm gonna get some more coffee," Martha's chair scraped when she stood up and very nearly tripped over, Mickey half getting out of his seat to help her if she fell, out of a reflex. "I'm fine," she waved him away, not looking at him because her cheeks suddenly felt very hot, _especially_ when she looked at him.

What the hell had just happened to her? What had she been grumbling about? Mickey being 'friendly to everyone'? No, it wasn't that. Well, it was a bit. It was because of the elephant in the room, she knew, as she tried to wave to get the attention of the acne-ridden dropout in the kitchen to ask for more coffee. She didn't even _need_ more coffee, she hadn't finished her last cup, it was still half-full and warm, she had just wanted to escape the situation.

Ultimately, she had to give up hailing the junkie down, because he was too high to pay attention. Defeated, she returned to her seat, and saw with horror that Mickey had realised she hadn't even drunk her coffee. What a devastating faux-pas.

"Oh, would you look at that? I still have loads of coffee left," Martha said, "That's lucky."

"Yeah," Mickey said incredulously, "Lucky. Are you okay? Apart from your nightmare?"

"Course I am." She sipped her drink.

"It's just that – Gwen mentioned something about – you broke up with your boyfriend recently." Martha stared at him.

"He was my fiancé and it was four months ago. That's not recently," she said coolly, "Why were you talking to Gwen about Tom?"

"I didn't even know his name was Tom."

"It is, and he's a paediatrician who specialises in foreign aid. Goes to where famines and pandemics are and tries to help sick children," Martha explained, "I met him when the Master took over the world, and then the Master killed him, and in this timeline I found him."

"Wow," said Mickey with an unusual tone of voice, "Sounds like a hero."

"He's in Africa right now, something to do with Ebola," she said.

"What? You're in touch?"

"As far as break-ups go, it was a pretty amicable one. We were both way too busy all the time, and I could never really tell him about work or the Doctor or even about why I tried to contact him in the first place, which was to see if he was still alive. I just don't think it was ever really meant to work out. Anyway, _you_ were just going on about Rose. Maybe it's time someone lived in the shadow of one of _my_ exes for a while."

"Okay, so I'm in his shadow?" Mickey seemed annoyed.

"What? That's not what I meant, I just mean everyone always goes on about how great Rose is and how clever and how… blonde," Martha complained.

"I wasn't going on about any of that stuff."

"You were talking about her."

"How she was a bad girlfriend."

"Well…"

"And then you start going on about your child-doctor ex-boyfriend who's off risking his life to deal with plague outbreaks."

"Well he _is_."

"And who you're still friends with."

"You don't have to hate someone to break up with them – it's not like you hate Rose. And I told you, he was my fiancé."

"Wow, good for you, having a _fiancé_ ," Mickey actually sounded angry.

"Are you jealous?"

"Am I _jealous_? Why would I be jealous of all the women being obsessed with these heroic men who go off selflessly to faraway places?"

"Alright, so you _are_ jealous."

"I'm not jealous. Why do you think I'm jealous?"

"I don't know, you're just acting jealous."

"Well I'm not."

She paused. "Maybe I just don't want to be with some doctor who goes wandering off to exotic places to rescue people all the time. It might be nice just to have someone I know is always going to be there," she said, and he quietened, so then she decided to dig a fresh knife in just because he had annoyed her, "Or maybe it would be nice for me to stay on my own." He looked down at his hands under the table and she watched him for a moment.

"…Sorry. I'm not… listen, I should tell you that I-"

Martha's phone rang and he stopped talking. She dug it out of the back pocket of her jeans.

"It's Jack," she sighed. If it had been anyone else, she might have ignored it and let Mickey continue. But it was Jack, and he would only be calling her at that time of night if somebody somewhere was dead. "Hello?" she answered.

" _You answered quickly this time_."

"I was already awake," she said.

" _Good, you're gonna need to be alert for this. We've got a third body. This one's a woman, also died on the toilet like our good buddy Elvis. Had two kids, the oldest is about ten, went to go to the toilet in the middle of the night and, uh… let's just say a referral to a very good psychiatrist is gonna be in order_ ," Jack explained, then gave her the address.

"Right. Mickey and I will be right there."

" _You two are-?_ " Martha hung up on him and then lifted her jacket up from the back of her chair.

"Another murder," she said, "We'd better go. Do you have money for a taxi? I've only got a fiver."

"Uh, yeah, sure," Mickey said, following suit and standing up.

"You'll have to tell him all about your toilet theory," Martha jibed. She didn't think he heard her, he was preoccupied counting out the change from his pocket. Then he looked up and bit his lip. "Don't tell me you haven't got any cash."

"I haven't got any cash."

"I said _don't_ tell me."

"It's fine. It's a train station, there's bound to be a cashpoint around here somewhere."

"You'd better hope so; if there isn't we've only got the one umbrella between us. Might get a bit intimate with the rain so heavy."

"I can think of worse things," he said quietly, quietly because he wasn't sure if it was something he should let her hear or not. She pretended she hadn't, but couldn't help smiling when she was sure he couldn't see her. "Let's go, then."

* _chapter 775_

 **AN: Two questions for you: 1) Do you think Mickey and Martha are cute? and 2) I AM going to write Nios and Cohen on their date (I've started drafts of it already) but do you guys want to see it after this storyline or after the next one?**


	114. Armitage Shanks

**DAY 151**

 _Armitage Shanks_

 _Martha_

"Well, congratulations!" Jack hugged her tightly and lifted her up for a second. Why was it that every time someone went to hug her they tried to pick her up? It was like they couldn't stand her being five-three, _or_ like they were patronising her. But it had been that way for her whole life and she was now beyond arguing with the people who did it. And there was never much point arguing with Jack, anyway. "Isn't that quaint. Who's the father?"

"Who's the-? What do you all take me for? Why does everyone keep asking me who the father is?" she was growing increasingly outraged with these suggestions against her fidelity. All this because _one time_ when she was _on alien drugs_ which she _couldn't even remember_ Clara Oswald had… well it wasn't really worth thinking about what Clara Oswald had done. But she had got the blisters she deserved.

"You can never be sure there hasn't been some extra-terrestrial insemination going on," Jack said, "You've scanned it, right?" Mickey and Martha looked at each other and didn't say anything. "Wait, you guys haven't scanned it? So you don't even know what it is?"

"It's not an alien monster," Martha said firmly.

"It could be. It happened to Gwen, it could happen to anyone. You three stay here, and _I'll_ go see what Helix has to say about it," Jack said, then he left the room, Ianto staying behind. Martha sat back down on the edge of the bed.

"Congratulations from me, too," Ianto said, "Always thought you two would make good parents. Seems there's all manner of revelations this week, eh?"

"It's always like that here," Mickey said.

"You should have seen it when the cat got pregnant," Martha said, "Everyone convinced themselves it was Jack and Jenny's. Can you imagine anything worse than those two having a kid together? Picturing the custody battles alone is giving me an aneurysm."

"Have you met the others yet?" Mickey asked Ianto.

"Not really. I think Jack's quite keen for me to avoid them. He's had me tied up in his room since I arrived." Martha raised her eyebrows at Ianto. "Sorry. Why do you ask?"

"Have you met Jenny yet?"

"Yes. Definitely met her."

"And what about the Eleventh Doctor? He's the shortest of the three of them and really likes bowties and custard," Martha said, "Just because, if you _haven't_ met him yet, you should probably try to avoid him."

"The Doctor won't do anything to Ianto," Mickey said, "Now, _Jack_ is a whole other story. He's going to throw Jack into a black hole. But Ianto'll be alright."

"Don't know that I would be if Jack got thrown into a black hole."

"He'd find his way out eventually."

"Reckon he might deserve it, too," Mickey said.

"Really?" Martha asked him, surprised.

"It is a _bit_ out of order making her go on a quest to find his ex-boyfriend. I don't know why he didn't just ask Rose about it."

Jack reappeared just when they were justifying what the Doctor was almost certainly going to do to him the next time they bumped into each other, having retrieved the Helix handset from whoever it was who kept it. Martha suspected he may have just had to pry it out of Oswin's possessive hands, unless he'd gotten lucky and she had left it lying around. She didn't bother asking, because finding out the truth about the baby growing inside her was now the utmost priority.

 **Five Years Ago**

"We really have to find out what's doing this," Gwen said. She looked green in the bright lights of the latest victim's bathroom. "I don't think I'm ever going to eat again if I have to see one more of these things." Martha thought to herself that she didn't think Gwen should be calling the deceased 'these things', given the enormity of the tragedies they had come across, but perhaps Gwen was desensitised. In fact, working for Torchwood for three years now, she almost certainly _was_ desensitised. At least this time as she examined the body she knew what she was trying to find, that being any trace of a liver, since the other two victims had lost theirs. "So, what's going on?"

"If I knew that I wouldn't be kneeling here looking through all these bits of flesh, would I?" Martha said.

"I don't mean with this, I mean that Jack said you and Mickey were together when you answered the phone, and then you showed up together." Martha met Gwen's eyes but couldn't find anything today. "There's no reason to be embarrassed! He's cute."

"You've got the wrong idea," Martha said.

"Have I?" Gwen asked wryly.

"I'm busy," Martha muttered, going back to the body. She did not want to talk about this.

"Alright, alright. I suppose I'd better go speak to the son and try and work out if he saw anything."

"Be careful," Martha advised, "He's only ten, you don't want to upset him even more."

"He walked in and saw his mother dead and ripped to pieces, I don't know if he _can_ get upset even more," said Gwen.

"Aren't you supposed to be the sensitive one?" Martha quipped, which insulted Gwen enough that she finally left Martha alone to study the body. Gwen went out into the hallway to find the boy, while Jack drifted in a moment later to replace her, hopefully coming to talk about work and not speculate about Martha's private affairs. Mickey was not in her immediate vicinity due to him being squeamish.

"What's your theory?" Jack asked.

"Whatever's doing this is eating the livers," Martha said.

"Oh yeah? Just livers? Rips a person apart so much for a liver?"

"Well, I don't know that it's _eating_ it, but they've all got missing livers, no trace of a liver at all, but no visible symptoms of ongoing liver disease. And humans can't survive without livers anyway," Martha said, "I don't think whatever's doing this is very intelligent, either, which rules out the possibility that it's anything black market."

"You sure? You get a lot of demand for human liver in the right kinds of places in this galaxy," Jack said, "Maybe less in this century, though. It's a delicacy to the right sort of psychopath. God, I once broke a bunch of people out this human foie gras farm. Took me eating the stuff in the first place to realise it tasted a little off, and was the wrong colour to be from poultry. And then I went vegetarian for the next couple of years. I couldn't even give anyone a blowjob for two weeks."

"Mickey had a theory, did he tell you?" Martha said.

"Is that what you two were doing together at two in the morning? Talking about work?"

"There isn't anything going on," she said.

"Uh-huh. Sure there's not. So if _you're_ not laying your claim on Mickey, does that mean anyone can have a go? Because I kinda think he's adorable. And I'd love to tell Rose I nailed her ex-boyfriend. If I ever see her again. Might be hard given the parallel universe thing."

"You're very welcome to try and sleep with Mickey," Martha said, because there was no chance of anything ever happening unless Jack went to one of his underground sources and procured quite a large amount of Rohypnol.

"So, what was his theory?"

A wailing sound erupted from elsewhere in the house, which Martha recognised distinctly as a child crying. She stood up, finding no outstanding evidence anywhere on the most recent body to keep her there, and followed Jack to find out what was going on.

"I'm sorry – no – don't think about your mummy, just, um," Gwen did not know what to say. She was talking to the ten-year-old son in his bedroom he shared with his younger brother, the younger brother being watched downstairs by a police officer and DI Swanson, who had called them in to that murder as well, just like the previous two. Gwen was floundering in her attempt to get through to the child, and had made him cry. Behind Jack and Martha, Mickey came up the stairs from where he had been talking to Swanson to get information about the victim. He immediately went to Gwen's aid.

"Hey, little man," he crouched down to be eye level and spoke, nudging Gwen out of the way. She shifted and looked rather ashamed of herself for upsetting the boy. "We're special monster hunters, okay? No, shh, listen to me. We're monster hunters, we catch the things that do this. But we haven't been very good at it recently because we haven't had any brave people to help us. But you seem brave, because you're dealing with all this really well, and you can help us to stop this happening to anybody else's mummy. We're all very sorry that this happened to yours, but I'm sure you don't want it to happen to any other mummies. That's why it's very important that you tell us if you saw any monsters when you found mum like that." The boy still had tears streaking his cheeks, but had calmed down significantly when Mickey had taken over from Gwen.

Martha realised that she was staring at Mickey and smiling – she had no idea he was good with kids – and quickly tried to disguise her facial expression as one of worry and general contemplation. But she did not fool Jack, who gave her a telling look before returning his own attention to the boy, who was whispering something to Mickey. When he did, Mickey's kind smile vanished almost completely.

"What?" he asked. The child seemed to repeat himself and Mickey's eyes widened, and he bolted out of the room without explaining himself at all. Jack, Gwen and Martha hastened to follow, but he had run off quite quickly back to the bathroom, so focused on whatever the child had told him that it was like he didn't even notice the smell or the vileness of the crime scene.

"What are you looking for?" Martha asked him.

"What did he tell you?" Gwen persisted.

"Shampoo bottle," said Mickey, "Do you see a shampoo bottle around here?"

"I don't think this is the time to be washing your hair," Gwen said, "You've barely even got any."

"There, in the bath," Jack pointed, ignoring Gwen's comment. And there was a bottle of shampoo, and Martha hadn't a clue why Mickey was so intent on getting his hands on one, because Gwen hadn't exactly been incorrect with her comment about Mickey's hair. Mickey lunged and grabbed the shampoo bottle, and that was when it exploded in his hands.

For a second Martha thought it must be a shapeshifter that had transformed into a shampoo bottle they were after, but she was wrong, it was just very good at fitting into tight spaces. The shampoo bottle, though split down the side, clattered back down into the bath and rolled away towards the plughole. The contents of it were most certainly _not_ shampoo though, and they launched themselves at Mickey, large, pink and slimy. It was a very good thing he had been expecting it, because he managed to dodge out of the way, and Martha finally got a good glimpse of it when it landed in the sink behind him and started writhing around.

It looked like a worm, very fat and just over a foot in length, segmented and bulbous and milky white and moist in the light, with a circular mouth and half a dozen rows of shark-like, needle-shaped teeth. It twisted and turned upon itself in the sink basin, having hidden itself away in the shampoo bottle, perhaps because it was clever enough to not want any witnesses. That must have been what the boy had told Mickey - that the culprit hadn't even left yet, and Martha could hardly believe that she had been in there examining the body with that _thing_ lurking just behind her. What if it had tried to strike her next?

"What is it!?" Mickey exclaimed.

"You're the one who found it!" Martha shouted at him, when Gwen drew her handgun and cocked it. Just as the worm looked about to make its escape down the plughole of the sink, she emptied her cartridge into its body and left it in splattered pieces, strewn about the now-destroyed sink. There it lay, and the noise was enough to draw out the police officers who had gone to hide downstairs. They were still in the room with the corpse and everything.

"Looks like we've caught our murderer. Nice work, Gwen," Jack said.

"I wouldn't speak so soon, have a look at that," Mickey pointed it out.

"Oh my god," Martha said, grabbing Mickey's arm while she stared at the sink, because the pieces of the worm were slipping and sliding back together again, with the flesh melding with itself and forming the monster again. Gwen couldn't reload her gun in time to shoot it some more before it slipped away down the plug hole in its smaller segments, probably reforming completely while it was in the drain. "You were right," Martha said to Mickey, still holding his arm, "It _is_ living in the sewers."

"Alright then," Jack said, "Gwen, call Ianto and tell him to ready the jumpsuits and the gas masks. Torchwood is taking a trip down into the sewers of Cardiff."

Mickey said to Martha, "And you were right too. He _is_ gonna send us into the sewers."


	115. Bottom Feeder

**DAY 151**

 _Bottom Feeder_

 _Martha_

" _Three-week old embryo of human origin detected_ ," Helix said, Jack holding the handset in front of Martha's belly.

"What do you mean 'of human origin'? Not an actual human?" Martha questioned, feeling her heart skip a beat when she heard that ambiguity.

" _Data inconclusive_."

"How can the data be inconclusive?" Mickey asked, growing very worried.

" _Embryo displays traces of Artron mutation and a genome abnormality consistent with the contraction of Corrupt Strain 25EFX4_ ," Helix said smoothly.

"My baby displays traces of _what_!?" Mickey demanded.

"Artron energy is the background radiation you get from time travelling," Jack said quickly because Mickey was growing very angry, while Martha was trying to work out where she had heard the phrase 'Corrupted Strain 25EFX4' before.

"But _mutation_ -"

"Probably means exposure to the time vortex at the time of conception and development has, you know… this kid is gonna be a Time Lord," Jack said, "But hey, at least it's not a Nostrovite baby and nobody's gonna come and rip it out of you."

"Small victories," Ianto commented.

"And 'corrupted strain'?" Mickey began, "What's that all about? What's this _corrupted strain_?"

"It's what Oswin calls the Manifest virus," Martha realised, "It's her scientific name for it, for the version that we have. So we were right. It's going to be a Manifest _and_ a Time Lord."

"At least Time Lords are resilient creatures," Jack said, "I'd bet it might be a pretty smooth pregnancy."

"Yeah, unless it inherits the power to set things on fire with its mind, like me," Martha said.

"Well, okay, yeah," Jack admitted, "But don't you need an adrenaline boost to kick-start the genetics? So the abilities might not appear properly until maybe years after it's born. And they're potentially passive abilities, like the eye colour changing or the breathing underwater."

"Or random teleportation spasms," Martha said.

"Helix, is there any way to tell whether the symptoms of Corrupted Strain 25EFX4 have begun to show themselves?" Jack asked.

" _Negative, but the embryo is not yet at a stage of development advanced enough for the neurological pathways enabling Corrupted Strain 25EFX4 to manifest to be formed_ ," he explained, " _By my best estimate there will be no possibility for advanced abilities to develop until six months of foetal growth minimum_."

"And at six months I'm sure we can get an advanced enough incubator from the future that would enable the baby to survive if it _does_ have the random teleportation spasms," Jack said, "And it might be enough time for Oswin to develop a new inhibitor to stop the powers, at least until after it's born. Look, we're on the most advanced spaceship in the universe, and _you're_ a doctor, this is gonna be the most well-protected and looked-after foetus in history. I promise you, none of us here are gonna let anything happen to this baby, especially not three Doctors, Jenny and Rose."

"Or me," Mickey said, "It's mine too."

"Well yeah but, you can't bend time and space to your will."

* * *

 **Five Years Ago**

Of all the sewers in the world, if she had to pick one she didn't want to go into, it was probably Cardiff. Mostly because in terms of human waste, all sewers were more or less on the same level, the thing about Cardiff's sewers was that they had a very nasty Weevil infestation, and she'd seen first-hand evidence of the state Weevils left people in when they were done attacking.

"Okay," Jack began, sounding muffled in his gas mask. They were all wearing gas masks, and full white hazmat suits, though Martha doubted they were going to stay white for very long. "Gwen and I will go this way, you two go that way." Ianto was topside in the SUV working comms and trying to find them a map of the sewage system to follow as they waded around knee-deep sludge looking for the arse-eating worm. "Remember what I said, it's a Ledan Bullpillar," he had finally worked out what the species was after seeing its behaviour, "Burrows in through your rear, eats the liver, comes out through your mouth and then back into the drains, killing its prey in the process. Which means we've all gotta take extra care to watch our sixes. And each other's sixes."

"You can keep your eyes well away from my six, I'm married, mate," Gwen jibed.

"You should be taking it as a compliment."

"Cheeky!" and then they both laughed, until Jack turned serious again and spoke directly to Mickey and Martha.

"Remember to keep your comms open at all times in case Ianto gets a bead on it from above, and don't take your hands off your traps. Move out." They went their separate ways. The traps he was talking about were nets probably based on pest-control devices, but these ones were made of very advanced and unbreakable chainmail. So they had those, they had stun guns, and they had headlamps; fully equipped for their putrid attempt at spelunking. It really was disgusting down there, and even with the industrial gas masks she was still getting plenty of the smell of raw sewage inflicted upon her. It was also both a blessing and a curse that the headlamps were so powerful; on the one hand, they would be very good for navigation and for spotting the parasitic critter they were hunting, but on the other, they illuminated some things Martha didn't think should ever be illuminated. Did anyone really want to see a river of floating turds and ballooning, water-filled condoms? Probably not. But that was what was down there.

Then she heard the noise of Gwen and Jack's comms shutting off, after some brief chatter where Jack gave out some very personal details about Ianto, though Ianto did not seem particularly bothered all in all.

"Does that mean something's wrong?" Mickey asked, startled. He had been listening, but only just; she knew because she saw him roll his eyes at certain choice moments during Jack's monologue about Ianto's bum, which was something along the lines of 'Ianto has to stay safe from the Bullpillar in the SUV – the only thing ruining _his_ anus is _me_.' Because of that, Martha was very grateful that the line had gone dead.

"No," Martha answered him, growing annoyed, "It means they're talking about us." Just to be safe, she then touched her own comm device in her ear, and made sure it was on the setting where the microphone was muted. Mickey tried to follow suit, but fumbled, and dropped his earpiece in the poo pond they were wading through. "Well done," Martha said.

"Oops," he was disheartened, "You'd better speak for both of us, then."

"Won't be much speaking to them; we can't hear them and they can't hear us."

"Are you sure they were talking about us? Maybe the signal died?"

"I'm definitely sure," Martha said.

"But… us how? What do you mean?" She thought he knew exactly what she meant, and what Jack and Gwen were talking about (probably with Ianto as well), but he wanted to try and pry some confession out of her. The last few weeks had been rather whirlwind, though, and she wasn't sure she had anything to confess. She hadn't had a chance to think much of anything through, really. Moving to a new house, adjusting to a new job, putting up with frequent nightmares, dissecting lots of dead bodies – it kept a girl occupied.

"Mickey, we're not children," she said, "We don't have to have any of this he-said she-said rumour-spreading nonsense with Jack sticking his nose in. We can just be honest."

"Go on then. Be honest," he pressed.

"Well, I… think you should be honest first."

"Fine, I care about you a lot, more than in a friendly way." Martha's foot snagged on something deep below the surface of the oily, mucky fluid, and she stumbled but managed to steady herself. "What was it?"

"I thought I felt something," she said. They both stayed very still and listened. Then she frowned (though he couldn't tell what her expression was properly with the gas masks on) and looked at him, "Wait, more than a friend?"

"Look out!"

It had not been something completely random she had tripped on, it turned out. Something had brushed past her leg, and now whatever it was had launched itself at her from behind, only to be grabbed out of the air by Mickey, who dropped his trap in the refuse in the process. Martha shrieked at the sight of it, that pearly worm but now brown and sticky with sewage coating its skin.

"Do something!" Mickey shouted, but just as she raised her chainmail-pole to try and catch it, Mickey's grip failed and the thing writhed around enough to get free. It splashed down into the gunk and left them splattered with brown stuff, and they saw ripples in the water as is slithered away, perhaps sensing the danger. In the distance, Martha saw one of the condoms burst, but was convinced it had disappeared away from them. She hastily turned her earpiece back on.

"We just saw it," she said, "Mickey dropped his earpiece in the sewage, and his pole, but it jumped out at us."

" _Did you catch it_?" Jack asked in a crackly voice; unsurprisingly, the drainage system didn't have very good Bluetooth signal.

"No."

" _How come_?"

"It startled me!"

" _It startled you!?_ "

"I was distracted. And it's covered in poo, it's very slippery, Mickey dropped it and we saw it sort of, swim away. To the west, I think."

" _That's where we are_ ," Gwen said.

" _Probably a good thing it's coming to us, at least we know how to do our jobs_ ," Jack remarked, and the line went down again, so Martha switched hers off, too, and rolled her eyes at Mickey when he was looking.

"Can you believe him? Lecturing me."

"Probably gets off on it," Mickey said.

"I'll say. Just because the last time I had anything to do with Torchwood I was technically _his_ boss, now he thinks he can order me around like I'm a rookie…"

"He's probably worried," Mickey said.

"Worried?"

"Well, you know, you've been off. The nightmares, and stuff. I don't know if I would have paired us off together."

"Oh, thanks. It's not like we're inexperienced. And I told you why they sent us off together."

"No, you didn't."

"Then you definitely know. Jack's trying to play match-maker. You know what he's like."

"Are you sure? I wouldn't think he'd like his staff getting, um, well, uh… well, with each other, anything like… you know, maybe, unprofessional."

"What a way with words."

"Shut up."

"He's shagging one of his subordinates on the regular," Martha said.

"Right, so, erm, what are you saying?"

"…I said that Jack's shagging one of his-"

" _No_ , about _us_."

"Is there an us?"

"I… you're doing this on purpose, aren't you!? Put me out of my misery." She laughed. Even though they were in an urban swamp chasing an anal-thrashing alien worm parasite responsible for the death of Elvis Presley, Mickey still made her laugh.

"What do you want me to say? It's four in the morning, you know, and we're in a sewer," Martha said, "Look, we both know what we're getting at, don't we? So why don't we just leave it until we're out of this sewer, because it's not the best place for a conversation."

"No, come on. Talk now. There's nothing else do to."

"Apart from our jobs."

"The Bullpillar will find us when it's ready."

"Okay, okay, there's a mutual attraction here, right? You're sweet, and caring, and I think Rose Tyler made a huge bloody mistake letting you go, but Mickey – _we're in a sewer_. What if we have a thing, and it lasts? What if we were to have a kid one day-"

"Getting a bit ahead of yourself-"

"Listen, what if we were, and they're like – 'how did you and dad start going out?' and I say it was in a sewer. That's a rubbish memory. I want a good memory that doesn't involve anything weird and alien and is just… just _normal_. And when I don't stink of shit, and I've had a shower. So I promise we'll talk about this when we're in an environment that's a little less turd-infested. Alright?"

"…Alright," he relented, and she heard a smile in his voice. She was smiling, too, as best she could under the strength of the gas mask. "Promise?"

"Yes, promise, now can we find the poo worm so that we can leave?"

"Yeah, um, do you think I should try and fish my pole out of this mess, or can I just leave it…?"

"I reckon leave it," Martha said, "As a doctor, I'd advise as little contact with old human biological waste as possible. You could get _very_ sick from just breathing this in." They moved on from the spot of initial Bullpillar-attack together, with Martha thinking more extensively about if she had overstepped by bringing up fictional future children. But you always had to think ahead, and she was serious about wanting to perhaps create a good memory. After all, what if she had actually married Tom? What if _they_ had reproduced? She would be living a lie. She didn't want to live a lie, and more than that, she wanted the truth to be as glamourous as it had potential to be. And by 'glamourous', she just met not in a Welsh sewer.

"So you're the first line of defence now between us getting our livers eaten or not," Mickey said.

"Don't worry, I'll protect you."

"Glad to hear it." Truthfully, she wasn't sure how much better she would be with the trap-nets than he was, since neither of them had actually had any practice in using them, but maybe they would get lucky and the thing would attack Jack first, and then gorge itself on his infinitely re-growing livers for long enough that they could capture it very easily. An unending buffet was rather a good bit of bait, Martha thought, and if the worm had given up with them it had almost certainly gone to track down Jack and Gwen instead. "So if I was gonna ask you out in a really romantic and memorable way you'd love to tell our imaginary future kids about, how would you say I should do it?"

"I think that's cheating."

"I wouldn't cheat on anyone."

"That's not what I meant and you know it. But really, if you could stop trying to flirt with me so that I could turn the comms back on, that'd be great," Martha said, and he did, so after a pause she turned the line back on to discover that Jack and Gwen were shouting very loudly for them to help.

" _What are the two of you even doing!?_ " Gwen was yelling, " _There's a bloody worm over here trying to burrow through Jack's pants!_ "

"Not for the first time," Mickey said, "We'll be right there."

" _You want to take the next right and then the second left_ ," Ianto spoke, " _I'm sure you'll hear the splashing when you get close enough_."

It didn't take them longer than a minute or two to go galumphing through the dark sludge enough that they found the grotesque sight they had been directed towards. It appeared that Jack may have suffered quite severely at the hands of the worm, being as his dead body was floating face down in god only knew what. It was lucky he could never die, because any other human being submerging themselves in that much raw sewage was almost certainly going to. At best they would be spending a few months in hospital getting tetanus shots and antibiotics pumped into their bloodstream on a drip.

"Why the bloody hell did you two turn off your earpiece!?" Gwen demanded.

"You started it!" Martha shouted back at her.

"Well help me catch the bastard, bloody thing bit through the pole of my net-thing, and Jack's dropped his," she said, "It's disgusting down here, so the sooner the better." So Martha had the only trap left.

The Bullpillar made itself known when she saw it lashing around in the water, still writhing within Jack's freshly-deceased body, perhaps still trying to consume the liver.

"Alright, one of you try and scare it so it jumps, and I'll get it," Martha said.

"Scare it how?" Gwen asked.

"Throw something, I don't know," Martha said.

"Here," Mickey had retrieved something almost as soon as she suggested scaring it, and held what he had found much too close to Martha's face for comfort. She swore and nearly hit it out of his hand when she saw it was one of the many shit-covered condoms they kept seeing, which found their way into the sewers from people flushing them down the toilet instead of throwing them in the bin, and then got filled with disgusting water along with the curdled dregs of semen.

"Chuck it at Jack!" Gwen ordered him, and so he immediately did, almost too quickly for Martha to get ready with her net to catch the thing. The condom hit Jack's dead back and exploded, making the worm screech a very high-pitched whistle and launch itself into the air to dive away and flee again. But this time they outsmarted it, and Martha snagged it out of the air with the chainmail net, and then pressed a button on the end of the pole so that the net closed itself off nicely. The worm was not strong enough to bite through the titanium chainmail like it had bitten through Gwen's pole, and finally they had it caught.

"Right, I'll take the Bullpillar, and you two can drag Jack's corpse back to the surface," Martha said, taking charge again if only to avoid having to fish Jack's body out of the river of poo. "And then we'll… I don't know. Throw him off the docks to clean up a bit before letting him back into base?"

"No," said Gwen, then down the earpiece, "Ianto, get the hosepipes ready on the docks. We'll all be needing a rinse."

"You know, the Torchwood paycheque is pretty big," Mickey began, going to locate one of Jack's arms in the sewage while Gwen went to find the other one, "But I still don't think it covers having to do things like this."

 **AN: I thought I would bring back some of the classic grossness of this fic for this storyline XD but, you know, I needed something simple since there's more important stuff going on right now than the poo worm. There's nothing exceedingly disgusting in the next few, though. Not unless I change my mind about what I'm writing on a whim.**

 **Anyway, the next day in fic is gonna be a Downtime Day because you remember I used to do those all the time where it was just them hanging about on the TARDIS together, and I really am missing doing a lot of TARDIS-centric stuff, so if any of you guys have any ideas for chill things they can do that are just shenanigans and not too stressful or crazy that would be cool. So far I think I might write in this bit I've had for a while where the girls play a game where they try to guess very personal things about Clara which was quite funny, then I might actually have Ravenwood be on the TARDIS briefly and have Jenny teach Nios how to cook. Aside from that I haven't got ideas for a lot of the other characters, and it would be nice to include them all.**


	116. Mad About the Boy

**DAY 151**

 _Mad About the Boy_

 _Martha_

Mickey and Martha were left in their bedroom with only the pregnancy test and Helix for company, when the situation all got a little _too_ personal for even Jack's taste, and he and Ianto took their leave in order to let the two of them talk about… well, talk about everything, she supposed. That was the only way to put it. They needed to talk about everything. Martha lifted up her feet from the floor and sat cross-legged on the end of the bed, Mickey still pacing around.

"Sit down," she bade him eventually, and he stopped walking and looked at her like he hadn't heard her properly. She nodded at the space on the mattress by her side.

"I don't know if I can sit," he admitted, "I feel like I need to keep moving, you know? Maybe I'm in shock. Am I in shock? What are the symptoms of being in shock?"

"You're not in shock," she said.

"I could be in shock."

"Alright, if you're in shock you definitely need to sit down. I'm sure I can find you a tinfoil blanket somewhere on this ship." He still didn't say or do anything. "Mickey, you're shocked but you're not _in shock_. Okay?" Eventually it clicked with him that she had asked him to come and sit down, and as he did she put the plastic test on the bed next to her, wondering if she ought to throw it away or not. It was a bit gross, since it had pee on it, but wasn't it a memento? She could not rightly tell if it would be weird. "…You do think we should keep it?"

"Of course I think we should keep it, Martha!" he exclaimed in horror.

"I'm not saying I don't want to! I'm just… worried, you know? About… a _baby_ , and the quality of life it might have. What if it _does_ get captured? Like River?"

"They were unprepared for that, alright? She never even _told_ Rory she was pregnant, he had no idea," Mickey said, "And I don't think the Doctor was expecting all that… stuff. Nobody's going to try and kidnap a baby from a woman who can set things on fire with her mind. And… Rose and Amy can both see into the future, right? See danger coming? Plus, Jack's right about it being safer on the TARDIS…"

"Mickey, we can't raise a child on the TARDIS," she said, "Neither of us even _want_ to live here, we've just been so caught up in everything for the last few months that… We both left for good reasons. And those good reasons were all still there, and now there's just one more very _big_ good reason."

"Maybe until, you know, it's… here," he said awkwardly, "For the medical facilities, yeah? Since it's gonna be… um… weird. Those cats are weird enough and they're _cats_. Believe me, I don't want to raise a kid in space, either, but safety has got to be the most important thing. Plus, this is where the Doctor is, and if this baby is going to be a Time Lord, then, he'll be helpful."

"Oh my god, I'm gonna have to tell my mum that I'm pregnant and it's going to be an alien with superpowers…"

"Good luck with that."

"You'll be there too," she told him sharply, "I'm not telling her that on my own."

"She'll kill me."

"Probably."

"We're gonna have to think about nappies and baby food and toilet training… can you imagine it? Us? Changing nappies? Doing all that? Teaching someone how to speak, how to, you know, be a person? About our lives and the Doctor and all this stuff? Because we can't hide it, Martha. Not when they'll be a Time Lord as well. It'll need to be told."

"And baby names, and mum will want a proper christening, and… god, are we going to have to have a baby shower? How long do you have to be pregnant for to have a baby shower? And we're going to need to find somewhere to live! Somewhere secluded, maybe."

"Secluded?"

"A village."

"Us? In a village? We're both from the middle of London. We can't live in a village."

"I am _not_ raising a child in _London_ – do you care about the safety of your offspring at all?" she snapped, "Abduction capital of the UK, no thanks. We'll have to go somewhere out of the way, and safe, with… good schools."

"So now we have to be house hunting as well as thinking about raising a child?"

"We've got nine months! We can find a house in nine months. Adam Mitchell might buy us one – he bought Other Clara one, and _she's_ not even a defenceless baby," Martha pointed out, but Mickey scoffed.

"I'm not asking Adam Mitchell to buy us a house."

"If things get desperate, I mean," she said, "A last resort."

"It had better be a last resort," he said bitterly, really not liking the idea of asking some nerd like Adam Mitchell for charity. Martha couldn't really blame him; she didn't like it, either, but would rather that then they end up back in their ill-suited one-bedroom flat – or worse, homeless, since they hadn't really been keeping up with the rent payments for the last few months…

"Maybe he'll buy you a sports car as well," Martha suggested to soften the blow.

"…Alright, maybe not a _last_ last resort. But definitely not a _first_ resort. Second-to-last resort, one up from going on _Location, Location, Location_. And then there's… godparents, and names – what are we going to call it, Martha? What if it's a girl? What if it's a boy? What if it's neither? Do we need a gender-neutral name?" Martha hadn't even _thought_ about godparents, and in all honesty, she had never thought all that much about having children, not nearly enough to have a short-list of potential baby names. "What if we're bad parents?"

"Why would we be bad parents?"

"Just… what if we were? What if we split up? That always happens, they bring a kid into a marriage to early and-"

"We've been together for five years and married for most of those," she said, "It's not early days. We've been living in the same flat for almost as long, too, and working together. I think you'll be a great dad. Best dad in the universe, probably. And don't you remember what I said to you? _Years_ ago?"

"You've said a lot of things to me."

"Remember, we were in that sewer and I said if we ever had kids we needed a really, you know, _ordinary_ getting-together story," she said, smiling as she watched him remember.

"And you're still talking about it in relation to the sewer, which is the one thing you didn't want."

"Well we don't tell the baby about the sewer. It's not for children to hear about, anyway. But you remember the _actual_ story?"

* * *

 **Five Years Ago**

Martha Jones didn't get out of bed until round about three o'clock the following afternoon. It had been a long night, and she would have very easily stayed asleep until dinner time, if she didn't have _some_ self-discipline. Funnily enough, it was one of the best sleeps she had experienced recently, after her hose-down and the following three showers she had put herself through that morning, one at the Torchwood base and then two more after Ianto had been commissioned to shuttle them all home one-by-one in the SUV. Except Mickey, who lived very close and normally walked to work, while Martha got taxis because the paycheques from Torchwood really were quite lucrative and afforded her this.

She was so exhausted from her very few hours of sleep and then going sewer-diving and showering so much she worried about making her skin bleed that she didn't even have another nightmare, didn't dream at all. It was very dark when she woke up, so dark she actually thought it was later than it was, but the bad weather was just because of a storm brewing. Incidentally, thunder from the storm was what had ultimately woken her up, and she was very grateful that Jack had given them the next day off work as well – though, she had a sneaking suspicion this was because he wanted Ianto to 'nurse him back to health', or something. It wasn't like any of them were going to complain about having a rest, and they'd be called back into work in a heartbeat if the Rift started to kick off.

Martha was shuffling around her flat in her dressing gown and slippers, wondering if there was anything good on TV lately she might want to catch up on since she had finally snatched some slithers of downtime. She had just finished making a cup of hot chocolate because she thought she deserved it after the day she'd had when her musings about television shows were cut short by someone ringing the buzzer for the flat downstairs. Seeing the pouring rain through the window, she hastened to answer it quickly. The speaker was broken though, so she was just letting someone up on blind faith. Not that she was putting herself at much risk, she _did_ have a gun.

When they knocked on the door she kicked over an old plastic box and stood on it on tiptoes to see through the peephole; it was only Mickey. She would rather he had called ahead so that she could actually get dressed and make herself presentable, though. She'd barely even brushed her hair. But she couldn't exactly tell him to go away – after all, he was cute. So she pulled back the chain and turned the key to open the door and let him in. He was carrying quite a lot of stuff.

"God, look at you," she said, "You'd never guess that you were crawling around in sewage twelve hours ago." He smiled.

"I try my best." She opened the door enough to let him come inside, and he was looking at her so he didn't see the plastic tub she'd been stood on and tripped right over it.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Oh, nothing," she went to move it back to where she normally kept it, pushed up against the wall with some of her pairs of shoes, "Just a box I use to… um… the peephole is quite high up, alright?" she said defensively.

"Really!?" he exclaimed, "You can't reach to see out of the peephole?"

"No."

"Oh my god."

"Leave it out."

"It's adorable!"

"It's not adorable," she grumbled, "I've got a loaded gun in here somewhere, you know. I'll shoot you." He was just laughing as she locked the door behind him. "How do you know where I live, anyway? You've never been here before."

"I'm the computer guy, remember? Been sorting out files for the last few weeks?"

"You're stalking me?"

"I've brought you a housewarming present," he said, holding out a gift bag he had brought. He was soaked from being out in the rain. "Wanted to see this flat. It's nicer than mine." Martha thought it had too many windows. Windows along all the walls; she could see Cardiff for miles. The problem was just that she didn't think she _wanted_ to see Cardiff for miles. It wasn't really the most striking skyline, and it had more or less no memorable buildings on the horizon.

"A housewarming present?" she asked incredulously.

"Have a look," he said, so she did, taking the bag, still self-conscious of the fact she was in her pyjamas.

"Oh, _wow_ ," she began sarcastically, "A bottle of wine that must have cost _at least_ a tenner."

"It was a fiver, actually," he said, "I thought we could drink it together."

"You like wine?"

"Well, you know, if the company's right I'll drink anything, really."

"And Blossom Hill definitely constitutes 'anything,'" she said, "To be honest, all wine really tastes the same. Don't you think?"

"That's why I didn't splash out. There's something else, too," he said. He was not annoyed about her berating the rather unimpressive cheap white wine that probably contained more diluted cleaning solution than any actual grapes, and this was probably because his _other_ housewarming gift was actually more thoughtful. It was a candle, but an expensive and large pillar candle set in glass.

"Oh, wow," she repeated herself, but this time without the sarcasm, "That's…"

"It's Soft Blanket smell," he said, "I just thought, you know, soft blanket, probably comforting, might help you calm down before you go to sleep. Stop the nightmares. Maybe."

"Okay, I forgive you for the cheap wine."

"I thought you might," he said, "Booze is booze, really, isn't it? And you seem like you might need a drink after this worm stuff. I know _I_ need a drink."

"Right, so… today you've… what?"

"Slept for a bit, maybe five hours, then I've been out in this weather buying this stuff. Then I came here because I didn't really want to wait to see you."

"Couldn't even wait for me to get dressed?" she teased.

"I thought you'd have woken up ages ago!"

"I didn't, but even if I _had_ , I fancy sitting in pyjamas for the whole day. Maybe watch _Come Dine with Me_."

"Are you gonna talk to me _now_ , then?"

"Yeah – do you want to go out together some time?" she asked, taking him aback.

"Well – you – I was going to-"

"What?"

"I feel emasculated."

" _Really_? It's 2008, you need to get over yourself," she laughed.

"…I'd love to go out with you some time…" he admitted very resentfully, which she also thought was quite funny.

"I know," Martha said, "It's – what? Half three now? So why don't you go home for a bit and come back here at, like, seven, and we can get takeaway and drink this wine and make fun of people on TV."

"You don't want to go to a restaurant? Or the cinema? Or a romantic walk in a park?"

"In this thunder storm?"

"We could go to the theatre."

"Can you even tell me where the nearest theatre is? Or what's on? Because _I_ haven't got a clue."

"…Seven, then? Your flat?"

"Yeah," she said. Then there was a flash of lightning outside and thunder followed after just a handful of seconds. A car alarm went off somewhere. "Or… erm… maybe you should just stay now. I'd feel a bit mean making you walk home and then all the way back here again when there's this storm on."

"Oh. Okay." He was trying _not_ to sound like he was immensely excited about her suggesting that he stay at her house during the storm instead of going home. Clearly, though, he was over the moon. "So I should…?"

"I don't know, put the telly on, I have to get dressed," she said, "I'm paying for Sky, someone might as well use it since I hardly ever do."

"I thought you wanted some really fancy memory?"

"No. I just want a normal one. For once. Okay."

"But I sort of wanted-"

"Oh my god, I _like_ you, okay? We can have more than one date, you know, if things go well. You can take me to a restaurant that's too posh for us both some other time, when it isn't raining."

"I'll hold you to that."

"I can't wait. I'm going to get dressed." She turned to leave.

"Just one more thing, though," he said, grabbing her hand. He tugged on her arm and when she turned around he had stooped to kiss her, knocking the breath out of her lungs and taking her by complete surprise. "…Thanks for protecting me from the worm."

"Don't really think I did an awful lot."

"Thanks anyway."

"I'm going to get dressed."

"What's the point? You might have to get undressed again later," he said when she again went to leave. He didn't grab her and kiss her this time, though. She flashed him a grin over her shoulder.

"Cheeky. Carry on like that and I'll kick you out."

"Yeah, right."

And, well, she never _did_ kick him out. Not at any point in the next five years, and certainly not in any of the decades after that.


	117. Breakfast

**AN: So, in actuality, these kittens are only a week old. But the thing is, this fic isn't going to last long enough day-wise for them to grow up at all, so I'm just going to sort of pretend they're older. Like they're advanced-ageing kittens. They're not, but just imagine.**

 **DAY 152**

 _Breakfast_

The first person into Nerve Centre that morning was Adam Mitchell. He was in there very early, perhaps even as early as seven o'clock in the morning, all because he was the only one who actually appeared to remember that they had a litter of new-born kittens making a little nest in the medibay from where Jonesy – or 'Princess Sparkle Tutu' as Jenny had annoyingly renamed the thing – had given birth to them all. You would think a group of over a dozen people might be a bit more interested in a flock of kittens, but apparently not. Not interested enough to take the time to take care of them.

And so it was Adam who went to look after them, having to go so early so that he could avoid the inevitable grief he would get from his girlfriend if he left her to look at cats while she was awake and around. It was like she wanted him to choose between her and a bunch of helpless babies, which were really his responsibility since he had been the most vocal advocate of bringing the cat onto the TARDIS in the first place. He _did_ like cats. And he'd spent so much time being charitable to humans in the last few days, maybe non-humans were due a break.

It was about time that he decided he was going to let them into Nerve Centre to explore, because they must be getting bored of the medibay and it wasn't like they had much chance of escaping. He just told Helix to make sure not to open the doors for any stray kittens who wanted to wander off, since if any of them _did_ get lost on the TARDIS, they might never be found again, not for millions of years. It would be just like _Red Dwarf_. They flocked him when he opened the doors, with their mother going to find somewhere to sleep where she wasn't going to be bothered by her children for a few hours. And after that he got a little too caught up in watching what they were doing to go back to bed with Oswin.

There was the friendly calico who liked everyone who came to pet her; there was the blue Abyssinian who was rather timid, even with the other cats, but was best friends with her sister the calico; there was the wrinkly, hairless sphynx cat who pretended he hated everybody but then fell asleep nestled against them (secretly this trait reminded Adam of his other half); then there was the black fur ball who spent most of his time lurking underneath the furniture and swiping his claws at anybody who strayed too close, and Adam was just lucky he wasn't a favourite target of this menacing Maine Coon which was already enormous; and finally was the incredibly nervous and tiny kitten which was probably never going to be allowed off the TARDIS, mainly because it glowed faintly green with ethereal white fur, had a few tentacles, and sometimes floated around the room. It was no wonder Princess Sparkle Tutu wanted a break from them.

Conversation came into the room sometime after Adam's early arrival, in the form of Mickey and Martha. Unbeknownst to Adam – who hadn't been taking note of whispered sentences between a married couple, because the cat with the tentacles had ended up stuck on top of the fridge and he was trying to get it down – Mickey and Martha were talking about how and when they were going to let her parents know that she was pregnant. They stopped as soon as they saw Nerve Centre was empty, though, and Adam didn't hear a word of it.

"What are you doing?" Mickey asked him, because he was kneeling on one of the stools, not being able to reach the kitten from where it was hiding close to the wall without something to elevate his height.

"One of the cats is up here," he said, "He's scared."

"How did it get up _there_? They can't jump high yet, can they?" Martha questioned, glancing at the Abyssinian, which couldn't even walk properly yet.

"The black one scared him and he floated away," Adam said, "It's under that sofa, be careful."

"Careful?" Mickey asked.

"It'll go for you," Adam explained. Mickey was sceptical of this, and so stooped down in front of the indicated portion of sofa and clicked his fingers in front of the dark gap. A paw came out and slashed the back of his hand.

"Ow!"

"I told you," Adam said, "What'd you go doing that for?"

"Why have you let them out? What if they poo on something?" Martha asked.

"We've all pooed on something at one point or another," he defended them.

"Please, spare us the details of your sex life," Martha said dryly. He didn't respond, because he had finally snagged the kitten from where it was on top of the fridge, and carefully got down off the stool with the thing hidden in the palms of his hands. As soon as he moved his hand it started to float off again. "Bloody hell!" Martha shouted when she saw it, frightening off the calico that had come to paw at her feet. " _That_ came out of the cat?"

"Yeah," Adam said, "I've asked the Doctor about it, he said it's something to do with Time Lords being able to regenerate into different species and genetics getting crossed through the time vortex." Martha was gawking at it. Adam decided he was going to put it back in the cat box in the other room so that it couldn't float off, so he went to do that while Martha began to have another crisis.

"It's got tentacles, Mickey!" she protested when Adam Mitchell was gone for a moment, "What if our baby has _tentacles_ and glows and floats around? How are we supposed to cope with a floating baby?"

"Uh… well, you know… we'll just have to love it the way it is."

"Tentacles!" she persisted.

"We can't not have a baby just because it _might_ have tentacles."

" _Apologies for interrupting unprompted, but my scans pick up no signs of inhuman physical abnormalities forming in the embryo_ ," Helix interjected, " _If you would like, Dr Jones, I can keep a constant monitor on the growth of the foetus for all the while you are in my presence?_ "

"Yeah. Do that. Thanks, Helix," she said, going to sit down at one of the tables where there wasn't a hidden cat waiting to attack her. She would have to watch out for it. Mickey was looking at the back of his hand.

"Can I catch anything from this? I'm bleeding," he said.

"You'll be fine. They've never left the ship, they won't be carrying anything," she told him. He sighed and thought for a moment, realising he was quite hungry, and remembering they had actually come to get breakfast.

"What do you want to eat?"

"I don't know. Not a lot. Maybe some bacon," she said, "A bacon sandwich. A bacon _and_ sausage sandwich, maybe, with ketchup."

"'Not a lot'?" he asked, smiling.

"I need to eat away the feelings of impending doom and anxiety." She said this right as Adam came back from sealing the floating tentacle cat away in the medibay, and he overheard that very last snippet.

"Impending doom and anxiety?"

"Just in general," she lied, "Who knows what horrible event we might stumble across today?" When she said this, she was not thinking about aliens, and neither was Mickey; they were both thinking about what Martha's mother's reaction was going to be when they told her they were going to have a baby. But she had always liked Mickey. Martha thought she would be thrilled to hear the news, potential tentacles and all, but it was still scary.

"There's not a possibility of you cooking for anybody else, is there?" Adam asked carefully.

Mickey sighed, "What do you want?"

"Just some bacon. Maybe. Please. Recently Clara keeps convincing me to cook dinner for her."

"Just tell her to piss off," Martha said.

"Well I don't want her to get food poisoning," Adam said, "Or to starve."

"She's got the nanogenes, neither of those will happen," Martha said.

"And Oswin will have a go at me."

"When does Oswin _not_ have a go at you?" Mickey questioned.

"…She's a lot nicer in private," Adam said.

"So nice you've had to sneak out in the morning because she gets jealous of the kittens?" Martha raised her eyebrows while Mickey sorted out finding a clean frying pan. There was quite a hefty load of washing up in the sink, though. Adam decided he might clean everything later, because it annoyed him to see it all so dirty. He could call up Esther, she would definitely help him clean up after everybody else – after all, her entire life was spent cleaning up after Sally Sparrow.

As though hypnotised by the smell of cooking bacon, it didn't take long for more people to begin to flock into the main room that morning, as Amy Pond led her husband in so that she could try and find breakfast but not lose out on his company.

"Mickey! Do us some bacon, would you?" Rory asked him, grinning. Mickey scowled.

"Why am I making everybody bacon? And I bet nobody is going to do the washing up, are they…"

"We ran out of washing up liquid," Amy said.

"When?" Adam asked. She shrugged.

"Four days ago?"

"Why didn't anybody go buy more?" he asked, and stared around at a bunch of 'innocent' faces belonging to people all perfectly capable of buying washing up liquid, but who apparently did not want to spend the entire fifty pence another bottle would cost. If they even paid for it and didn't rob a supermarket in the middle of the night, which was what they usually did.

"Me and Rory will go shopping if you make bacon for us," Amy volunteered.

"Will we?" Rory asked her.

"Yes, shut up," she hissed. That was good enough for Mickey. It seemed that while they ran out of washing up liquid, they had an apparently endless supply of meat.

"I'll do the washing up," Adam finally declared, "I'm sure I can trick _someone_ into helping me." He was planning on asking Clara, who would probably help him without really complaining, as long as he didn't catch her when she was busy with something else.

"We haven't got any sponges, either," said Amy.

"Make a list then, for when you go rob Asda tomorrow."

"A _list_? With what?" Amy asked him.

"A pen?"

"A _pen_? Where am I supposed to find a pen?"

"What about your phone?"

"I'd rather write a proper list."

"Then-!?" Adam was not coping well with talking to Amy.

"I'm going out!" a newcomer declared as soon as the doors from the Bedroom Circle began to open. It was the Doctor, the Eleventh Doctor, and being as his wife was nowhere to be seen, it was not clear whom he was talking to.

"…Alright," Martha said eventually when no one else responded, "Good for you?"

"What are these things doing everywhere?" he said when the calico shuffled towards him and started crawling over his foot, "Did someone set them loose? Little devils." He picked it up to look at it closer. At least the Doctor liked the cats, Adam thought. _Somebody_ else cared.

"Where are you going?" Amy asked him.

"Football."

"Who's playing?" Mickey asked.

"Me," he answered, "It's a thing now. Craig and I. Our thing. Calls me up whenever they're a man down and I step in. Jenny keeps asking if she can come with me but I told her she can't because it would be very unfair to everybody else to have an ex-soldier and professional acrobat playing. What about _you_? Do _you_ want to play football?" He spoke to the kitten, which tried to meow but could not quite managed it and just made a croaky noise. Amy couldn't resist saying, " _Aww!_ " when she saw this. Eleven finally put it back down on one of the sofas. "But they're two men down today. For five-a-side."

"Take Jenny," Martha suggested, "If she already wants to come. Put her on the opposite team to you."

"No! She'll win. I'm not having her beat me at sports. No, no, no. One of you. Adam."

"I can't, I'm doing the washing up today," he said.

"What? _All day_?"

"Have you seen how much there is?" Adam pointed at it all next to the sink. Mountains of dirty crockery. It wasn't a good environment for the kittens.

"Yes. Well. Someone else. Mickey!"

"Mickey's busy today," Martha said quickly, but Eleven still looked at Mickey for an answer himself.

"…Mickey's busy today," he repeated, then turned back to the bacon. Eleven frowned and glanced between he and Martha for a moment, and Martha just smiled.

"I'd come, but I wouldn't want to set the ball on fire," Martha said. Eleven looked to Amy next.

"I don't want to," she said, then she went to sit down, "Rory will go."

"Excellent!" Eleven beamed.

"Uh, what? Amy?" Rory asked, "What about my bacon?" Eleven put an arm around Rory's shoulder to lead him out of the room. "Isn't there time for breakfast?"

" _Time for breakfast_? When all forms of physical matter are ultimately going to decay around us to the point that everything in the known universe is rendered utterly obsolete and irrelevant as every single sun explodes?" Eleven questioned. Rory didn't know what to say. "No time for food. Or Craig might have some food. There's the potential both for and not for food, but really we could be catapulted into oblivion at any second, so we'd best leave now. Careful not to step on the cats."

"No – but – see, I was going to – Amy?"

"Have fun!" Amy called after them, "My two boys playing football. I wish I could be there to cheer you on, but… I'm hungry." Rory was glaring at her when the door into the console room closed. "Thank god he's gone. I can have a nap later without him waking me up every time he hears people having sex."

Martha commented blandly, "How exciting for you," as they all settled in to receive their bacon.


	118. Lunch

**AN: I should have written these chapters as scripts I realised once I finished this one.**

 _Lunch_

Oftentimes, Jenny would walk the long way around the TARDIS interior to leave, to avoid people prying into her business. But in this case, she didn't think she minded anyone finding out what she was up to, so she actually went through Nerve Centre. And all the better for it, ultimately, because she walked in on a huddle of gossiping women in their late twenties and early thirties (and Donna), and she might as well not even _be_ on a state-of-the-art alien spaceship. She might as well be in a cheap nightclub on a Saturday eavesdropping on a hen party. As soon as they saw her come into the room, just to get a drink before she left, they all fell silent.

"…What?" she looked between the faces of all four of them.

"What?" Rose asked her.

"You all stopped talking when I came in," Jenny said. The other three, Martha, Donna and Amy, were avoiding meeting her gaze. Martha was looking into her tea and Amy was staring at the lock screen on her phone as though there was something profoundly interesting on it, instead of just her wallpaper, which was a photo of she and Rory on their wedding day. "You lot always leave me out of your girly stuff!" Jenny began to whinge, feeling excluded.

"It's not _that_ ," Martha argued, "It's just… we were…"

"We're playing this game where we guess things about Clara and then ask her whenever she can be bothered getting out of bed," Rose said.

"Says you, you only got up half an hour ago, it's nearly one," Amy pointed out.

"At least I haven't been sat in here on my own for ages," Rose snapped.

"I haven't been on my own, Martha's been here, and we were watching _Four in a Bed_." _Four in a Bed_ was actually still on, being projected into the centre of the room via the holobox, and Amy's eyes kept straying onto it because she really wanted to watch some posh people get ripped into for having a pube in one of their showers.

"What kind of things are you guessing about Clara?" Jenny inquired.

"Just stuff," said Donna.

"Right… stuff…"

"Well, anyway, you can't play, because she's your girlfriend so you can cheat," Rose said.

"That's not fair!" Jenny protested, "I don't want to be left out. I don't know everything about Clara. There's plenty of things I could guess at. Let me play. I promise I won't spoil it if I _do_ know the answer." She pulled over a chair, being careful to avoid all of the roaming kittens and jump tactfully out of the way when the black one swiped for her foot. She wedged herself in between Donna and Amy, which either meant they were going to be forced to let her play or all forced to move. And they were too lazy to move.

" _Fine_ ," Rose sighed.

"We were guessing what the weirdest place she's had sex is," Amy explained, locking her phone again and picking up her coffee. Jenny shifted so that she was sitting on the stool with her legs crossed, mainly to keep out of the way of the Maine Coon, which had attacked her on sight every other time she had been in the same room as it.

"That's a good one, I don't know it," Jenny beamed. She was already having plenty of fun speculating about the personal business of the woman she loved, cashing in on her girlfriend to gain a place in the amusement of her flatmates.

"I reckon it's... in a hospital bed. While _she_ was a patient," Martha said, "I've caught that happening before. It's more common than you think."

"Toilet of an aeroplane," Amy decided.

Donna scoffed, " _That's_ not weird." Everyone looked at her. "…What?"

"You've…? Done it? On a _plane_?" Rose asked in a whisper, even though there wasn't anybody else in the room. Adam Mitchell had spent the entire morning doing the washing up with soap and sponges taken from his own room, and had since disappeared back to Oswin.

"Have you never heard of the Mile High Club? It's _very_ common," said Donna.

"Amazing," Martha said, "You think you know someone, and then they…"

"Impress you?" Donna suggested wryly. The girls all made half-hearted noises of agreement, with Donna swelling with pride and not picking up on their underlying sarcasm. Unless she just didn't want to pick up on it, which was fair enough, given the circumstances.

"Wait a minute," Jenny started, thinking, "I might know the answer."

"Oh?" Rose asked.

"But I might not."

"Tell us," Amy urged her.

"She's always going on about this time she was backstage at a burlesque show and she got off with _two_ of the female dancers in the dressing room during the intermission when she was twenty-one. There's that one and the ballet dancer I never hear the end of. And the underwear model. And _Jane Austen_ ," she said the last one very bitterly.

"Seriously? She's done that?" Rose asked in disbelief, "The stripper one, not the… other ones."

"Burlesque and stripping aren't the same thing," Amy said.

" _You'd_ know."

"I do know."

"Well, exactly," Rose said, "Point proven."

"What point?"

"The point that you… know."

"…Right…"

"I don't think it's very weird, though," Jenny interjected, "The hospital bed one is weirder."

"How about," Amy began, "Under one of the tables at a wedding reception, while people were still there. Probably during the speeches."

"I wouldn't be surprised if she did that at her _own_ wedding," Rose commented.

"I would be," Donna said, "Since we were all there at her wedding."

"We were quite drunk though," Martha said, "She could have slipped off."

"Under the top table at her own wedding? No one noticed that the bride vanished?" Jenny asked.

"Well just at a wedding, then," Amy said, "But under the table."

"I think it was while swimming with sharks," Donna said, triggering mass protests and objections from the others.

"That's ridiculous, you cannot have sex with someone while _swimming with sharks_ ," Martha said, "It would probably agitate the sharks, for one thing."

"Not if you were having sex _with_ a shark," Jenny said knowingly.

"She's _your_ girlfriend, do you think she's capable of doing it with a shark?"

"Do you mean physically or emotionally capable? Because physically, we're probably _all_ capable," Jenny said, "To be honest, though, if she was in one of those cages, so she was safe from the sharks, she probably wouldn't care. Not if she was doing it. She never cares about _anything_ going on around her when she's doing it, she once threw her phone at the wall because it rang while I was..." she cleared her throat and did not finish her sentence, much to the relief of the others, who did not want to know exactly what Jenny had been doing to Ravenwood.

Amy turned to Donna and asked, "But wouldn't you have a scuba suit on if you were swimming with sharks?"

Donna shrugged, "Depends." She seemed to know a very worrying amount about copulating with somebody while swimming with sharks.

"…So you're sticking with the sharks?" Rose asked. Donna nodded. "Right… who's gonna ask her when she comes in, then?"

"Martha should ask," Amy said.

"What? Why me?" Martha complained.

"She fancies you."

"Okay, first of all, Clara fancies everyone," Jenny said, "But I agree, Martha should ask."

"No! It's Rose's game, _she_ should ask. What do I even care the weirdest place Clara Oswald's done it is? It seems like Donna's done it in way weirder places," Martha said. Donna pretended she hadn't heard that remark.

"Ooh, hello," Amy said quietly when the doors into Nerve Centre slid open, "Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear." Rose and Donna sniggered. Jenny couldn't tell if she was doing something immoral by joining in with all this or not. Clara herself walked in, and shocked Jenny by actually being dressed and made up, like she was going somewhere.

"Morning, Clara," Rose called brightly, smiling and waving. Clara stopped dead, and looked at the five of them very suspiciously, holding a mug in her hands.

"…What…?" she narrowed her eyes, as yet completely oblivious to the lot of them judging her for things she may or may not have done.

"What's the weirdest place you've ever had sex?" Rose asked outright without even trying to be subtle.

"Oh," said Clara, then she paused in thought. They all watched her intently. Realistically, there were a billion possibilities for the answer to this question, and the likelihood of one of them guessing it (even Jenny) was infinitesimally small. And accordingly, none of them _did_ guess it. "Jet-ski."

"A _jet-ski_?" Jenny gawked at her. Clara nodded.

"But, like, it was parked?" Martha said.

"Oh, no, it was on this lake at like, fifty miles an hour," Clara said, "It was with a boy, so it was easier than if it had been a girl. There were loads of people around so we had to go quickly so that no one noticed."

"Not in the back of a burlesque club with two dancers?" Donna inquired, and Jenny went red when Clara's jaw dropped and she shot a very accusatory look in her guilty direction.

"Have you been telling them stuff about me!?"

"No!" Jenny lied, "I can't believe you had sex in the back of a burlesque club with two dancers and I absolutely never knew anything about it until this exact second when Donna gave a very lucky guess!"

"You should not violate your girlfriend's trust like that," Clara said, "You better come clean about this all and say sorry to her." Jenny looked down at the table in front of her and didn't say anything else.

"See? Now the sharks don't seem that weird," Donna said.

"The sharks are definitely still weird," Amy told her. Clara asked what was all this about sharks, so they explained Donna's unusual remarks to her and she was just as perplexed as the rest of them.

"Did you actually do that? See, _I've_ never done that," Clara said, "I tried in the sea one time and I got an infection, and it wasn't even _really_ in the sea, it was on a beach and the tide started to come in."

"We're sure you have _plenty_ of infections," Martha said boredly, "What about in a hospital?"

"Uh, I was dating a porter and we did it in a cleaning cupboard," Clara said.

"Aeroplane toilet?" Amy suggested. Clara laughed.

"With three different people. Not at the same time, like. There's not enough space for that. It was different occasions. That's not even weird; haven't you ever heard of the Mile High Club?"

"I told you lot," Donna said triumphantly, then went on to ask, "What about at a wedding?"

"At one wedding when I was a bridesmaid I slept with the best man."

"Oh, we've all done that," Martha said offhandedly, and everyone looked at her.

"No, we haven't," Rose said firmly. Unlike Clara, who would tell anyone more or less anything they wanted to know about her, Martha actually _did_ get ashamed of them all judging her. Clara was far beyond caring what anybody thought of her sex life anymore. Anybody on the TARDIS, at least.

"Then at _another_ wedding when I was a guest I slept with the maid of honour _and_ the best man. At the same wedding, I mean. The bride and groom don't talk to me anymore…" she spoke as though she couldn't think of a single good reason why the bride and groom might not want her over-sexed person hanging around in a room full of their nearest and dearest friends and relatives and a great deal of alcohol.

"You're a monster," Rose said.

"We should have an intervention," Amy said.

"Thanks," Clara said.

"Well, then," Jenny finally talked again, beginning to get off her stool, "I was just leaving when you lot roped me into your game-"

"You begged us to join," Amy pointed out.

"There are two sides to every story," Jenny countered knowingly, "And I was just going because I wanted to catch something to cook for dinner, and I have to go get my rifle from Hollowmire without Ravenwood catching me first." She slipped out of the room very quickly, the black cat hissing from the sofa as she passed by.

"Did she say _catch something to cook_?" Rose whispered, and went ignored by everyone except Martha, though Martha just shrugged.

"So. What's up with you?" Amy asked Clara.

"Pardon?"

"Well, you're dressed, you only get dressed when you're going somewhere. Are you going to watch the football?"

"God, no. I have way better things to do. Like… I don't know. Wank, or something."

"You got dressed just to wank?" Rose frowned.

"Well, no, obviously not, that would be weird," said Clara, coming and leaning on the back of the sofa in front of their table, still holding her tea, "The wanking was hypothetical. I'm just going out."

"Out where?"

"Shopping."

"For what?"

"Why am I getting the third degree over here? Isn't a girl allowed to go out if she wants?" Clara said defensively. "I was just… going to look at wedding dresses."

"Without Oswin?" Martha joined the interrogation, "I thought she's your chief bridesmaid?"

"She is, but she's busy, and I have this… friend. I don't want to bother her with having to meet Oswin."

"Ooh, here we go, a _friend_ ," Donna said wryly, "Who is this friend?"

"Just a girl."

" _Just a girl_ ," Donna repeated, "It's never 'just a girl' with you."

"Well in this case it most certainly _is_ just a girl, a friend I have from uni, her family on her mother's side run a bridal boutique, okay? I haven't seen her for years and she'll get me a discount," Clara said, "She's straight."

"Discount?" Rose was intrigued, "How much of a discount?"

"It doesn't matter, Adam Mitchell can pay for it," Clara said indifferently.

"Can't the TARDIS just _make_ you a wedding dress?" Martha questioned.

"First of all, the TARDIS still hates me; second of all, probably, but I always daydreamed about going out and one day getting to pick my wedding dress, you know? And I don't care how upset Oswin is, the thought of taking her dress shopping is too much for me to stomach." In private and to herself alone, Clara wished that she had Thirteen there to take wedding dress shopping. Though, it was bad luck for the future-spouse to see the dress, so it was probably a thousand times worse for them to help choose it.

"So you're not gonna take _anyone_ with you?"

"Who do you suggest I take?" Clara said, "I can't take the Doctor and I already said I'm not taking Oswin."

"I'll go," Rose volunteered, and they all looked at her. "What?"

"You'll… go? With… Clara? _Shopping_?" Martha asked in disbelief.

"Yeah," Rose said, "Why wouldn't I?"

"Because… you hate her?" Amy suggested.

"And you tried to kill her that time," Martha added.

"When I was on drugs," Rose said, "We all know we can't blame ourselves for things that happen involving Clara when we're on drugs. Isn't that right, Martha?" Martha said nothing.

"No, it's weird. Are you gonna murder her?" Amy persisted.

"Yes. I'm going to murder her."

"It's about time somebody murdered me," Clara said dryly, putting her dirty mug down on the table and fishing something out of her pocket. It looked, for the briefest second, like a new sonic screwdriver, and all of them were considering protesting about why _they_ hadn't been given shiny new tools. But it wasn't a sonic.

"Is that an e-cigarette?" Martha asked, "Are you trying to quit?"

"No, it's just, he said I'm not allowed to smoke on the TARDIS because of something to do with ventilation," Clara said, plainly talking about the Doctor.

"At least e-cigs don't stink as much," Donna commented.

"Well, she's not the only one who needs a wedding dress," Rose said, "I mean, I haven't got one yet, and there's – what? A week and a half before the wedding?" Amy spat coffee all over the table; Clara dropped her e-cigarette and the cartridge fell out; Martha choked on a biscuit; Donna practically screamed.

"You only got engaged two weeks ago!"

"Hold on, hold on," Clara said like she couldn't understand what was happening, and they all stopped staring at Rose to stare at her instead while she searched her pockets for something else. They all watched Clara take out a packet of Marlboros and a flip lighter and light an actual cigarette. After she took quite a long drag on it, she looked at Rose and said, "Carry on."

"We just thought we'll do it as soon as possible," Rose said.

"Yeah but, there's 'as soon as possible' and then there's… less than a month," Martha said.

"They manage it on _Don't Tell the Bride_. The Doctor doesn't like the suspense. At least we haven't eloped while drunk."

"Hey!" Clara protested, "I didn't even say anything about you getting married quickly! It doesn't affect me and you're welcome to come and look at dresses if you want."

"Oh. Right. Well. I will. Anyone else want to come? We could do like that episode of _Friends_ where they all buy wedding dresses and eat cake."

"I won't say no to a wedding cake," Amy said, "But I can't be bothered leaving."

"You can't be bothered doing anything these days," Martha muttered.

"I can! I go to the spa sometimes. And you can't blame me for being tired all the time, not when I get woken up by Rory when he hears people shagging. Which is all the time, _Clara_ ," she said very pointedly.

"We try to be quiet…" Clara mumbled.

"It's mainly been Jack he complains about recently, in fairness. Are you getting a cake, then?"

"Maybe _you_ should get a cake if you want a cake so much," Rose snapped.

"Yeah, whatever. Are you leaving soon? Her fag stinks."

"Yes, alright," Rose got out of her chair, "We'll go. And we'll have loads of fun, too, just like the other night."

" _Whoa_ , what were you doing with Clara 'the other night'?" Donna questioned.

"She was upset so we gate-crashed this party at Dean Martin's house in the 1950s," Clara explained, "It was great. We got kicked out. Then we went to this cabaret and one of the girls _totally_ tried to finger me."

"She tripped over and knocked into you," Rose said, pulling on her jacket. While Rose wasn't paying attention, Clara did a rather grotesque mime where she nodded and then held up her own two fingers to indicate she was under the impression the girl definitely _had_ tried to finger her. Not that any of them actually cared. "Where is this shop?"

"Leeds," said Clara.

" _Leeds_? You didn't say it was in _Leeds_."

"It's not that bad," Clara defended it somewhat.

"It is quite bad," Donna said knowingly.

"What do you lot know? You're all from London."

"Hey," Amy interjected.

"Except you."

"Thank you."

"She's bound to think Leeds is alright when _she's_ from Blackpool," Martha jibed, and Rose and Donna sniggered.

"Very funny, you're all hilarious," Clara grumbled, "I'm leaving now."

"Wait for me," Rose said as Clara went to leave, and she just _had_ to be extra about it and phase through the table, passing right through Jenny's empty chair between Donna and Amy. None of them had been expecting it, though Rose ignored her completely and eventually trailed after her and they both left the room. Only Donna, Martha and Amy were left behind, and Martha had only come there very briefly to find something to have for lunch.

"…I might leave, then," Martha got up gingerly from her chair, "If Rose has gone. And I have stuff to… talk to Mickey about."

"Oh yeah?" Amy asked, though she had her eyes on her phone.

"Yeah, why? Just stuff. Normal married stuff. No need to ask so many questions, god, I'm not hiding anything," Martha said very quickly. Amy and Donna glanced up at her. "…What?"

"Are you okay?"

"Yes. I'm fine. Bloody hell, this is like Guantanamo Bay. First Clara, now me."

"I don't think it's really the same – we're not grilling you about your sex life."

"No? Well, good. You'd better not be. Not that there's anything interesting about it, obviously, I barely even have a… sex life. Not for, bloody, years."

" _O_ kay…" Amy watched her go, out of the opposite door to Rose and Clara, back into the Bedroom Circle. "That was weird, then."

"A week and a half until they get married…" Donna was still in shock.

"Do you think there'll be a free bar? I hope there's a free bar…" Donna said nothing, and then Amy looked at her, "Do you want to watch _Take Me Out_?"

"…Yeah, go on then. I'll make more tea."


	119. Dinner

_Dinner_

"Have you been in here for the _entire day_?" Mickey stared at Amy Pond when he and Martha came back into Nerve Centre at roughly six o'clock that evening.

"I'm supervising the kittens," she answered. The kittens had been roaming in and out of the medibay for hours, because she had requested to Helix that the door be kept open, as the litter trays were in there. Not that the kittens were very good at using the litter trays, and she had cleaned up multiple tiny poos so far that day and one puddle of wee, so it was a lot of watching them and trying to work out when they needed the toilet and then carrying them very quickly into the other room and plopping them down in the gravel.

"Do you actually do anything? Ever? Why don't you get a TV in your room so you never have to leave your bed?" Martha questioned, making a beeline for the kitchen to see what was in the fridge.

"Listen, I know the two of you think Torchwood and alien catching is hard work, but living in New York during the Great Depression doing menial labour? _That's_ hard work. And I'm going to enjoy being able to sit here watching reality TV for as long as I can until the Doctor kicks us all off. This can't last forever, Martha."

"No…" Martha agreed solemnly, thinking again about that whole 'baby' thing. That was all she and Mickey had been discussing, all of that day so far and all of the previous day. And every subsequent day for the next twenty years, at least, and possibly every other day after that. It was daunting to think about, and part of her desperately wanted to pretend it wasn't happening. "Right, then. We've got nothing in to eat."

"I'm going shopping," Amy said, "Eventually. There's a shopping list on the table behind me if you want to add anything to it." Martha was looking for something to drink while Mickey meandered over to look at the list. And what a list it was – already it was huge and written on in at least half a dozen people's handwriting. He picked up the biro sitting on top of the page and began to scrawl things on it, too, all kinds of junk.

"We never normally do a list," he said.

"And people always forget things," Amy told him, "And they never buy enough milk or bread or washing up liquid. Or wine. Me and Donna are always running out of wine."

"Maybe you and Donna drink too much wine," Martha commented, realising there was nothing to eat _or_ drink in the fridge, just a few bags of vegetables that were turning black and two bottles of milk which were going furry. "Right. This is disgusting. I'm cleaning the fridge out. Helix, open the waste disposal chute and keep it open."

" _Affirmative, Dr Jones_." The rubbish chute, which was about the size of an oven, opened in the wall nearby. She did not know where the stuff that got thrown in their actually went, but presumably it ended up incinerated somewhere. Maybe it got launched into the Eye of Harmony, or even fly-tipped in outer space somewhere. She put on the washing up gloves no one ever used before she dared touch some of the things in that fridge, which was the same height as an ordinary fridge-freezer but triple the width and presumably transdimensional in some aspect.

"I thought Donna was in here with you?" Mickey asked Amy as he wrote things on the list. Martha made a retching noise and threw a bag of mushy, dark carrots down the garbage chute. He supposed _that_ must be the stuff making the fridge stink…

"She was, she's in the console room talking to the Doctor. He came to find her because Rose is still out with Clara. Wedding stuff. He seems a bit worried about it."

"Doesn't surprise me," said Mickey, "It'll be like our wedding, don't you think, Martha?"

"How do you mean?" Martha called back.

"Well, you know, because stereotypically the bride does more or less _all_ of the work along with her mother, and the groom just has to agree to say yes to everything she suggests. But sometimes that doesn't happen and you get a really indifferent bride who's allergic to making decisions and then she goes out for an early hen party and makes the groom go buy the flowers because she's too hungover-"

"Oi!"

"And _then_ has a go at the groom for picking the wrong flowers even though she refused to come." Amy was laughing.

"I told you to take my mum," Martha reminded him, "And you didn't listen."

"You made me go out the day before the wedding to buy more-"

"And that time you took mum with you so it was alright."

"It was more like I was marrying her mother than her," Mickey spoke to Amy, "And I'd rather marry her sister."

"Shut up, or I'll tell Tish's boyfriend you said that, and he won't think it's nearly so funny," Martha said, then she added to Amy, "He's a bodybuilder. Does those male physique shows and stuff, and bloody hell is he tall. You should see how Mickey behaves at Christmas dinner, he does this really weird voice to sound more manly."

"…No I don't…" Mickey mumbled (but he was lying.)

"…to think about, you know? I can't wrap my head around it, Donna," Ten was whining as he followed Donna back into Nerve Centre from the console room. Donna had not been enjoying listening to him rave too much, though, especially since he was worrying about a bunch of things she was sure Rose could take care of. And she had a whole spaceship full of bored women (and Jack) to help her if she couldn't.

"Are you cleaning the fridge?" Donna cut Ten off to speak to Martha.

"Yes. It's disgusting. Do you want to help?"

"…You're alright. So, wait, is there no food? At all?"

"I'm. Going. To. Go. Shopping," Amy said loudly and slowly. Then she pointed out the list to Donna.

"What. Are. We. Supposed. To. Eat!?"

"I. Don't. Know. Maybe. You. Should. Go. Buy. Something. Because. You. Are. Rich!"

"Do you _have_ to talk to each other like that…?" the Doctor asked.

"YES," they both said together. It didn't seem like Donna _was_ particularly inclined to go and buy anything, though, even if she _was_ rich. Mickey wondered how rich she was, and how much she had left over from her lottery winnings, since unlike Adam Mitchell, Donna wasn't in the middle of a constant cash flow.

And speaking of Adam Mitchell, it wasn't long until he returned to the scene, having been notably absent since that morning. Only this time he actually had Oswin in tow.

"Before you ask, yes I'm cleaning the fridge, the shopping list is on the table if you want to add anything to it, and no there isn't anything to eat," Martha told them immediately, cutting over whatever Oswin had been saying, though nobody had been listening to her.

"Doesn't really affect me, I was thinking about getting pizza," Adam said.

"Pizza?"

"Someone said pizza?"

"I'll have pizza."

"Pizza sounds great."

Only after he heard all this did Adam Mitchell realise he had made a terrible mistake in declaring his plans to get pizza, because now he was obligated to also get pizza for everybody else. And probably pay for it as well. Oswin thought this was very funny, and a new sheet of paper was produced seemingly from thin air to take down what everybody wanted to eat before Adam had a chance to argue at all. He stood there in the middle of the room completely helpless and too generous for his own good. Oswin touched his arm for a second and smiled at him before going and sitting down on a sofa that hadn't been overrun by kittens.

"You can pick up husbandy on the way," she told her boyfriend.

" _Me_? I can't fly the TARDIS."

"I'll go with him," Donna volunteered, "I can fly it.."

"Good, because I can't carry ten odd pizzas on my own…" Adam sighed, going to wait for the list to finish being dictated to Mickey, who was copying it down simply because he had been closest to the pen. It didn't take long, because everyone was hungry so they were rushing, and then Donna and Adam left and Ten came to sit next to Oswin, who was glaring at one of the cats. The friendly calico.

"You really don't like cats, do you?" Ten said to her.

"I don't understand the point of them," she said, "What purpose do they serve? They're so domesticated that they're completely redundant when it comes to actual ecology, and therefore are irrelevant and wasting resources. _And_ they poo on the floor."

"How is that boy still dating you?" Amy asked her, "A cute billionaire with a heart of gold decides he wants to go out with a washed-up dead girl who hates animals?"

"He can also sing," Oswin added, "Do you know he built an orphanage this week?"

"Sounds like the perfect man," Martha remarked.

"I heard that," said Mickey. Martha smiled at him and went back to trying to scrape an old pool of disintegrated rotting something from the plastic shelf of the fridge. At one point she took off the washing up gloves and tried to burn the stains away with pyrokinesis, but that went about as well as expected (not well at all.)

"Well I wish you lot would say that sort of stuff to his face," Oswin told them, "Maybe then he wouldn't be so insecure. Do you want some help with the fridge, Martha?"

"No, it's fine."

"You were just asking Donna to help you," Amy pointed out to her.

"Well – yeah – but – you know, Donna's – she's not – and Oswin – I just mean-"

"Is this about my legs?" Oswin asked, "I can sit on the floor and go through the freezer if someone helps me back up again." And because Oswin had offered where nobody else had, and didn't seem to be doing it only to be polite, Martha ultimately accepted, and she came limping over. Then Ten decided he was going to put the cats away in the medibay before they got over-excited about the pizzas that were soon to arrive, so he enlisted Mickey's help in going around and picking them up.

It was only when they got to the last one, the black Maine Coon, that they encountered a problem. The Doctor cooed and, despite warnings from everyone else, put his hand underneath the sofa to entice it out. They _all_ heard it growl, and the Doctor yelped when it apparently went for him. It was possibly trying to tear off his skin, and it was quite horrible for them all to watch so helplessly. As soon as this happened Martha had to go to his rescue, and lay down at the back of the sofa to hold her own hand under there and conjure flames from her fingertips. This scared the cat enough that it shot off to a different sofa in the blink of an eye.

"Reckon you should just leave that one alone," said Amy, "It hates everybody."

"These are some nasty scratches," Martha said, "It got you worse than it got Mickey this morning."

"This is why I don't like cats," Oswin called through from the kitchen, where she was still sitting on the floor organising everything out of the freezer into piles of things that were no longer good. "Let Mitchell deal with it, it never normally attacks him. I don't think it likes him, but it's never done _that_ to him."

"It is quite nasty," said Ten, "Are you sure you want to risk Adam moving it?"

"Risk it?" Amy asked Ten, even though he wasn't speaking to her.

"Because he can't heal anymore," Ten said.

"Then I'll get Clara to scoop it out telekinetically and levitate it back into the medibay." Ten was still examining his hand when Martha told him to go and put a plaster on it and then wandered off back into the kitchen to continue scouring the fridge.

"So why are you and Rose getting married in a week and a half?" Mickey asked the Doctor. There was a bang in the kitchen and Martha stopped what she was doing.

"Fucking hell!" Oswin exclaimed, though nobody except Martha could actually see Oswin, who had just dropped an entire frozen chicken on the floor (hence the bang), "A _week and a half_!? Are you mental?"

"We just want to get married quickly," said the Doctor, "Rose wants to get married quickly."

"So this is all Rose?" Mickey asked him.

"It's an equal decision."

"Which is man-code for 'it's all Rose,'" Amy 'translated.'

" _No_ , we decided, _jointly_ -"

"You decided jointly that _Rose_ wants to get married as soon as feasibly possible."

Ten was in the middle of very unconvincingly arguing that he had just as much say in his relationship as the other half of it did when the pilgrimage to the cheapest possible takeaway returned. Them having a time machine really did mean things happened quite fast. Adam and Donna were carrying all the pizzas, while Rory and Eleven were carrying sides and drinks between them. They were also _very_ muddy, having just been retrieved from their football match with Craig Owens. Martha took off the washing up gloves again and helped Oswin to stand back up, leaving all the old food just on the floor where it could be thrown out soon.

"Have you heard this?" Amy spoke to Eleven, but Eleven wasn't paying attention, he was bragging about the fact they had won their match and he had scored a hat trick. "Doctor?" Ten and Eleven both looked at her, and she gave Ten an apologetic expression before pointing at Eleven and saying, "That one."

"What?" Eleven asked while Ten sorted out which polystyrene boxes contained chips and which contained onion rings.

"That he's getting married in a week and a half."

"A week and a half!?" Eleven exclaimed, dropping a handful of cans of fizzy pop onto the table where Mickey had to scramble to stop them landing on the floor.

"Well – at least we're not eloping," said Ten.

"I think that's worse than eloping," said Amy, "At least they were drunk when they decided to get married quickly. _You've_ decided to get married quickly while _completely sober_."

"That's true," said Eleven, "I don't even remember getting married. How much of this wedding lark have you got planned?"

"Well, Rose is, erm… she's…"

"In charge of everything?" Amy suggested, finally getting up from where she had been laying on the sofa for the last five hours or so, to go and claim her food. Everyone was flocking over to the two white kidney-shaped tables now, while carefully avoiding the corner of the sofa underneath which lurked the black cat (who could sometimes be heard growling.)

"No!" Ten continued to argue.

"There's no shame in letting the bride have her way," Donna said, "Especially if the bride has superstrength and can control the universe. Better let her do as she likes."

"Exactly," Eleven said, "Clara is sorting out almost all of the arrangements for our next one."

"When's _that_?" Mickey asked him.

" _Two_ weeks, knowing him," Amy quipped.

"Actually, I haven't got a clue," said Eleven, "It's an incredibly slow-going process and I can't say I'm particularly inclined to hurry it along. Where _are_ Clara and Rose?"

"They went shopping together," Donna answered, and he stared at her.

" _Shopping_? _Together_? Clara and Rose? My wife and his fiancée?"

"Yes, for wedding dresses," Donna said.

"What!?" Oswin shouted, "Clara's gone wedding dress shopping _without me_!? I'm the bloody chief bridesmaid! This is disgusting behaviour. I'm going to do something horrible to her, just wait and see…" Eleven did not try to argue with her, probably because he knew that if he did, Oswin would do something horrible to _him_ , too.

"I'm sure she had a good reason," Adam said.

"Don't defend her. I hate her now, we're not friends anymore." Adam sighed and gave up. "That reminds me, though, I need to use everyone's phones. Which I can do remotely, I just thought that I'd warn you in advance I'm messing with all your phones."

"You better not be changing the names again," Martha warned her, "It took me weeks to work out that 'Cum Guzzler' was my mum. She was really annoyed when I kept rejecting her calls."

"No, actually, me and this weird boy who follows me around have done something _so_ clever," she said, indicating Adam.

"What…?" Amy asked very suspiciously.

"Made an app for Helix," Adam explained, "So we don't have to share the big handset."

"It was Mitchell's idea; basically made me cream my knickers when he suggested it."

"Eurgh!" Amy exclaimed, "We're trying to eat here!"

"That's quite gross…" Martha muttered too.

"What? I'm just telling the _truth_ …" Oswin grumbled. Clearly, she had said it on purpose though, because she was filth.

"Where are you having this wedding?" Amy carried on questioning Ten, then she asked Donna before Ten even had a chance to speak, "And how come _you're_ alright with it being so soon? Aren't you the best man? Or woman."

"It's _their_ wedding," Donna shrugged.

"We were thinking of a hotel," said the Doctor.

"Will there be a free bar?"

"Yeah, will there?" Donna repeated.

"Ask Rose."

"Are we staying in the hotel? All of the guests?"

" _Ask Rose_."

"What kind of facilities does the hotel have?"

"What kind of food are you going to have for the wedding breakfast?" Mickey joined in.

"Wedding breakfast?" Ten frowned.

"Is it gonna be a religious service?" Oswin inquired.

"I don't really-"

"Who do I have to speak to to get a look at the seating plan?" Amy persisted.

"Well, that's-"

"How many guests are you even having?"

"Are you sending out proper wedding invitations?"

"Where are you going to honeymoon?"

"How much champagne are you going to buy?"

"Are there any plus ones?"

"Stop asking me!" he shouted finally, cutting them all off, "I don't know! Fine, I admit it, Rose is doing everything, it's all Rose, I have basically no say in anything, and I'm going to eat my chips in my room now away from you lot." He stood up and skulked away, and got swiped at by the cat on his way out, which made him yelp again like a wounded fox. Then he glowered at them all in turn and vanished into the Bedroom Circle.

"I'm not sure they've got enough time to plan a wedding, you know," Martha said.

"As long as they remember the free bar, I'm _sure_ it'll be fine," said Amy, then she settled in to eat her pizza with the rest of them.


	120. Supper

_Supper_

"You're _sure_ it's alright to be here?"

"Clara, it's my father's spaceship, of course I am," Jenny assured her.

"I just feel like I'm an intruder. Someone's going to come in and have a go at me."

"Anyone who has a go at you has me to deal with," she said firmly, "And _I'm_ strong enough to pull teeth out with my fingers." Ravenwood remained uncomfortably on one of the sofas while Jenny was up to no good in the kitchen, cooking something. Clara hadn't bothered to ask what it was, and Jenny was often very deceptive about her cooking anyway, until it was done. "I told you, we're only here because your kitchen is rubbish."

"If you want my house gutting and having a new kitchen fitted, then it's Adam Mitchell you need to be schmoozing, Jen," Clara advised her.

"Do you want me to ask him?"

"Not really. I can't be bothered having people in the house refurbishing it just for you."

"What do you mean ' _just_ ' for me?"

"I don't really care about you, that's all."

"Oh, thanks." Jenny looked up long enough to see Clara smile at her, which meant Jenny instantly forgave her for anything she may have done or said. "Do you want to do anything else after dinner?" Currently, it was just after midnight; Jenny had waited specifically for everyone to vanish off to bed before she risked bringing her girlfriend on board, because Clara was right about people not liking her being there. They always worried Jenny was trying to move her in.

"Can't think of anything off the top of my head – but that reminds me, I was going to ask you out."

"Oh really?"

"Mmm, so, it's Thursday now, do you want to come over on Saturday? I had this idea today, and it's _totally_ romantic, but it's a surprise," Clara said. She was leaning over the back of the sofa with her arms crossed, watching what Jenny was doing but not remotely understanding.

"The night after next?"

"Yeah."

"Sure."

"It's gonna be so great, just you wait, you're going to fall in love with me. Like, again."

Jenny laughed, "If you say so."

"Wear a dress, too. A cute one."

"Okay. But, tonight, though? Any thoughts? Apart from sitting in your living room watching reality TV and getting wine-drunk?" Clara's favourite thing to do recently was watch TV and get wine-drunk, but it was usually with Sally Sparrow, which Jenny was not remotely bothered about because she didn't like to drink.

"I'll let you know right away if I think of something. Promise." All of Clara's ideas revolved around food, though, and considering Jenny was already painstakingly cooking something gourmet, they were all irrelevant. Clara began thinking again about her plans for the coming Saturday, while Jenny was engrossed almost right away by her cooking, and so they didn't talk for a few minutes. "Dylan asked me if I believe in aliens today."

Jenny laughed, "Really? And, do you believe in aliens, Clara?"

"Tricky question. I suppose I'm on the fence. Like, do we really have any concrete evidence that aliens exist?"

"I'll give you some really concrete evidence in a couple of hours," Jenny said wryly, catching Clara's eye and winking.

"He keeps asking to meet you."

"Why? He's your boss, you're not even friends."

"Probably because he thinks you're amazing."

"Why does he think I'm amazing?"

"Because I told him you're amazing. And I never shut up about you. It's _very_ annoying." Jenny's hearts swelled hearing that Clara never stopped talking about her to other people, even people she had never met, like Dylan Danvers. "He wants to meet Esther, too, but I think that's because he reckons he might be able to make a girlfriend out of her."

"Doesn't he know she's not into that?"

"No. Me and Sally haven't told him. Sally said it'll be funny if he asks Esther out."

"…But she'll say no." Clara nodded. "That's mean, Clara. Don't go along with Sally, it's cruel. Although, that reminds me, what's going on with her and James Elliott? I thought she talks to you about that stuff?" Jenny was right, Sally did confide in Clara about 'that stuff', like when they mocked the television and got drunk, or went to the pub. Because she couldn't well confide in Esther. Of course, Esther would listen loyally and carefully if she had to, but she wouldn't have any solid advice.

"Damned if I know. _She_ doesn't even know," the doors in from the console room opened as Clara continued to talk, "I told her to just be friends with benefits if she thinks he's fit but doesn't want a relationship and she was like – 'that's rich coming from _you_.' And I'm like – excuse you – Jen and I are very happy together."

"What's this?" the newcomer inquired. It was only Nios. Jenny hadn't seen her at all for the whole day, which she thought was unusual, because Nios usually bided her time in Nerve Centre and the console room exclusively.

"Sally Sparrow and James Elliott. You know, from Undercoll," Clara said, "You know Undercoll?"

"Erm… yeah."

"Of _course_ she does," Jenny smirked, "Didn't I tell you? She's totally got a hot date with one of them." Nios looked like if she _could_ blush, she would be, but her expression actually just looked quite angry and a bit threatening. "Did you have it today? Is that why you haven't been around?"

"No. I've been on the ship, in Oswin's lab mostly. Has she been talking to you?"

"She's been talking _at_ me," Jenny said, "I get dozens of texts every day with a running commentary of her life. Well, mainly it's other people's lives, she's not so forthcoming about herself."

"What are you doing?" Nios very obviously went to change the subject, and Jenny did not persist with asking her about her alleged date, which she had barely even confirmed existed. Jenny was a real advocate of privacy, though, and didn't think it was anything to do with her what Nios got up to. She didn't think it was anything to do with Oswin, either.

"Cooking dinner," Jenny answered.

"But… what is it?"

"This alien shellfish called a kaggon," Jenny explained. The shells were circular and about the size of her palm, and she had quite a lot of them and had begun scraping them out of the shells and into a bowl to boil them. Before that she had been making a sauce using a garlic substitute paste she had found in the future which recreated the flavour (near enough) without any of the toxic components (allyl) that would throw Clara Ravenwood into anaphylactic shock.

"You're doing shellfish? Again?" Clara asked, "Trying to get me into bed?"

"I'd get you into bed no matter what I cooked you. And actually, because these are alien, they're not aphrodisiacs like those oysters. You'll like these, they go blood red if you cook them right," Jenny said, then her hand slipped and she ended up dropping the sharp knife on the countertop and wincing.

"Are you okay?" Nios asked.

"It's just my thumb," Jenny said, "Hard to scrape the meat out properly with this thing." She showed it to Nios, who saw that it was still bruised and yellow and bearing marks from where all of the stiches had been.

"Can I help?" she offered, and Jenny stared at her.

"You, um… since when did you offer to help people? Has Oswin been messing around with your programming? I heard she's been involving herself a little intimately with AIs lately."

"I'm not evil. And it… looks interesting."

"…Alright. You can help. But I'm closely supervising," Jenny said seriously, letting Nios come over. Again, Clara wondered how the holobox worked, because she had not yet been able to work it out. Jenny thought this was amusing, because Clara had lived with them for a few weeks a while back, and so didn't put her out of her misery with it. "Okay, so, the thing about kaggons is they're _very_ poisonous if you cook them wrong-"

"Oh, maybe I shouldn't-"

"I'm not going to let you actually cook them, and lucky you won't accidentally kill yourself licking your fingers after you cut these, _so_ ," Jenny pulled her over by her waist and gave her one of the kaggons in its silver shell to hold in her left hand and the unusual, curved knife Jenny had been using to fillet them in the other, then Jenny stood more or less with her arms around Nios to show her what to do. "You have to hold it with your thumb firmly and then slide the knife into the side of the shell wherever you can find an opening because you don't want to puncture it – they sort of burst if you do this wrong – but you've got to kill it _before_ you open the shell. Or it'll go for you."

"It'll…? What?"

"They're like leeches, they sort of latch on and… suck. Wouldn't do anything to a synth but it leaves a nasty mark, like a hickey."

"You're going to feed me hickey fish?" Clara asked.

"Technically it's not a fish. And I never remember you complaining about hickeys before."

"I've never had one that might kill me before."

"Well _that's_ not true, what about when the vampire bit you?"

Clara grimaced and changed the subject, "You know, when you said you were going to supervise her _closely_ …"

"You _are_ quite close," Nios said to Jenny, having to lean to her right to turn her head enough to see Jenny.

"In a 'lover's embrace' kind of way. If you were doing pottery instead of cooking it would be just like in _Ghost_."

"Maybe I do love Nios, what's it to you?" Jenny remarked.

"I reckon I've seen porn that starts like this. _Ooh_ , _why don't you scrape the meat out of my sexy clam_ ," Clara mimicked.

"Well you must watch some _weird_ porn," Jenny shook her head and went back to directing Nios in what she was doing, hovering her hands right about Nios's to guide her while she stabbed into the lining of the circular clam and cut down, "You have to stay along the back of the shell to make sure it's definitely dead – it can't survive without being attached to the shell, like turtles, or snails."

"So it's dead now?" Nios asked when she finished scraping.

"Hopefully. Just twist the shell, like opening a jar."

"I wish you would teach _me_ how to cook," Clara muttered.

"Never as long as I live. I'll teach you how to do something else. I'll teach you how to dance, there, that involves plenty of touching and closeness, so you can stop being jealous of Nios for getting to stab alien scallops to death." Nios twisted the shell apart, which took more strength than she anticipated, and something white and slimy fell out into the bowl underneath.

"Is it dead?"

"I think so," said Jenny, then she kissed her cheek lightly and slid the bucket full of shells over, "You can do the rest of them now, if you like. I have to go stop Clara from being insecure about our relationship." Nios didn't know what that meant, not until Jenny vaulted over the back of the sofa to land on Clara, and then Nios averted her eyes and went back to carving into the shellfish very carefully. For their sake, she hoped nobody else came into the room to see them kissing.

Her phone buzzed two shells later and she dropped the kaggon and the knife to check it right away.

"Who texted you?" Clara asked, making her jump. She glanced at them and saw they had sat back up, with Clara looking at Nios and Jenny watching Clara and playing with her hair.

"Nobody, just somebody, asking about…"

 _I saw a film once where these people built these hyper-realistic sex dolls. They were like computers only the CPU fans were between their legs and all these penises got mutilated. Is that what your charging port is like?_ read her message from Dr Cohen.

"…about… um… you know, like… IT support…"

Nios replied: _No_ , and put her phone away again.

"Was it from the boy you have a date with?" Clara asked.

"It's a girl," Nios said.

"Ah! So it _is_ from them, though?" Clara persisted, and Jenny decided to leave her alone and return to the kitchen after that.

"No!" Nios exclaimed. Clara raised her eyebrows. "Alright, maybe." Her phone went again, and she read the message while Jenny went to get a large saucepan and fill it with water.

 _I once saw this fourteen year old boy who got a very similar injury involving a vacuum cleaner_.

"What's she messaging you about?" Clara asked. Another text.

 _Well it wasn't really an injury because he died from massive blood loss, there's a lot of veins in the male penis_.

"Just, um… normal stuff," Nios said, "You know? The usual." She picked up the kaggon again.

"Who is she, anyway? What's she like?"

"She's… a person."

"Most people are persons."

"She's a doctor, isn't she?" Jenny said.

"…Yes."

"Are you nervous?" Clara asked. Nios didn't say anything. "She's totally nervous, Jen."

"Why wouldn't she be nervous? Everyone gets nervous about people they fancy. Right now _I'm_ nervous about if _you're_ going to like this weird food," Jenny said.

"Is that true?" Nios asked abruptly.

"About me being nervous around Clara? Sometimes," Jenny shrugged, "Like when she wakes up next to me I worry about what I'm going to say because I think 'good morning' is a bit boring. Or when I show up at the bookshop and surprise her by having made lunch and brought her some extra blood. Or just when I haven't seen her for a few days and I forget how pretty she is."

"How do you forget how pretty someone is when you live with two clones of them?"

"Well I was out in the jungle with Jack and River for days, that's what I'm talking about," Jenny explained, putting the pan of water on to boil. "I'm sure Clara must get nervous around me sometimes. She definitely gets jittery whenever she has to go talk to Sally."

"Sally's very attractive, it's not my fault," Clara defended herself, "And it's not every time, I talk to Sally quite a lot."

"But do you, though?" Nios persisted, "Get nervous?"

"Nervous about if she's actually going to like my surprise, romantic date I've planned," Clara said, and Jenny smiled, "What are _you_ anxious about, though? She must like you if she's texting you and you got her phone number."

"I just don't think I'm very interesting."

"You're a time travelling android from the future!" Jenny protested, "That's fascinating! And now you know how to fillet a kaggon, that's interesting, _and_ impressive. Not many people can cook these without killing someone; they're like puffer fish."

"I better not die from eating this, Jenny," Clara warned, "I won't be very happy with you if I die."

Jenny scoffed and said dismissively to Nios, " _Women_."

"So, what are you doing while I do this?" Nios asked Jenny, not recognising any of the vegetables she was chopping up.

"Making a very complicated marinade for those things," Jenny said, chopping the veg into the tiniest pieces possible and then sliding them off the board and into a mortar, "Lucky thing I have this synthetic garlic paste instead of actual garlic, makes it easier to rub in."

"Please, talk dirty to me," Clara remarked, listening in.

"What we're gonna do," Jenny blanked her completely and kept talking to Nios, "Is boil these until all the poison evaporates out of them, then wash them in the sink over a sieve, then cover them in this stuff I'm making now with the pestle and shallow fry them. If you want me to teach you how to actually cook ordinary things, though, I will."

"I'm not sure…"

"Let her show you, it'll make her happy," Clara said, "Give her something to do. I'm always telling her to get a hobby."

"I'll show you how to make a Full English, then everyone on the ship will love you. If you really want I could show you how to kill and skin animals as well, but no one ever seems as interested in that. They all talk about how hunting is bad, but you know, it's all about not _over_ hunting. Clara would tell me off for it but she's never complained about the alligator meatballs, have you?"

"I don't tell you off for hunting," Clara said, "Because I know you only do it when you want to eat something. If you did it for sport, though, that'd be grounds for us to break up." Jenny was actually surprised by Clara saying that, especially since Clara was serious, and thought it was lucky she never _had_ hunted something for sport. If she wanted to get thrills that badly, she would go steal the crown jewels. She'd actually been meaning to steal the crown jewels for a while, just to see how hard it would be (and to one-up Christina de Souza.)

"Well, anyway, everyone here would love you if you cooked breakfast for them," Jenny said, "But I have to admit, Ni – it does seem a bit odd now that you suddenly want to, like, do things." Nios was taken aback by Jenny calling her 'Ni', the same obnoxious nickname Oswin called her. But maybe it was growing on her, so she didn't argue.

Before Nios could answer – _or_ let Jenny know she had just about finished murdering the shellfish – unusual, male giggles emanated through from the Bedroom Circle, heralding the arrival of none other than Captain Jack Harkness and his newest flame. When they came in, Jenny got considerably more aggressive with the pestle and mortar, so much so that Nios worried she was going to start grinding up the solid marble as well as the vegetables. It seemed like Jack had been in the middle of tickling Ianto, but stopped immediately upon seeing the three girls in Nerve Centre. Jack cleared his throat and put his hands in his pockets.

"Jenny," he said, nodding at her, "Nios." Then a longer pause. "…Clara."

"Hi," said Clara, trying to be polite. Jenny said nothing, and neither did Nios, but Nios often didn't say anything.

"Hello," Ianto didn't quite seem to grasp the awkwardness of the situation. Or maybe he did and he was just significantly more mature than everybody else. "We haven't met, have we?" he looked between both Nios and Clara.

"This is Nios, my new culinary prodigy," Jenny introduced, "And that's Clara."

"But I've heard there are a lot of clones of her, or something."

"There's two of us, sort of," said Clara.

"This Clara is my girlfriend," Jenny said, "She's the best one."

"Right. So. Hmm. Is this awkward? Should we leave? We should probably leave," Ianto said to Jack.

"No, it's fine," Jack said, "We were only cutting through. And it's good you're here, actually, because I… hang on, is one of you _growling_ at me?" They all frowned, and Jack turned to Ianto and said, "Do you hear growling?" When they all strained their ears, they all most certainly did hear a very low and rumbling growl, which seemed to be coming from underneath the sofa Clara was sitting on. "What is that? Some kind of territorial vampire thing?" But his question was answered when a black mass of hair shot out from under the sofa and went for him.

"Oh my god, what _is_ that?" Clara exclaimed.

"It's the cat," Jenny answered, she and Nios both dropping everything to go and help Jack, who was shouting and getting mauled by a kitten. And maybe it was a Maine Coon, so it was still rather large, but it was still a _kitten_.

As soon as Jenny drew near, it turned and hissed at her and brandished its claws, and she saw for the first time that this tiny beast had red eyes. But when it was distracted by Jenny, _Nios_ decided to be the brave one and grab it, pulling it off Jack as it clawed at him. And remarkably, it did not turn to attack Nios. It did wriggle considerably to try and get out of her grip (and she was very careful not to hold it too tightly) but it did not hiss or try to maim her.

"What do I do with it?" she held it at arm's length.

"You're going to hurt it," Clara said, coming to try and take it from Nios. The thing then practically jumped out of Nios's hands for Clara, and for an instant Jenny was terrified it was going to start slashing at her as well, even though Clara was immune to cat scratches and it would be like trying to gouge the eyes out of a rock to go for her. That was when they heard it _purr_. "What's wrong with this cat?" Clara asks.

"Seems alright with you," Ianto pointed out.

"It shouldn't be, cats hate me, all animals hate me," Clara said, "It's a vampire thing. Babies and toddlers cry when I walk past."

"It must be _because_ you're a vampire that it likes you," Jenny said, "And that's why it doesn't ever attack Adam Mitchell, or Nios. Nios is a machine and Adam's in cryostasis."

"So it hates me because I'm _too_ alive?" Jack questioned.

"Hates all the Time Lords as well."

"What are you doing with these cats, anyway?" Clara asked, taking it with her to go and sit back down on the sofa. Jenny walked the long way around the furnishings to get back into the kitchen to cook.

"I don't know. I don't think dad wants to keep them here, though."

"So they're… you know. Up for adoption?"

" _What_? Clara, you can't adopt a cat that's going to savage me. When that thing grows up it's going to be the size of a lynx, it's _massive_."

"Well… you know. You're a big girl."

"Clara!"

"Where else is it going to go? It's either going to stay on the TARDIS or come with me, and you're going to be in both of those places," Clara said, "I'll protect you from the kitten." Jenny was very unhappy with this turn of events, and so went back to her angry mashing with her pestle.

"…Back to what _I_ was saying," Jack talked again, "I just wanted to apologise to Clara."

"What for?" Clara asked suspiciously.

"For letting _her_ be in a very dangerous situation this week for… arguably selfish reasons," he said, "And I thought that to make up for her being at risk of dying, I'd… well, if you ever want some blood that comes from someone who isn't genetically identical to you, I'll be glad to donate some."

"Oh, really?" Clara's eyes lit up at the mention of blood, "I could always do with more blood."

"Yeah, well, I'm busy at the moment, but I'm sure Jenny will be more than thrilled to find me and slit my throat at some point." Jenny didn't say anything, just glared at the pestle and mortar. "Well, we'd better go then, leave you to your.. are you making fried kaggon?"

"Yes, and you can't have any," Jenny snapped. Jack raised his eyebrows at her.

"We were just leaving," he said, and finally he did drag Ianto away.

"It was nice to meet you all," Ianto said.

"You too," said Clara. Nios smiled at him. As soon as the door closed behind them, Jenny stared at the metal. "Ianto seems alright." Jenny still didn't speak. "Jen, it's going to be ages until the cat is old enough to take away from the mother anyway. And I let you keep all those guns in my house, you could at least let me-"

"It's fine," Jenny sighed, "It'll be better for the cat. It's not its fault it has a disposition for the undead, though personally I'd rather you adopt the floating one with the tentacles. I _like_ the one with the tentacles, and it wouldn't look out of place in Hollowmire." Going by the look on Clara's face, Nios assumed that she had never seen the floating cat with the tentacles. "Anyway, I just thought of somewhere we can go."

"Oh yeah?"

"Let's go to a UFO hotspot and mess with people."

"That _does_ sound fun," admitted Clara with a grin, "I guess it's a date. As soon as you finish teaching Nios how to not poison people."


	121. Regenderation: Part One

**AN: I was re-reading my first draft of this and it's actually so old that Clara refers to Jack as the Doctor's son-in-law – which means it comes from before I even had the idea for Clarenny or decided that Jack and Jenny would break up.**

 **DAY 3,794**

 _Regenderation: Part One_

 _Clara_

"You – are – so – stupid!" Clara Oswald shrieked at the green-coloured, algae-stricken mass lying in the foetal position on the glass floor of the console room. She beat her fists uselessly on the cold floor between every word, kneeling there and waiting for the bloated corpse to decide it wanted to wake up. She could just about hear the rattles of its dying breaths brought back to it again, but that was all. It hardly moved. If it wasn't for the TARDIS scanners, she would be sobbing with twice as much grief as she had been for the last two weeks. She was still crying as she looked at the pitiful mess in front of her, which did not move, and she put her head in her hands and tried to suppress her emotions. "You're an idiot. Wake up. Wake up so I can tell you you're an idiot." No sign of movement from it. "Please," Clara begged through tears, "please wake up, sweetheart…"

It shouldn't surprise her. What did she expect from a rotten body that had been fished out of the Irish Sea after two weeks submerged in the icy waters? The tweed suit was tearing at the seams, lumpy and covered in seaweed and limpets. She would not know how to manage with this if she had not been given the gift, ten years ago, of seeing into the future to know that this was not the end for her Time Lord. That there were at least three more weddings for them. She had always known, though, that she would have to say goodbye one day, but she had always thought that… she would be able to _have_ a goodbye. Instead she had seen her husband sucked underneath grey waves, and had been laughing and finding it rather amusing, if reckless, and then… he had not come back up again. He had disappeared. The Eleventh Doctor had been pulled under the water, just like that, and she had not even been given a chance to savour their last few moments together.

It made a sound. A small, tiny sound, like somebody sighing in their sleep, but it made Clara pause and look up again and fix her eyes on the waterlogged bit of refuse they had been very lucky to rescue. She did not give a second thought to the sea-sludge and the smell as she leant over to urgently shake what she thought was the shoulder of this very small thing, who was shrunken in the ruined clothes of her dead husband, and it rolled over and heaved very violently in Clara's general direction, regurgitating a gallon of unpleasant sea water and silt onto the glass floor. Clara jumped away from the mess and stared at this coughing creature who had nearly vomited scum onto her. Awkwardly she stood up and went around to the other side so that she may rub its back, which made the creature sick again.

"You need to get it all up," she advised quietly, "You'll feel better. It can't be good having all that inside you." She didn't know if she was heard or listened to, but the creature heaved up enough water to fill a lake onto the TARDIS floor, and Clara hoped she wasn't going to get it in the neck from the spaceship later. Hopefully the TARDIS cared more about the Doctor's wellbeing than the mess. Clara did not speak again until after there had been a break of a few minutes since the last bout of puke. The smell in that room was obscene. "Is that everything?"

Finally, a voice: "Where am I?" it was female, and accented, and it had been many long years since Clara had last heard this voice. She had nearly forgotten what it sounded like, and it gave her the motivation to carry on helping the person she now found herself caring for.

"On the TARDIS."

"The what? Who are you?"

"Okay. You've been through a lot right now, but you have to trust me. I'm…" she took a deep breath and proceeded, "I'm your wife. I'm Clara. We've been married for ten years. You've just been through a… near-death experience. Do you understand? You almost died, and now you can't remember anything, but you're going to get your memory back. I know you will."

"Who am I?"

"You're the Doctor."

"Doctor who?"

"Exactly. Look, I can't imagine what this is like, and I didn't know it would be… you just, you need to trust me."

"What's that smell?"

"That's you. You stink. You drowned. You've been underwater for two weeks, you're lucky to have survived. But listen to me, you need to come with me and have a shower."

"N-no water-"

"No, you need to. You'll feel better. It'll be clean, warm water, and I'll be there, I'm not going to leave you," Clara said firmly. She wanted to leave her. She did not think in a million years that when this happened she would feel so inherently averse to the transition, and it appalled her that she did, but she could not leave this vulnerable person alone. "Please trust me, sweetheart. I'm only going to do what's best."

It was a depressing affair. She may have once daydreamed about what lay beneath the clothes of Thirteen, but now having to help this new Doctor have a shower because she was so full of amnesia she could not remember how to do anything for herself was not how Clara's sordid imaginings had ended up. She supposed she had to expect something like this when she married somebody so old, though. At least it was still one step above a sponge bath, and it was probably good to remove the illusion of mystery around the Doctor's new body. It would stop her from drooling, at least.

Nearly an hour later they were seated in the living room, which had changed in the last decade to be much smaller as people moved out. It was just the four of them now, the four of them and Jonesy Two, the floating tentacle cat, but anything out of the ordinary had been removed by Adam and Oswin on order of Clara, who had slipped out of the Doctor's company for just long enough to text and tell them to get rid of anything over-stimulating. Very little had been said between them, it had just been Clara comforting her ever since they dragged her out of the sea. They sat at the table, large enough for eight but rarely used for that many, Clara having just made hot chocolate for them both.

"So… we're married?" the creature asked.

"Yeah."

"I'm married… to _you_?" Clara nodded. "How did I manage that?"

"I'm sure the memories will come back to you if you give them time. Although, actually, we were drunk, so they probably won't… we, um, eloped. Okay, how much do you remember? About anything? Over all?"

"I remember the taste of this hot chocolate, it's familiar."

"I mean about, like, you."

"I don't know, I… I remember this planet, with glass domes and an orange sky…"

"Gallifrey. That's good, you remember Gallifrey," Clara said.

"Maybe going there would help with the memory stuff?" she suggested. Clara's heart sank. How much devastating news was she going to have to deliver now? How many tragedies had the Doctor seen that she now did not recall?

"Gallifrey's gone, sweetheart," she said softly, "It's been gone for a few hundred years. There was a war, the Time War, against the Daleks." Was the Doctor going to have to grieve for her entire species for a second time? It made Clara's heart ache to think about it.

"But the Time Lords, they…"

"They're not here anymore. Except the Master, they're still kicking about _plotting_ ," Clara said, "But there's always Jenny. Do you remember Jenny?"

"My daughter," she realised, "How do I forget these things? My whole planet, my own daughter…"

"You're lucky you're not worse off, being without oxygen for so long. It wouldn't surprise me if we had to teach you how to walk and talk again. But it's going to be alright, do you remember? Ten years ago? Where you came back, from the future, to the TARDIS for a while? But you won't have been you, you'll have been…" Clara couldn't finish the sentence. "I know you'll be alright, the TARDIS scanners showed the brain damage is healing, but it might scar."

"Scar?"

"Until the next time you regenerate," Clara said. The Doctor paused. "You remember regenerations? What they are?"

"Yeah, I… but, wait. Wait, wait, wait… there's something different this time, like I've changed more than… oh my god. _Oh my god_. Am I-?"

"A girl?"

"An _American_?"

"Oh. I-"

"Obviously I've figured out by now that I'm a girl, c'mon. I'm not blind. Kind of a hot one, too."

"I'm not going to disagree."

"But an _American_? Maybe if I do a fake English accent for long enough it'll stick…"

"How would you decide which English accent to use, though? There are so many." The Doctor didn't reply to that, she sighed and grew very quiet again.

"All of them gone…"

"You can rebuild them," Clara said, "There's always Mattie."

"Mattie…"

"Smith-Jones." The Doctor looked at her blankly. "You remember? She's nine now? Mickey and Martha had a daughter? Matilda?"

"Mickey Smith and Martha Jones!? _Together_!? Who'd have seen _that_ coming…"

"They've been together for fifteen years. And then she got pregnant and they have Matilda who we've only met once because they're _very_ protective of her. Do you not remember anything about her? She's very unusual." The Doctor shrugged. "Oh, it's crazy, something to do with the Manifest virus and the time vortex getting twisted in her genetics. She's ageing _incredibly_ slowly. She's only learnt how to walk just recently. But, hey, you remembered who Mickey and Martha are. That's a good sign. And you remembered, like, what America is."

"I don't remember a lot about you. Shouldn't I remember you first? If you're my wife?"

"I _am_ your wife, but you're over a thousand years old. You've known Mickey and Martha for three centuries and me for a decade. And it'll come back eventually. I _know_ it'll come back." The Doctor crossed her arms and slouched down on the table top.

"Why did I drown?"

"You tried to go after these shark aliens that were killing people. Jumped into the sea, in Belfast. Do you remember?"

"No."

"I don't want to talk about that. Let's just talk about what else you remember. The Ponds, Amy and Rory, do you remember them?"

"Uh… I…"

"It's fine if you don't."

"Tell me about you."

"You know _everything_ about me."

"Are we in love?"

Clara answered somewhat awkwardly, "Yes." She felt like she was lying, or doing something wrong. Betraying her husband. She supposed it was a residual feeling from her borderline-affair a decade ago, but now there was no jealous man in the back of her mind. There was just this woman.

"I trust you," she said, "It's strange. Because I don't remember you. But it's easy to be here. What if I never remember you? What if I was just a good liar before?"

"Well. If you never remember us falling in love, I suppose I'll just have to get you to fall in love with me all over again."

"I can't imagine that would be very hard." She took a deep breath and thought for a while before speaking again, concentrating quite hard on whatever was in her head. Clara sat by her side, feeling more empty than anything else. "Alright. I'm a Time Lord. I'm called the Doctor. I'm from Gallifrey. I'm a thousand years old-"

"Twelve-hundred years old," Clara corrected. She nodded.

" _Twelve-hundred_ years old. I'm the only one left, but there's Jenny, my daughter, and Matilda Smith-Jones, but she's a toddler. And you're Clara, you're my wife. And I'm American."

"And a girl."

"Why are you so hung up about me being a girl?"

"I just… like girls. It's not a crime. Not in _this_ decade, anyway. Do you remember anything else about me? Do you remember my sister?"

"You have a sister?"

"It's complicated."

"My head hurts."

"Yeah, that'll happen…" Clara sighed.

"Tell me about _you_ , though," the Doctor persisted. Clara couldn't blame her for asking; if _she_ had woken up with amnesia and had a strange woman she had never met telling her she was her wife, she would want to know things about the woman, too.

"I'm Clara. Clara Oswald. I was born on November 23rd, 1988, in Blackpool, England. On planet Earth. Right now I'm about thirty-five, but I haven't aged for a decade because I have a cloud of nanogenes to keep me young."

"That's just facts," said the Doctor.

"Well, what do you want to know?"

"I don't know… just something _real_ , about you. About us."

"Okay…" Clara had to stop and think. "My dad's always hated you but every time we visit him you make sure to bring the fanciest bottle of wine or whiskey to try and win him over." The Doctor just looked at her and waited for her to continue. "Erm… I can't cook. I'm rubbish at cooking. Can't even do toast, I set the toaster on fire, you always complain about having to cook for me but you do it anyway. But I make really good drinks. Uh… I smoke, and you hate it, and you make me smoke e-cigarettes on the ship but while you've been… away… I've been smoking real ones."

"Something more than that, though."

"You call me 'Coo.'"

"Why do I do that?"

"Because it's engraved inside your wedding ring because you thought that's what my initials were, because you thought I had a middle name when I don't," Clara said. The Doctor looked down at her hands then, but there was no wedding ring to be found on either of them. "…Maybe it slipped off when you were in the sea…"

"No. No, I… I remember that, I remember _coo_ … hold on… there's this old party trick I used to be able to-" she stopped dead in the middle of her sentence and paused, Clara watching her very carefully, and then she jerked and made a noise like she was trying to suppress a violent burp. Clara only realised what was going on in the nick of time, and moved her hands and her hot chocolate off the table as the Doctor retched _again_ and sicked up a last little dribble of sea water onto the table, and coughed until something else came out, too. Something mucky and circular.

"What _is_ that? No, don't touch-" the Doctor didn't listen, because she did touch it, she picked it up and then took it out of the pool of semi-translucent fluid over to the sink and turned on the faucet to rinse it. Clara didn't think she had ever seen so much vomit in one night, and that was saying something, because she'd been out clubbing in Manchester on New Year's Eve before. The Doctor washed the object and then dried it with the nearest tea towel before bringing it back over to hold it under the light properly.

"It _does_ say 'coo'…"

"That's your wedding ring?" Clara asked. The Doctor held it out to her. "I'd rather not touch it, thanks."

"I washed it. And I swallowed it, I remember, because I knew… I knew that I was going to die, and I remembered… I didn't want to lose it, so I swallowed it when I had to open my mouth to let the water in anyway."

"You spent your last breath of air making sure your wedding ring would be safe?"

"I guess so. We must be really in love, then. If I did that." Clara watched her slide the ring onto her finger, where it hung, comedically large. So that was the last meaningful thing the Eleventh Doctor had done for her, he had remembered he was going to change into a girl with much smaller fingers, had realised he was at risk of losing his wedding ring, and had clung onto it most dearly. Clara felt tears in her eyes, but the new Doctor was still looking at the ring. She cleared her throat and fought them off.

"We'll get it adjusted," Clara told her, "Don't worry." The Doctor closed her palm tightly around the ring, like it was the only tether she had to who she had been before. "Sweetheart, you're going to be okay. Like I said, you're already lucky, and at least you're remembering some stuff, yeah? Like me?"

"Yeah. Yeah, you're right, at least I am…" she sat back down, the vomit on the table between them. It was going to start trickling over the edge in a moment; Clara kept a very close eye on it. "Your sister is called Oswin."

"She is."

"And I thought that was your middle name."

"Yeah."

"And she's… got a husband?"

"A boyfriend," Clara said, "They're not married. Every time he proposes she says no."

"What about Jenny? Where's Jenny?"

"Jenny moved away a long time ago," Clara said, "Because she's got that job with the police now, you remember? And they have their hotel?"

"They have their what?"

"Just – never mind. We'll go and visit Jenny, okay? As soon as we can. She'll want to remind you of all this stuff herself, don't you think? You don't want to hear it second hand from me. I don't even really know the details. Maybe you should go to bed, though, for the time being. You should go to bed, try and sleep, you'll feel better to get some rest. Then in the morning Adam will make us breakfast."

"Oswin's… boyfriend. Not husband."

"Yeah, him. And we'll wait until you're okay and then we'll go do visits and get the ring adjusted and… all sorts of stuff."

But when Clara said they would wait until the Doctor was okay, she actually meant they would wait until _she_ was okay, because Clara was most certainly not okay. Not with any of this. Because her husband had still died. So she lied to the new Doctor and tried to shuttle her towards their bedroom as quickly as she could.


	122. Regenderation: Part Two

**DAY 3,795**

 _Regenderation: Part Two_

 _Clara_

She was woken up by a feeling of extreme cold on her face. It was probably one of the worst ways she had ever been woken up in her life so far, subtracting all the times she had found herself passed out in a stranger's bed with a hangover from hell. No feeling really matched to that of getting frostbite one your lips, nose and eyelids, though, like she had fallen head-first into the arctic sea. _This is how Captain Oates must have felt_ , Clara thought. It didn't last forever, though, just until she woke, and she flailed around trying to stop it from happening. When she finally managed to open her eyes, she saw Adam Mitchell was standing over her with his arms crossed. Of course it was him; nobody else would try and freeze her head off.

"Why are you sleeping on the sofa out here?" he asked her sharply. She did not answer. Half because she couldn't, because she had to wait for the frostbite to heal on her face (seriously, it was worse than when Martha had set her tongue on fire), and half because she did not have a real answer for him. And there he was, so inherently _good_ , all the time, and he was judging her as though he knew what this felt like. The only person who even slightly understood was Rose Tyler, but Rose was very hard to get a hold of those days. They only saw one another at pre-arranged events, like birthdays and christenings, and rarely spoke otherwise. "Clara, come on."

"I'm not in the mood," she muttered.

"You're lucky Oswin's still asleep," he said, pushing her legs off the sofa so that he could sit down next to her. They only had the one sofa now, for the four of them. "She'd really chew you out if she saw this, you know." Clara did know, and she had still left the Doctor in the middle of the night, once she was sure they were fast asleep. "Look, I know it must be hard that she doesn't remember-"

"It's not about her memory," Clara said quietly.

"Then what _is_ it about?"

"He's dead."

"He's still there," Adam told her, "She'll remember eventually, we know she will because we met her in the future, and weren't you so obsessed with her then?"

"It was different. I still had him. And then at the wedding, when she told me not to take him for granted because one day… but I did. Because I just thought, one day, it would be Thirteen, but I never thought that the first time I met her would mean it had been the last time I meet him."

"They're the same-"

"They're not the same, though!" she shouted at him without meaning to. In her mood, she got off the sofa, throwing the blanket she had brought onto the floor, "You don't understand. What am I? Some sort of superhero? I watched the love of my life _drown_ and you think that that's going to mean I'm alright now? Because they're back? If they were a human and we were normal and they'd been in a coma, would you just expect me to be fine? Probably bloody not. So don't come out here and talk down to me like I'm a criminal for still being in mourning." He just sat there and didn't look at her for a while.

"Do you want a cup of tea?"

"…Yes, thanks. Tea would be nice."

"I think you're too used to seeing them as separate people," he started saying again as he got up to go over to the kettle, "Because they were both there at the same _time_ , and then living with multiple Doctors for so long and having them all still be individuals…"

"Please, psychoanalyse me further, unqualified boy-genius."

"Well you can't abandon her."

"I'm not abandoning her!"

"So sneaking out here in the middle of the night to avoid her _isn't_ abandoning her? She's going to wake up without you there, what's she going to think?"

"She doesn't even remember who I am right now," Clara said coldly, picking up her dressing gown from the sofa, which she had been using as a blanket after she had crept out in the night to cry herself to sleep elsewhere.

"You can't start off this next stage of life resenting her for not having a penis."

"I am not resenting her for not having a penis!" Clara exclaimed, " _I'm_ queer, thank you very much."

"I always got the impression that you liked her more than you liked him. Back when it was taking every fibre of your being to _not_ have an affair."

"I wasn't that bad."

"You were _so_ bad! Couldn't even trust you to be alone together. And now you could finally have her all to yourself and you're terrified."

"Oh my god – just because you've been shagging my sister for a decade doesn't mean you know what's going on in _my_ head."

"Erm, you and your sister are the same person, and I've literally been _living with you_ the whole time as well," Adam pointed out. In that moment, Clara hated him. She hated him because he was being calm and logical and showing her the flaws in her behaviour, but she didn't want to see the flaws in her behaviour, she wanted to crawl into a very small and very dark room and hide there with a carton of cigarettes and a case of pre-mixed cocktail cans and be completely alone. She did not want Adam Mitchell to be right, with his obnoxious philanthropism and _do-gooding personality_.

He wasn't destined to continue giving her his opinions, though, because his prediction that the Doctor was going to wake up without Clara by her side came true. When she saw the girl-Doctor walk through the doors into the living room looking lost and slightly hurt, she did regret what she had done. And Adam had been right, of course. Clara looked guiltily at the floor in silence.

"What's going on?" the Doctor asked.

"Nothing," said Clara. Adam did not dispute this. The Doctor looked at Adam for a while, and squinted.

"Adam, right? Adam Mitchell?"

"Welcome back," he said warmly. She kept staring at him, straining to remember.

"You're colour blind," she said, then she turned to Clara, "And _you_ …. really like mayonnaise." It made Clara sad that she had left the Doctor when the Doctor was putting so much effort into trying to remember her life, when her life was really a series of intermittent tragedies she was constantly trying to put behind her. Now they were all going to be brought to the surface again. Still, Clara managed the tiniest smile when the Doctor told her about the mayonnaise. "I've… been thinking…"

"You should really just be resting and taking it easy," Clara said, and the Doctor shook her head and carried on.

"I think I should go and see Jenny."

"I-"

"That's a great idea," Adam interrupted Clara, "Seeing Jenny is bound to help jog some memories."

"Staying on the TARDIS where we can monitor her condition is a 'great idea,'" Clara snapped at him, "She shouldn't leave."

"She'll be fine, you can go with her. What's going to happen at the Cosmonaut?"

"Anything could happen there, it's full of lowlifes."

"It's full of refugees, Clara."

"I'm right here," the Doctor said loudly, "And I said _I_ want to go and see _my_ daughter who I barely remember anything about. I don't even know what she looks like, I don't remember why she doesn't live here, I don't-" she grew very frustrated very quickly, and Clara was resigned to go towards her and regretfully compromise and agree to her request.

"It's okay," Clara said softly, though she did not touch the Doctor, "We can go see Jenny. We can get breakfast there. You'll just have to get dressed first, alright?"

"I think you should wait until Jenny can advise her about what she should wear," Adam said, "I'd hate to see _you_ pick clothes for her."

"I'm sure she can pick her own clothes," Clara said coldly. Then the Doctor laughed all of a sudden. "What?"

"Nothing, it's just… your bad dress sense. I see it now." Clara rolled her eyes and went to get her cup of tea from Adam Mitchell when he put it down on the table to indicate it was ready.

"I wish you would remember something good about me, like what an amazing lover I am," Clara said.

"Uh – what?" the Doctor asked. When Clara turned around, she saw the Doctor had gone bright pink.

"Or that I have cool superpowers. Come on, let's leave Adam, he's annoying me."

"Hey!" Adam argued. Clara stuck her tongue out at him when the Doctor wasn't looking, and steered her out of the room so that they could head towards the TARDIS wardrobe, which was somewhere Clara was very rarely allowed to go, and so she didn't really know where it was. She hoped the TARDIS would help them out, though.

"Why did you leave?" the Doctor asked her straight out. Clara stopped walking and struggled to think of what to say. But in the end, it was very easy to talk about this Doctor as some kind of interloper when she was not there. To her face, though? Her very attractive face with very sad eyes? It became a lot harder.

"I'm sorry," Clara muttered. "It just felt weird. It feels like I'm doing something wrong."

"What's doing something wrong?"

"I don't know. Just being in the same room as you, like… I'm betraying you, somehow. But not you, like… him. It feels like I'm betraying him. And you don't remember, so that makes it even more like you're a stranger, when I know logically you aren't at all and you know me _very_ intimately, but I can't shake the feeling that I shouldn't even be talking to you. Adam was right, he said he reckons living with multiple Doctors and then girl-you coming back from the distant future makes you seem more separate than you actually are. It was hard to sleep in the same bed."

"It would've been nice if you'd been there… or, I don't know, left a note? I barely recognise the room as it is, or anything here, you're the only thing that I know now, and-" Clara hugged her. She had very obviously not been expecting that. "I remember you being shorter."

"You remember _you_ being _taller_ ," Clara said softly. She got a strong aroma of cinnamon from the Doctor's new, blonde hair which made her feel safer than she had done for a while.

"How tall was I?"

"A little under six foot."

"Did I stoop to talk to you?"

"Sometimes."

"I already think it's nice not to stoop to talk to you. You smell like strawberry laces."

"Just my shampoo." Clara let her go, though the Doctor seemed reluctant. "Come on, then," Clara stepped back, "Wardrobe. I guess you're going to have to decide what your new look is. If you're quick about it you can do it before you remember what you in the future looked like."

"Oh, I can't do that," she said, beginning to walk. Clara suspected that if the Doctor did not think too much about it, she would be able to automatically find her way to different parts of the TARDIS, through muscle memory. "Boy clothes are one thing, but _girl_ clothes? I don't know anything about girl clothes."

"Well, gender isn't actually real, you know, so I'm sure you can get away with wearing whatever takes your fancy."

"And what if typically-stereotyped 'girl' clothes _do_ take my fancy, then?"

"Somehow, I really don't think they will…" Clara sighed, recalling the future Thirteen's 'ironically hipster' and 'postmodernist' look, which she had once described to Clara on one of the rare occasions they had actually interacted ten years ago as a 'combination of 1960s MOD, 1980s punk, and mid-2000s anti-establishment.' Which was a fancy way to say she was a no-good hipster who bought gimmicky 'sneakers', wore a lot of hoodies and sweat-shop manufactured skinny jeans which were ripped at the knees and bleached to look faded just moments before they hit the shop floor. Clara had called her a hypocrite, and the Doctor had said she was being 'ironic.' And it seemed like this Doctor's decision to look like a comically mass-produced manic pixie dream girl archetype was a base factor of her entire personality, because lo and behold, it was that fateful day that she decided Converse with the Stars & Stripes on them would look _really_ trendy.

"Oh my god, you actually wear these? Like people wear them? Regularly?"

"Everyone wears them, they're skinny jeans," Clara said, "Although someone told me a rumour that flares are coming back into fashion."

"Don't they cut off your circulation?"

"That's how you know they fit," Clara told her. She felt like she was prying by watching the Doctor try on clothes in a bunch of very large mirrors, and so tried to avert her eyes as much as she could.

"What about bras? How do you put them on? Why are there so many names for things? It's confusing."

"There are sociological studies that if consumers get bamboozled they're likely to spend more money," Clara told her, "That's why supermarkets are laid out in such a weird way. It's like, a conspiracy."

"Did Sally Sparrow tell you that?"

"Who's Sally Sparrow?" Clara asked quickly.

"She's…" the Doctor paused and turned to look at Clara with her jeans only pulled up to her knees and a very unusual hat on her head, which Clara was sure was an antique she had probably stolen from a Cavalier during the English Civil War.

"Nice of you to make fun of Sally out of habit."

"I don't know why I said that."

"Sally's a nutcase, end of story," Clara said, "She's drunk on conspiracy theories and she keeps a doomsday supply of toilet roll in her cellar."

"Huh… I'm not sure about this hat."

"I don't think _anyone_ is sure about _that_ hat."

"What about a top hat?"

"Do you _need_ a hat?"

"What if it rains? How will I stop my hair from getting wet? That's a thing girls worry about, right, they don't want their hair to get wet?"

"I think a lot of people don't want their hair to get wet. What's with the gender stereotypes?"

"I'm very confused. The stereotypes are helping me make sense of all this stuff and how the world perceives me now. Like, do I have to hide my ankles in public?"

"No! Show your sexy ankles off to the world."

"Maybe I should forget the whole thing and wear a dress, I've always wanted to wear dresses."

"A dress might be a bit intense for your first trip out."

"Because of my ankles?"

"No, not because of… why do you think this about ankles?"

"What about a hood. Maybe I should get something with a hood. That seems sensible."

"I – sure. Whatever you like." Clara felt like a useless boyfriend in a department store who sat playing games on his phone for hours while sitting on the chairs outside the changing rooms and pretending to pay attention to the outfit changes of his significant other. She was quite bored, to put it simply.

"What about a scarf?"

"Can't have a scarf, scarf's Jenny's thing."

"You're gonna have to show me how makeup works, too."

"God, really?"

"Well… I mean…"

"Yep. Sure. Fine. Whatever you want. You can be whatever you want to be. I just hope you work out what you want to be quite quickly, because I _really_ want some breakfast…"


	123. Regenderation: Part Three

**AN: There will actually be another Future Clarenny storyline set a few years before this one which will elaborate significantly on what's going on with them at this point in time and Jenny's job and Nios's relationship and Clara's hotel, so don't worry if I'm skimpy on the details.**

 _Regenderation: Part Three_

 _Ravenwood_

"What _are_ you doing?" Nios addressed Clara Ravenwood. She was standing behind the bar with her hand on her neck and her arm in the air, balancing a glass bottle full of something purple on her elbow. "Aren't you supposed to be restocking?"

"I dropped a bottle last night," Clara said, then she managed to bounce the bottle on her arm and it did a spin in the air until she caught it again, then exchanged it into her other hand behind her back, "I have to practice the stall so I don't do it again." She picked up another bottle and started to juggle with them.

"Or you could pour the drinks normally," said Nios.

"Ni, the whole reason people come here is to see the pretty vampire doing fancy tricks while she mixes the cocktails," Clara told her knowingly. Nios was more practical and didn't believe in putting a flare into anything. Well, she said that, but her food presentation was always impeccable. "The kitchen is your area and the bar is mine. I don't know anything about cooking and you don't know how to make a Long Island Iced Tea in ten seconds."

Nios looked around the bar, which was completely empty, though this was typical for six in the morning. Most pubs and bars would turf people out if it got after three, and that was being generous. It was only Clara's vampirism that kept the alcohol flowing until the dawn light crept through the windows – though there were no windows at all. One of the first things Clara had decided when she took over was that she was going to brick up the windows down there. Even the windows in her bedroom, which was in the attic at the very top of the building, had large wooden coverings which hung from the curtain rails and completely blocked out all sunlight.

"Are you not letting her come downstairs today?" Clara inquired, putting the bottles down and beginning to pull the shutters across the shelves lined with expensive booze, a lot of which was from completely different planets. The shutters had an unusual mural of ambiguous space scenery painted across them, which Jenny had done one week when she was bored. Nios narrowed her eyes at Clara.

"She doesn't like coming down when there's people in the bar," Nios said, "…And she's having a shower."

"So, is it breakfast in bed again this morning?"

"It depends how long you keep me talking out here for," Nios said as Clara locked all the metal shutters. "Is Jenny asleep?"

"She's at work," Clara said with a sigh, "She took on an extra double shift again. I told her not to, but far be it from me to think she might listen to what I tell her for once. She's supposed to be back soon, though, but she hasn't texted." Clara and Nios were both very worried about Jenny, who had not been herself ever since getting the news that the Eleventh Doctor had drowned. Which was very understandable, really, but she had not been taking care of herself.

"Will she want scrambled eggs?"

" _I_ want scrambled eggs if you're making scrambled eggs," Clara said.

"I'll get the big pot out then and make them in that," Nios decided. Actual breakfast, for the guests, began officially at seven, though very rarely were people there to eat it. Even less-so when the only guests they had were two drifters who probably wouldn't have anything to eat and one of their more permanent 'residents' who wouldn't be awake for hours yet. "Doesn't look like there are going to be many orders this morning, you know."

"Yes, yes," Clara dismissed her, "Alien refugees is often a niche market."

"Which is why I think-"

"That we should open to humans. But we can't. Not without segregating the human guests from the alien guests. That's why we hide." Their building was wedged into a random alley in Fitzrovia and kept completely secret from the human population of London, and was there to give lost aliens a safe place to go. Nios was only worrying about money, when strictly speaking they didn't need to, because they had a lot of clever tricks to keep them off the grid and operating with minimum expenditure. And Jenny brought in an annual salary of seventy-grand, and had very little to spend it on. They were in no danger of becoming unsustainable. "We do have one human guest anyway, don't we? Just because she doesn't pay for the room-"

"Leave her alone."

"Fine. But only because she scares me. And you can leave me alone because this is my business."

"Which Jenny funds and does all the accounts for, and which you only have because your ex-girlfriend decided to give you a deed to it on a whim."

"It was a present because Jenny got her that job. Look, I'm getting tired of you always-" Clara could not complete her sentence when the loud sound of ethereal thrumming broke the dawn quiet inside The Lost Cosmonaut. "Holy shit, that must mean there's news, right?" Clara said to Nios, going over to the doorway back into the main room. It seemed the TARDIS was materialising out by reception though, because while she could hear it she could not see it.

"Or they have the dates mixed up," Nios said, "Why do they have to arrive when I'm trying to make these eggs?"

"Forget the eggs, there might be a hot girl on that ship," Clara said, then added – though she really did not need to – "Apart from me, obviously."

"I never noticed how much like Oswin you are until I'm not around Oswin anymore." Clara took that as an insult. "Well, you tell me what's going on, because I've already started cooking." Clara left her behind and walked quietly through the empty bar and the chairs and tables and finally heard hushed voices. One of the voices was identical to her own, and the other was an American. Her heart nearly started beating again at the prospect of seeing Thirteen, whom she remembered to be _gorgeous_.

And she still _was_ gorgeous, too, when Clara Ravenwood saw her, with Clara Oswald at her side and looking dishevelled. Her hand was twitching like she needed a cigarette. Ravenwood clapped her hands and made them both jump.

"Welcome to The Lost Cosmonaut, how can I help you today?" she asked.

"Very funny," said Alpha Clara.

"Whoa, this is totally like déjà vu," the Doctor stared at Ravenwood. Alpha Clara narrowed her eyes at the Doctor.

"…Right… this is the Other Me, you remember? She's from the alternate universe? She's also your daughter-in-law which is very weird…"

"I don't get it," said Thirteen.

"She's married to Jenny, they got married two years ago."

"What? That's crazy. Congratulations. Unless I hate that you're married to my daughter because it's kind of weird, then not-congratulations."

"You don't hate it," Clara sighed, then Clara said to Ravenwood, "I'm so sorry, basically she was underwater for two weeks and the brain damage is healing very slowly. She can't really remember anything. Wanted to come and see Jenny, but can't remember what Jenny looks like."

"No, I think she's blonde," said the Doctor quite proudly.

"She _is_ blonde," said Ravenwood, "She's also not here. Sorry. Meant to be back soon, though; I have the maid cooking her breakfast."

"I'M NOT A MAID," Nios shouted.

"You're wearing an apron!" Clara shouted back. Nios didn't respond. "Sorry about the help. She's tetchy this morning. Anyway, if you like you can have breakfast while you wait for Jenny. She's doing scrambled eggs at the moment but it's almost time for the actual breakfast orders to come in. We doubt there will be any breakfast orders, though, it's nearly empty here."

"And what is this place?" the Doctor asked.

"The Lost Cosmonaut," Alpha Clara supplied the name.

"Why do you have a hotel?"

"Because Ashildr gave me the deed to it," Ravenwood explained, "As a present, to Jenny and I. Because we decided we wanted to move in together but didn't really know where, or what to do. Not that she works here really, she's a Chief Inspector with the Met, she's on overtime at the moment. Even though me and Nios both told her she really ought to be on bereavement leave."

"Who's Ashildr?"

"Viking girl. Got made immortal by parallel universe you, ended up killing Jenny because of… some very complicated reasons. It would really be better to just wait for you to remember, to be honest, it's quite convoluted," Ravenwood explained, then added, "You don't like her."

"Why a hotel, though?"

"This place is basically The Leaky Cauldron but for aliens," Alpha Clara said.

"Oh, from Harry Potter?"

"Amazing. You remember Harry Potter, but not what your daughter looks like. But yes. From that."

"Oh my god! Nios!" Thirteen exclaimed with joy when she saw Nios through the kitchen doorway, "My favourite synthetic buddy in the whole entire universe!" And then, though Nios herself protested vehemently against it because she was paying very close attention to stirring her potful of scrambled eggs, the new Doctor hugged her as tightly as she could.

"I can't believe she forgot me but remembered Nios," Alpha Clara said quietly to Ravenwood.

"It's not so bad," Ravenwood said, "At least she hasn't turned into an angry, old Scottish man who wants absolutely nothing to do with you."

"I saw him drown, you know. Right in front of me. No regenerations or golden lights, he was just gone, under the water, and I had to sit there, and wait, for hours, until…"

"You should be talking to her about this, not me," Ravenwood said, "As much as I'm willing to help your grieving process as best I can since I know what it's like more than anyone else, after coping with a regeneration and then managing to get over Danny, the best person to ease you through a regeneration is the Doctor. Why don't you go tell Nios what you want to eat?"

* * *

Ravenwood was pacing up and down in the kitchen, which was where the service entrance was and the same way Jenny always came in. Other Her and the Doctor were, by this point, eating in the next room, and Nios had vanished upstairs to give Dr Cohen her breakfast in bed, leaving Jenny's scrambled eggs on the side for whenever she arrived. But she was nearly an hour late, and she had not texted or called, and Clara even kept braving the sunlight to stick her head out of the door and see if Jenny was approaching. Finally, though, she caught her smell on the wind, and ceased worrying about if she was alright. There was another unusual smell coming along with Jenny, though…

Clara, anticipating her, went and opened the door as soon as Jenny was outside, about to touch the handle.

"Hey!" she greeted brightly, dragging her inside and closing the door. Then she turned serious. "Where have you been? You're late; I've been worried."

"You should be in bed," Jenny told her quietly.

"You know you smell like weed?"

"What? Oh. Yeah, see, we got called into this drugs raid and I was only supposed to be doing admin but we were so short-staffed I volunteered," she said.

"A _drugs raid_?"

"Well, not really a _raid_ , just these people got forcibly evicted from their house and it turned out the house was doubling as a pot farm. No danger, just a lot of stuff to clean up. And then I got chewed out and taken off duty by the Superintendent, so I'm forcibly out of commission for the next week."

"Oh my god, what happened? Are you okay?" Clara touched her shoulders and tried to make Jenny meet her eyes, but Jenny refused and kept glowering at the floor.

"I'm fine, but all my superiors seem not to agree," said Jenny through gritted teeth. Clara also did not agree, but wrapped her arms around Jenny in a hug nonetheless, and Jenny took a few moments to hug her back and sink into the embrace.

"I'm sorry. But sometimes the universe works in strange ways. You being taken off duty might be a blessing in disguise. And, um, there's another blessing, not-so in disguise, sitting in the next room eating Nios's best Full English." Jenny pulled away from Clara but kept her hands on her waist.

"What do you mean?"

"…The Doctor is here," Clara said after a pause, and Jenny moved so fast to get into the other room Clara might have mistaken her for a vampire. She did not immediately use her undead-speed to follow suit, but instead paused a moment and remembered the scrambled eggs and a cup of fresh coffee she had also made. These she picked up and walked in to find Jenny practically hanging onto her mother for dear life.

"She's having these problems with her memory," Alpha Clara was explaining.

"I know," Jenny let the Doctor go, wearing the biggest smile Ravenwood had seen on her face in months. "She told me, in the future. It's very fragile; even when she teleports somewhere it gets all mish-mashed. Don't you remember when she first showed up on the TARDIS? She forgot everyone then, too."

"Jen, Nios made you breakfast," Ravenwood said, "You should eat something." Jenny ignored her, but she could tell she was doing it on purpose, and so begin addressing the Doctor instead, "Tell her to eat her breakfast."

"Eat your breakfast," the Doctor repeated, "These are some of the _best_ sausages I've ever had. Who taught that synth how to cook? Is it a mod?"

"No, I taught her," Jenny said, pulling a chair over to wedge herself in between Alpha Clara and her mother, then finally taking her plate of scrambled eggs and cup of coffee from her doting wife (who was getting more and more tired as it became proper daylight outside, but was going to wait around a little longer to see if there was any chance of Jenny coming up to bed.) "How have you been? When did they find you?"

"Last night," Alpha Clara answered, "She's puked up half of the Atlantic Ocean since she got pulled out of it."

"That's true, there has been a lot of puke…" Thirteen sighed. Jenny was shovelling scrambled eggs into her mouth at an alarming rate, Ravenwood leaning on the back of her chair. The puke talk did nothing to put Jenny off her food.

"Where _is_ Nios? These eggs need more pepper," Jenny said.

"Do you want me to get you the pepper?" Ravenwood asked.

"No, I just mean for future reference, she put in the wrong amount of pepper for whatever volume of scrambled eggs she made," Jenny explained.

"She went upstairs." Jenny realised after a moment what that meant.

" _Oh_. Best to leave her alone, then… you don't have any criticisms for Nios?" Jenny asked the Doctor, "New tastebuds and all."

"Absolutely none, this is perfect," she said with her mouth full of bacon.

"Have I missed anything apart from the puking?"

"I ate my wedding ring," said the Doctor, holding up her wedding ring, which she had tied to a string and was wearing as a necklace. Alpha Clara watched her carefully, but did not say a lot. "It needs adjusting. Can we do that today?"

"Uh…" Alpha Clara was surprised, "If you want to."

"We don't have to."

"No, if that's what you want."

"Yeah, but you're-"

"There's tons of jewellers around," Ravenwood interrupted because they seemed on the brink of an argument she didn't want to get involved in, "You should go shopping."

"Oh. My. God. I would _love_ to go shopping," the Doctor declared, "That's a girl-thing, right?"

"I keep telling you to stop saying 'girl-thing,'" Clara said. Things seemed quite tense between the Doctor and Alpha Her, but the Doctor was clearly trying her hardest. Clara was trying to push her away. She sighed. "We'll go out into London when you finish breakfast." The Doctor stayed quiet and accepted this, barely saying a word.

"Really? You're not staying?" Jenny was downtrodden.

"She's been under the sea for two weeks, Jen, I hardly think you've missed much," Ravenwood said, "Anyway, _you_ need to go to bed and start taking care of yourself." She tried not to mention Jenny having time off work.

"Have you not been taking care of yourself?" the Doctor asked.

"She's being melodramatic," Jenny said.

The Doctor deliberated what to say next for a few moments, "I don't know… you should probably listen to her. She knows what's best." Already this Doctor had infinite faith in Clara, both Claras, as people. Which was quite refreshing.

"We'll come back for dinner," Clara decided, "We'll find some money and actually pay."

"Nios will be thrilled for someone to pay for something here," Ravenwood said.

"That's a promise," Jenny said, "You'll be back for dinner."

"And _you'll_ promise to go to sleep," said the Doctor firmly, "You look tired."

"…Fine," Jenny said begrudgingly. "But we've still got until you finish eating."


	124. Regenderation: Part Four

_Regenderation: Part Four_

 _Clara_

"I thought we were going to a jeweller? About the ring? And shopping?" the Doctor queried as she followed Clara up the large stone steps to a large library.

"It's very early in the morning," Clara said, "Barely nine o'clock. This library is an associate of one of the universities, it's open twenty-four hours. Lucky for us, I didn't want to hang around in The Lost Cosmonaut. It's depressing in there."

"Why do you want to go to a library?"

"I thought you might like it," Clara said, slipping through the gap to get through the revolving door. The Doctor was too slow and got stuck in the compartment behind, and because she looked quite sad about that, Clara phased back through the sheet of glass to join her in the other one. This gesture made the Doctor smile, though Clara thought little of it, and hadn't minded them being separated that much.

"There's a pretty big library on the TARDIS, isn't there?" she said as they stepped out of the doors and into the library itself, lowering her voice. It was quite empty, though. She could only see two people sitting on one of the large tables looking through books, and one of them was wearing headphones; along with them was one lone librarian wheeling a trolley of books around and looking in dire need of a cup of coffee.

"Yeah," said Clara, "But I like libraries. They make me feel calm."

"Are you not calm right now?"

"I'm just… you know," said Clara, going off to the right to peruse the shelves, not even bothering to look at a map of which section was which. She wanted to explore, pick something up at random – she might learn something new.

"No, not really," said the Doctor under her breath, "And not just because I've forgotten things. I'm not stupid, and I'm remembering – I remember how I feel about you. And it's making me sad that you're being so distant. It's like you're just putting up with me being here and you can hardly even look at me. Do you resent me for not being him?" Clara didn't know what to say, because the new Doctor was clearly much more intuitive than the last one had been, and for all the things she had forgotten about Clara she could still manage to read her like an open book. Ironic, given their surroundings. "Clara…" the Doctor tried to touch her arm, but Clara pulled it away as soon as she tried.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do," she admitted pitifully, but also very quietly, stealing away into an aisle of books on economics she had no chance of understanding. At least they seemed to be largely alone. The Doctor crossed her arms and leant on the bookshelf while Clara stood in the middle, feeling useless. "Because you're confused and you're adjusting and I have to be here for you, but it's hard because… I'm still hurting a lot inside. And I'm still angry with him. You. Both of you."

"Why?"

"For being stupid and jumping into the sea!" Clara hissed, "I'm so mad I can barely even contain it. But what good is shouting at you for it going to do? I should have done something. Shouldn't have let you. I'm telekinetic, for god's sake, I could have stopped this."

"Everything has its time, Coo," she said softly, "Everything ends."

"That doesn't make it any easier."

"I don't want you to think you have to bottle up all your grief just because I'm here."

"That's all everyone keeps telling me, is that you're here so I should be fine."

"Well, they're wrong," said the Doctor, stepping towards her, "You need to let yourself be sad, it's not a crime to mourn somebody, especially since he's… gone. In that form. I'll get his memories soon, but… come on, my whole species regenerate, you think I don't know what it's like to go through what _you're_ going through? I'm starting to remember a lot of things about Gallifrey and Time Lords." Clara took a deep breath and looked at the floor for a while, one of her fists clenched with the effort of trying not to cry.

"You're gonna make me cry and we're in public," she said hoarsely.

"It's a library at eight in the morning, I don't think it's _that_ public."

"Other Me was right."

"'Bout what?"

"She said you were the best person to talk to about all this."

"Oh, well, I'm trying my hardest," the Doctor smiled, "Can't resist trying to make a pretty girl feel better." Clara was taken aback, but laughed, though she did still have tears in her eyes. "Unless the economics section of a library is doing a better job, then I can always leave."

"Don't leave. I'm rubbish at maths, anyway. Don't know why I'm in this part."

"Yeah, I remember, don't you…?" she paused, thinking, squinting at Clara, "Something about you to do with books…"

"I just like books," Clara told her, "I've got my English degree."

"Aren't you a teacher?"

"Erm, kind of. I'm qualified, but I've never actually taught anybody. Other Me has. I guess I'll have to be teaching you all kinds of things now, though," she said, beginning to walk again to get out of the dull economics text books, the Doctor following her automatically. It was a bit like having a pet dog. She felt like giving the Doctor a grand tour of the entire building though, to see if anything more specific piqued her interest. Try and pick out the differences between the two iterations via the filter of academia.

"Things like what?"

" _Girl-things_ ," Clara said slyly, smiling at her.

" _That_ sounds _totally_ suggestive – and potentially misleadingly suggestive."

"Only potentially."

"You've cheered up a weird amount in the last minute." The Doctor swung her arms by her side as she walked and sometimes slid books out at random, just to read the spines and then shove them away again, uninterested.

"I told you, libraries calm me down," Clara said after a pause, because it was not so much the library as the girl, but she didn't want to tell the Doctor that for some reason. "Smell of the books, or something."

"Well, the signs say that literature is _this_ way," the Doctor touched her elbow for just the smallest second as she passed by to lead the way, "Let's see if I can remember your favourite books. Or my own favourite books. Or any books, really, my mind is totally empty in terms of books at the moment."

"Imagine if you never remembered any books and then you got to read them all again. I'd love to do that."

"It's sort of like you."

"What do you mean?"

"Like this whole… remembering things about you. It's like when couples think they're gonna get divorced but then they have marriage counselling and it, like, _totally_ works, and they're all 'I've remembered all the reasons why I fell in love with them.' It's like that. I'm _remembering_ all the reasons why I'm in love with you, but sort of also for the first time. It's weird, to be honest," she said idly, Clara watching her. She stopped walking, but Clara was slightly zoned out and ended up walking straight into the Doctor when she was turning around to talk to her again.

"Oh, sorry," Clara said, and then she looked up and she was looking right into the new Doctor's brown eyes, seeing for the first time all the glittering streaks of gold within them, like she was wearing her history on her sleeve.

"That's okay," she said, smiling. Clara felt herself blushing. "Do you think it's weird?"

"What's weird?"

"Like… hmm. How to phrase it without sounding, like, presumptuous… I just mean do you feel like you have to fall in love with _me_ again?" Clara stared at her, and then laughed unusually shrilly, and knew she was still blushing. Then she punched the Doctor's arm in a friendly way.

"Oh… _you_ ," she said.

"Huh?"

"Never mind, just… funny."

"What's funny?" Clara was enchanted by the new Doctor's face. Even her teeth were pretty.

"…Yes."

"Excuse me?"

"I _said_ … I said we should go this way," Clara cut and ran. Well, she didn't _run_ , but she did duck away and begin to walk again.

"Have you hit your head?"

" _No_. Come on, what's my favourite book, can you guess?"

"I have no idea – is it an early work of queer fiction all about this sort of cute, nerd girl who loves to hang out in libraries and stuff getting super awkward when she meets an amazing, young American out in the unforgiving, concrete jungle of London?" the Doctor asked, and Clara turned on her, looked at her for a while, then scoffed indignantly and put her hands on her hips.

"I'm so insulted I don't even know what to say."

The Doctor laughed, "What are you insulted by?"

"By you accusing me of being awkward, through a pathetic allegory. I'm not awkward. I will have you know I used to come to libraries all the time to pick girls up."

"You must be out of practice then, because I'm not seeing much of the old talent."

"Pfft, no. I get with girls all the time, actually, because – you don't know this, but I'm actually a giant cheater. I'm completely unfaithful."

"Okay, okay," the Doctor was smirking, crossing her arms and leaning on the edge of a bookshelf again. God, Clara thought, why did she have to keep _leaning_ against things like that? Didn't she _know_ people were all ten times hotter if they were _leaning_ on things? Clara had even had untoward thoughts about Adam Mitchell when she had seen him _leaning_ on door frames giving his classic expression of philanthropic, guiltless disapproval. "You'd rather I believe that you're a cheater than think I make you nervous?"

"Why would I be nervous around you? We've been married for ten years."

"I guess it just means there's still a spark in our relationship."

"Well _clearly_ there's no spark because I'm not nervous at all, I don't know why you'd think that I-" the Doctor hadn't even been moving, yet Clara had attempted to back away and ended up walking into a bookshelf and knocking off a decrepit-looking collection of Arthurian legends which included the original French. The Doctor raised her eyebrows. _Thirteen_ raised her eyebrows. Because now Clara was beginning to see them as one and the same, the girl in her present and the girl from her past (who was also the girl from her future.) She was finally finding her personality.

"You okay?"

"I'm completely fine."

"I don't remember you getting like this before."

"I'm not getting like anything! Can you just stop?"

"Stop what?"

"You're being…" Clara began, meeting the Doctor's patient, expectant eyes as she tried to think of something to say, "You're being. Just _being_. It's offending me."

"I'll stop 'being' then, shall I? What exact part of the fact I exist is making you so tense?" She was clearly very bloody impressed with herself.

"I keep telling you. I'm fine. And I don't get awkward around random girls in libraries. I told you. I'm the queen of hooking up with people in libraries."

"Why don't you prove it?"

Clara stared at her, then exclaimed, "Well don't do _that_!"

"Do what!?"

"Flirt with me!" Eleven couldn't flirt. Eleven wouldn't know where to being to flirt, or seduce someone, he was an idiot. But _this_? This _woman_? Who was doing nothing at all and yet managing to do absolutely everything correctly? Clara could barely collect herself to fathom it; the sheer idea of a Doctor who knew exactly what they were doing in pursuit of women was impossible to comprehend. "I'm a grieving widow, actually, so I don't really need this right now."

"Seems like you might need it a lot."

" _Stop flirting_ ," she hissed, "Everything you say – oh my god – it's like you're _oozing_ it, like you're regenerated into Jack. Just standing there being all bloody calm and _magnetic_."

"Ooh, magnetic – so you feel a pull between us?" Clara clenched her jaw and the Doctor smiled.

"I'll tell you who I feel a pull between."

"Go on, I dare you."

"Me and the ladies' bathroom."

"Sounds risky, I like it."

"I don't – I don't mean _that_! I need a shit," she said very bluntly, "And, um, it'll be a bad one, so you just stay out here. Right here. Don't go anywhere else in case you get lost."

"I'm sure if I did get lost I'd find my way back to you."

Clara made a vomiting noise at her and finally managed to escape the intoxicating situation with that godforsaken woman. She didn't even need the toilet, she had lied. Why had she made her lie so disgusting? To try and gross out Thirteen? Well it clearly hadn't worked, she didn't seem to care. At least it meant Clara had an excuse to spend even longer in the bathroom trying to decide what she was doing. She stole away into the apparently empty ladies' room and started looking for windows she could potentially climb out of, not remembering in that moment that she had the ability to simply walk through walls. But she didn't know where she would go if she climbed out of a window. Maybe to an early-opening strip club where she could schmooze her way in and start day-drinking.

Thinking about this, among other things, Clara slid into one of the cubicles and put the lid on the toilet down, sitting on top of it and putting her head in her hands to contemplate and try not to cry. It was really quite overwhelming, and it was not for some more vanilla and acceptable reason like Clara was just seeing traces of Eleven in the behaviour of the new Doctor, or she had made a similar gesture. It was all because Clara was vividly remembering the effect Thirteen had had on her when she had come back to the past so many years ago and, just as Adam Mitchell had told her that morning, she really struggled to control herself around that woman. Because, yes, Thirteen was her favourite daydream made real, and it was quite unnerving to suddenly be married to someone she had imagined for herself whenever she had been bored. Along with that, she also knew that Eleven had always disliked Thirteen, so she even more felt like even _thinking_ about the new Doctor was doing something gravely wrong.

She heard the doors go into the toilets and paused for a second to work out if it was the Doctor coming to investigate her absence; if she was barely coping being around her in a public library she didn't know _how_ she would manage with them alone together in a deserted toilet. It had all the makings of the filthy, illicit encounter Clara and her low-standards were very used to*. It wasn't the Doctor, though, because it was multiple people. Probably a study group taking a break all together; maybe there were exams on somewhere.

"Clara Oswald? We saw you come in here." She froze. "We can kick down every one of these doors in order, if you like." Normally, she would just phase through the wall onto street level and run, but she couldn't. Firstly, because the Doctor was still out in the library waiting for her, and secondly because she recognised the voice speaking her very distinctly as belonging to _ex_ -Brigadier Kate Stewart. When she heard someone very aggressively kick down the door to the first cubicle, she quickly stood up and flushed the toilet, feigning that she had actually been using it. Then she phased through the door with the eyes of Kate and two men on her, men who were clearly trained soldiers or some policemen she had drafted, but they were not in uniform. Of course, if they had been in uniform, Clara may have spotted them crawling about the building, or tailing them through the streets.

"Come on, Katie. Can't a girl empty her bowels in peace?" Clara asked, going over to the sink to wash her hands.

"What have you heard? The rumours?"

"Rumours about what? You being a stone-cold lesbian who likes to corner young and defenceless girls in library bathrooms with some gigolos you've hired?" Clara asked innocently, "Do they have guns in their pants or are they just pleased to see me?" she winked at one of them.

"They're guns," said Kate, and then she gave them a hand motion and they both drew their guns. "And don't call me _Katie_."

"Sexy," said Clara, "I really get off when people shoot me in the face."

"We're not here to watch you do your best impression of your sister."

"Hey – she's doing the impression of _me_. I made her. And I'm not doing an impression, if I was doing an impression I'd balance on one leg and talk about how I wish I was dead. Is there something important you want or can I leave? I'm only here to look at books on a day trip."

"On your own?"

"Yes."

"No Doctor?"

"I don't need a chaperone, Katie. Can I leave?"

"I need your help."

"So you followed me?"

" _You_ followed _me_. We were already in the library trying to contain the situation when we spotted you wandering around here badly trying to pick up that American girl."

"I was not trying to pick her up."

"Not very hard, that's for sure," Kate said dismissively. Clara clenched her jaw and fists but didn't say anything that might give away that the girl was actually the Doctor. But she needed to get out of that place before the Doctor came looking for her. They always tried their hardest to avoid Kate Stewart, ever since she had mishandled the Manifest Crisis so severely. And because every time they saw her she asked them for help.

"Who's the squad, then? Were you reinstated into UNIT after the HCC got shut down?"

"The HCC hasn't been shut down, it's just changed into being what UNIT used to be but more public and aggressive," Kate explained, "I work for a small group of what's left of UNIT who deal with… phenomenon."

"Is the small group _all_ that's left of UNIT?" Kate didn't answer. "Didn't all of UNIT used to deal with 'phenomenon'?" Still nothing. "I get it. It's like _The X-Files_ , isn't it? You're all hidden away, a puppet organisation of the HCC? And now you need the help of the Phantom."

"Stop calling yourself the Phantom, Clara, nobody is going to start calling you that."

"Pfft. That's what you think."

"Fine. Maybe it is a bit like _The X-Files_ -"

"Do you know I've met them?"

"Shut up."

"Tetchy."

"Where's the Doctor?"

"No idea. We're divorced. He cheated on me."

" _Cheated on you_? With who?"

"The _worst_ person. _Himself_. Or, his hand, more specifically. I may same like a progressive, happy-go-lucky, binge-drinking whore, but I actually have some very debatably old-fashioned views on what level of adultery masturbation is," Clara said. Kate glared at her.

"Do you really think I would suffer through having to talk to _you_ if it wasn't important? You're very annoying."

" _Thank_ you," Clara smiled and did a curtsey. Kate shook her head.

"There's a monster living in the basement of the library."

"There's a monster in the basement of my _pants_ all ready for you."

"Don't get clever, we need you to sort it out."

"Do your boys not have guns big enough?"

"We don't know what it is, some sort of creature and it's been killing and eating pets from all around London. We traced it back here."

" _Pets_? What is it, urban sasquatch? One of those werewolves you accidentally let out years ago?"

"I just told you, we don't know what it is."

"You want me to go into the basement and… hold on, am I pest control now? You can't just corner me in a toilet and tell me to go down to a random basement and kill an alleged monster. It might not even _be_ a monster."

"And who better to find out than the Doctor's compassionate wife?"

"I told you, he wanked so I dumped him. I can't abide by wanking."

"You're still wearing your wedding ring."

"Well, what can I say? Semen is a very potent adhesive. It's tragic that even I wasn't enough for him. I guess I'll be taking down your beast solo."

"So you'll help?"

"I'm not sure I have a choice with you sandwiched there between your burly boys. Pet-eating creature in the basement, then? And I'll just handily ignore how ridiculous that sounds because I'm a gullible pawn and you're scared of the dark, or something?"

"Sorry for taking the opportunity to send a telekinetic girl who can't die down to deal with it instead of my men," Kate said.

"Whatever, Katie. Can I leave? I have to see if that American girl has a special moist place I can put this finger to maybe slide off the wedding ring. Unless _you_ want to do it? I'm totally single now," Clara said, saluting her.

"Get out my sight. We'll be watching the perimeter to make sure you deal with the problem."

"Oh, I'm sure you can't _wait_ to talk to me again," Clara said on her way out, blowing Kate a kiss as she went past. _See_ , she wanted to tell the Doctor, _I totally still know how to flirt with girls_. But finally, she was out of their sight and she could vanish into the bookshelves before they followed her. This she was very good at doing; they didn't call her 'the Phantom' for nothing (and people definitely called her that.) Very lucky the Doctor had done exactly what she promised and stayed on the same aisle; Clara found her skimming through _Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas_ , coming through the shelves behind her and then nudging her in the back to get her attention. The Doctor jumped.

"What are you-"

"Shh," Clara said.

"Oh, I get it. Is this some kind of sexy roleplaying thing?"

"Kate Stewart is in here looking for us, she cornered me in the bathroom."

"I see."

"She told me we have to go into the basement of the library because there's a giant monster down there killing pets."

"Uh-huh. And what are you gonna do to me when we're in the basement alone together?" she said sultrily, smirking. Clara stared at her, then hit her on the arm. "Ow!"

"I'm serious! Pick you jaw up off the floor. Do you remember Kate Stewart?"

"Works for UNIT. Don't I know her dad?"

"Yes, they're here investigating the basement monster."

"Okay, I'm not gonna lie to you, but this sounds really unlikely and stupid."

"And I thought my husband jumping into the sea to chase a bunch of shark aliens and then drowning was unlikely and stupid, but you proved me wrong that time, didn't you?"

Thirteen paused for a moment, "…Point taken."

"And what about the time we went back to Blackpool in the middle of the night because _I_ was sad and a UFO carrying a flesh-eating lizard monster coincidentally crashed into the sea and you killed it with a roller coaster?"

"Oh, I definitely remember that one. Well, did you get any more information out of Kate? Aside from ambiguous pet-eating creature in a library?"

"No. She was annoying me, I wanted to leave. Look, come on, we've got to sort this out, and she can't find out who you are, I told her we got divorced because I got angry at you for masturbating," Clara said, pushing the Doctor in the opposite direction to the one she had just come from, the Doctor sliding the book back onto the shelf.

" _Why_ did you tell her _that_!?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time! Now be quiet, I want to deal with this before lunch. I'm getting hungry already."


	125. Regenderation: Part Five

_Regenderation: Part Five_

 _Clara_

"Okay. So. To get through a locked door, we need… we need… what do we need?" Clara opened her mouth to answer when the Doctor clapped her hands. "We need a sonic screwdriver. And my sonic screwdriver is…" she looked down at her clothes and thought very hard about where her sonic screwdriver was. Clara crossed her arms and waited. "Why haven't I got any pockets? I used to have loads of pockets, to put all sorts of things. Oh my god." She grabbed Clara's forearm and gasped. "I finally understand how Donna felt that time I abducted her at her wedding. How are we supposed to get into this basement _now_?" She let go of Clara and leant down to squint at the doorknob. "Do you have a lock-pick?"

"No."

"How about explosives?"

"Yes, hang on, let me get my C4 out – oh wait," Clara stopped when she had been pretending to search herself, "I haven't really got any pockets either." She only had pockets on her jacket, and they did not have any screwdrivers in them, just her phone and her cigarettes.

"If you haven't got a pocket where are you keeping the C4?" Clara couldn't tell if she was being serious or not. "Whatever. Look, I've got a plan, all we have to do is find the head librarian and seduce her and steal the keys to the building."

"Well. You go do that, and I'll just phase through the door and meet you on the other side."

"Phase?"

"Yeah."

"As in… uh… what?"

"You _still_ haven't managed to remember my cool superpowers?" Clara questioned her. To think, she had been under the impression that quite a lot of the Doctor's memories were returning. The Doctor clearly did not have a clue what Clara was talking about, and Clara _loved_ to showboat, so she took the Doctor's hand and took the Doctor herself quite by surprise, then dragged her through the door marked 'BASEMENT: STAFF ONLY' with a very large padlock on the handle. The shock of moving through a solid object meant the Doctor fell into Clara when they were on the other side in the dark, and Clara had to try and steady her.

"What the _hell_ was that?"

"I can pass through solid objects," Clara reminded her, "Give me some space now." Clara searched her aforementioned pockets until she found her flip lighter, which startled the Doctor when she lit it so that they could see where they were. It was just very dark and musty, full of books and cobwebs and a narrow staircase; predictable.

"Why do you smoke?" the Doctor asked abruptly upon seeing Clara's lighter, "I don't get it. Like, I guess it doesn't hurt you because of those nanogenes, but what's the benefit?"

"Familiarity," Clara said, beginning to walk down the stairs.

"But why?" Clara stopped and sighed, turning to look at the Doctor, whose face was a very well-defined silhouette in the flickering light of the flame Clara held up at her own eye level. "And why do I let you?"

"'Let' me?"

"Not _let_ , just… well… you know what I mean. Why do I put up with it? I hate it, it stinks, and I don't remember ever liking it."

"I don't like telling this story…" Clara said quietly. The Doctor said nothing; she couldn't decide if she ought to press Clara on it or not. "Okay. Do you know what happened on the 11th of March 2005?"

"No."

"That was the day my father and I buried my mother," said Clara, "And it was the first day I ever smoked, because my dad let me have one of his cigarettes, and it calms me down. Just like the libraries. And at that point in my life I didn't care if it was destructive, and as soon as I _did_ care I quit, when I became a nanny. And now… it's not destructive. And it still calms me down. And being married to you, there's a lot of things I need calming down about. I don't even smoke that much, I smoke like, half a pack a day, and that's on a _bad_ day, it's usually less."

"But the other one, _she_ doesn't smoke. Does she?"

"Not anymore, but she does consume human blood at an alarming rate," Clara said, "You think me having to donate my blood to a vampire doesn't warrant me being allowed to smoke? And anyway, you make me use e-cigarettes on the TARDIS. I've got a bubble-gum flavoured one on the go at the moment."

"I could go for some gum. Have you got any gum?"

"No, sorry." Clara, again, began to descend the steps deeper into the bowels of the library, and this time the Doctor actually followed.

"Is this why girls care so much about bags? Because they never have any pockets?"

"More or less."

"God. It must be some sort of artificially created demand for a relatively unnecessary product perpetuated by the fashion industry just to earn more money. Can you believe they would do that? It's totally immoral." Ah. She had forgotten about that. Thirteen's whole… _political_ thing. "We should do something about it."

"Maybe later, we still have to get your ring adjusted."

"Well, after that," said the Doctor, "Then we'll go back in time and have strong words with Coco Chanel." Clara definitely didn't want to do that, so she tried to change the subject. The Doctor had the jump on her though, and was skipping between topics quite quickly. "Did you really not get any more information about this 'monster'?"

"No, she said it's been eating pets and it lives down here, and that she'd rather send _me_ to deal with it than one of her soldiers. It's always better to just do what she asks, anyway, sometimes it comes in useful having Kate on our side," Clara said, "Until she lost nearly all of her power."

"Why would a monster that eat pets live in a library?"

"I haven't got a clue."

"And why did you lie about Kate about us being divorced?"

"I didn't want her to know you'd regenerated. You're still in your regeneration cycle because you haven't healed yet, I don't know that she doesn't have any dodgy ideas of what she could do with a Time Lord still regenerating. Harvest the energy and leave you a husk, maybe. Besides, it might come in handy one day, you can go incognito."

"So… it's not because you're thinking of getting a divorce?" she asked quietly. Again, Clara had to stop. They were now in between stacks upon stacks of old books and already the dust was making it an upward battle not to sneeze everywhere.

"I am most definitely _not_ thinking about getting a divorce," Clara assured her, "I was just trying to annoy Kate. And I annoyed her really well, so it worked. I'm also pretty sure she didn't believe me, since I'm still wearing my ring."

"…Are you _sure_?"

"Well I'm pretty sure we _don't_ split up, considering we were definitely still married in the future," Clara said, looking around at what some of the books down there _were_. She had assumed they would just be the same as the books upstairs but extra copies, though upon closer inspection they looked a little more suspicious than that…

"Clara," the Doctor took her hand and startled her, making her jump and knock into the pile of books she had been looking at. Lucky they didn't fall over, "I'm still worried." Clara froze and looked into her eyes.

"…That's nice," she said.

"What?"

"I – erm – don't be worried," she said awkwardly, trying to pull away from the Doctor, but the Doctor would not let her.

"C'mon, you won't even _look_ at me," she touched Clara's cheek to stop her from turning her head away. And her hands were so warm and soft and she really _did_ look worried that for the tiniest second Clara felt herself giving up. That was when the sensible part of her managed to teleport a few feet backwards, which scared the Doctor. Another talent of Clara's she had forgotten.

"…I'll totally look at you. From over here," said Clara, half-smiling and looking at her feet.

"Did you just teleport?"

"I do that sometimes."

"You teleported away from me!?"

"Well don't get angry! It's a reflex, it's not on purpose!"

"What's the deal. And don't say 'there is no deal' because there is totally a deal, and I'm not gonna walk another inch until you explain whether or not you're even, like, _into_ me."

"Excuse me? Did you just ask if I'm into you?"

"You won't look at me, you won't let me touch you, you ran away to the bathroom earlier to _hide_ from me, what am I _supposed_ to think?"

"Okay, you want to know the truth, then? The truth is that I am _unbearably_ attracted to you," Clara declared, still holding up her flip lighter, "I am _so_ into you that it's taking basically every tiny shred of willpower I have not to jump you in this gross cellar that may or may not be home to an alien creature and a bunch of dead animal parts. You are _literally_ the hottest girl I've ever seen in my _life_ and you're all over me so can you please just give me some space?" The Doctor had _not_ been expecting Clara to say _that_. Even Clara hadn't really been expecting it. But she couldn't lie to that face, it was impossible. "See? _Now_ you're speechless. You don't even know what you're asking for by trying on all this flirting, you haven't got a clue. I bet you don't even know what to do with a girl when you haven't got a penis."

"Well _that's_ not true!"

"Go on, then. Tell me. What's your scheme for when you finally get me into bed? _Tell me_."

"…No!"

"Because you can't. Which is nothing to be ashamed of, but you should really stop trying to force yourself on me when you don't know what you're doing," Clara said. But the Doctor looked sad. "Don't be upset. It's just… you know."

"What?"

"Well, when we first got married, it was because we were drunk, neither of us even remember it. And, the first time we slept together, _I_ was drunk and down flirting with random people at the bar next to the swimming pool of that hotel and you didn't even _know_ I was drunk until way later."

"So… what are you saying?" Thirteen crossed her arms and frowned.

"I'm saying that… the first time _we_ , y'know… it would be nice if it was, well, _nice_. Not drunk or angry or trying to prove something or win an argument. Or in a gross basement. And, also, why should our stability as a couple be defined by how immediately we screw after you die and come back to life? We're both adults, we can have a day together without it being all about how quickly we can take our clothes off." The Doctor just stood there huffily, because Clara was right.

"…But you do think I'm pretty, right?"

"You're ridiculous, of course I do, you're unfathomably gorgeous and it burns my eyes to look at you. It's like staring into the sun. Now, can we stop having our lover's tiff and actually try to find whatever Kate sent us down here looking for?"

"Right. Right, yeah, you're right, I'm sorry," she shook her head, "I'll hold the lighter."

"You just don't want me to light up."

"I don't want you to burn your hand," she said, holding out her own. Clara let her take the lighter.

"Well, bring it over here. I was looking at these books before you started getting frisky." The Doctor was displeased, but came to hover at Clara's shoulder and hold the light up for her while she used her telekinesis to slide a book out of a stack without knocking the whole thing over. "Do you see what this is? It's an ancient text. I recognise it from, uh, my studies, it's a valuable sacred book belonging to a lost civilisation speculated to be Iram of the Pillars." The Doctor was totally buying it as Clara flipped it open and the Doctor got a face full of nudity from a very old photograph.

"Eurgh!" she exclaimed, staggering away from it while Clara burst out laughing.

"Oh my god, you totally believed me."

"Why wouldn't I believe you!? What is that really?"

"It's a collection of Nineteenth Century pornography," Clara explained, "In fact, almost all of these books down here are about porn. Which is probably why they're in the basement. As if you think there'd be a random lost text about Iram of the Pillars down here. ' _That is not dead which can eternal lie, And with strange aeons even death may die_.' Kind of fitting given the current situation."

"What's that from?"

"It's Abdul Alhazred's unexplainable couplet, from Lovecraft. _The Nameless City_ , that one."

"Guess I'd better make a mental note to go and find Iram of the Pillars after this, then."

"Maybe there are porn goblins down here."

"…Excuse me?"

"You know. Porn goblins."

"Again. Excuse me?"

"I can't believe you don't remember the porn goblins. They live in cellars and come out at night and steal women's underwear and they have swords made of dildos and they shoot butt-plugs out of slingshots." The Doctor narrowed her eyes at Clara for a while, until Clara broke and ended up laughing again.

"Stop doing that!"

"Stop being so gullible then!"

"I didn't believe you that time."

"You totally believed me."

"Shut up, Clara. Pay attention." She went skulking away with the lighter.

"Are we allowed to check out these books, do you think?" Clara asked, "I'm very interested in porn."

"I don't think porn is going to help us. Maybe you should focus on coming up with an idea of what's going on?"

"I have ideas," Clara said, putting the book back down on the floor because she couldn't remember where she had gotten it from in the darkness, then hastening to follow the Doctor, who was walking cautiously through the maze of books and shelves. "But, you know, you go first. If you've got an idea."

"My idea is just that there's a lost alien and a library is a hub of learning where you can probably find out anything you want and learn the language. Well, anything you want about sex, apparently, since that's what's down here."

"No, it's probably all banned books and stuff. Probably a few copies of _The Satanic Verses_ and _The Anarchist Cookbook_ down here. Old cult relics. Spell-books."

"Alright then, wifey, what's _your_ idea?"

"Ooh, there's a few rattling around," said Clara, "Apart from the porn goblins. Could be a cult, sacrificing baby animals. Could be a lost alien, of course. Mostly I was thinking about sphinxes, though. Incredibly ravenous monsters, guardians of knowledge, et cetera."

"Sphinx guards one place, it wouldn't leave to go get food."

"That's why it's just an _idea_. And maybe it would, I doubt there's much good to eat down here. Maybe it just got bored of rats and librarians. Kate never specified what the pets _were_ that were getting eaten."

"So, UNIT deal in missing animals now? That's a downgrade."

"UNIT is a husk, probably just there to keep the UN happy that it still technically exists, and they left Kate in charge to seem like they're protecting some kind of legacy," Clara said, "But she can't be hanging around in a public library with armed guards without having a good reason. Plus, she sent me off alone, and as annoying as she thinks I am, she also doesn't trust me, or you. So she wouldn't do that without a good reason." The Doctor stopped and looked at her, suddenly worried. "What's wrong?"

"She must be lying. Armed guards to deal with something that only eats pets? Why didn't you try to get more information about it out of her? It's a totally disproportionate response. You said 'monster', why did you say that?"

"That's what Kate said. Which, yeah, is weird… she's a soldier and a woman of science, she wouldn't just call something a monster… I don't think she does know anything. Just that it's dangerous, and – shit!" Clara slipped and everything went dark. She heard the clatter of the flip lighter landing on the floor and going out as the Doctor caught her.

"Are you okay?" Clara could see nothing, but knew Thirteen was very close.

"Yeah. I slipped on something, that's all. Totally just remembered I have a torch on my phone." The Doctor moved while Clara dug her phone out of her pocket. When she turned the light on she nearly blinded the Doctor, who was now crouched on the floor, with the bulb. "Sorry. Whatcha looking at?"

"Either strawberry sauce or… fresh blood."

"Taste it and find out."

"Uh, no thanks. You can if you want to."

"Wow, the woman has grown out of her gross habits."

"Still married to you, aren't I?" she said, only half-listening. She was looking at the blood. Clara spotted something else, though, something shiny, glinting from the light of her phone torch. She stepped around the Doctor, who had reclaimed the flip lighter from the floor, and went to pick it up. When she realised what it was she held it in front of Thirteen's eyes. It was a shell casing from an automatic weapon; there were maybe a dozen scattered around. Clara crouched down next to her and spoke in a whisper.

"I bet this is how Kate figured out it was dangerous, and the reason she doesn't want to risk losing any more of her men."

"Because whatever it is killed them, and dragged them away," Thirteen cast her gaze across the bloody streaks on the floor, "Must have happened in the last few hours. They probably came in here during the night to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves."

"And whatever this creature is, it showed up right here. Where we are."

"Yeah."

"And killed a soldier."

"Yep."

And then they heard a growl.

Clara and the Doctor met each other's eyes, and then very slowly looked upwards. When they did, they were met with the looming face of a grotesque creature – a monster, for definite – and it looked like it was made of pure shadow when it struck them from above with a force so tremendous Clara didn't even have time to scream before she was knocked out cold.


	126. Regenderation: Part Six

_Regenderation: Part Six_

 _Clara_

She was woken up by someone licking her face. She had been married to a weird alien for ten years, and never in her life had she been woken up by someone licking her face. It was becoming a trend, Waking Clara Up in Weird Ways, after Adam Mitchell making her nose and lips turn blue that morning, and not a trend she was enjoying. She spluttered and coughed and rolled around to try and shake whatever was doing it, and whatever it was whined and moved.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead," said the Doctor's new American accent. When Clara opened her eyes she could see that there was a fire wherever there were, and that – thank god – it had not been the Doctor who had woken her up by licking her mouth. There was a dog in the room, a mongrel, which had only three legs and a very glassy look in one of its eyes. After Clara had shrugged it off it had gone to lay down by the fire. "You won't believe it, Coo. We've been abducted by the porn goblins." To Clara it looked like they were even deeper in the bowels of the library, and she tried to sit up but struggled. This was when she realised she was handcuffed to a bookshelf, a very heavy one stacked with maybe a hundred old tomes, right at the leg of it so that she couldn't rightly sit up.

"Why did you let that dog lick me? I don't like dogs," Clara grumbled.

"He was only doing it for a moment, and I'm not the jealous type." Clara knew _that_ was a lie for sure, Thirteen was definitely the jealous type. She remembered ten years ago hearing the way Thirteen talked about Jane Austen. "Don't phase out of the handcuffs."

"You like me tied up now, do you?"

"We're both tied up, actually," said the Doctor behind her, "You've got handcuffs stolen from the dead soldier, I've got some gross old rope."

"We were crouched on the floor, then we looked up and saw a face, and what happened after that?" Clara asked, noting the irony of it now being she who had to ask her amnesiac wife to refresh her memory.

"It knocked us out, whatever it is," Thirteen explained, "Woke up here. But I think we've heard this story from the wrong side, because if it was really a monstrous, ravenous creature, we'd both be dead. Well, _I'd_ be dead, _you_ would pass through its entire digestive tract in little pieces until eventually re-growing all your limbs from scattered droppings."

"Oh, what a bright future."

"Plus, the dog. The dog would be dead. And the other dog. And the three cats. And the chinchilla. This is like the episode of _South Park_ with the Woodland Critters – next thing you know they'll be trying to turn one of us into the unbaptised host of the antichrist and we'll have to train a mountain lion cub to carry out an abortion."

"What excellent retention – since _when_ have you ever watched _South Park_?" Clara questioned her, struggling to try and sit up. Her intangibility wasn't working; typical superpowers. Always got taken out for a while if she got knocked out suddenly.

"Background knowledge. Gets absorbed into the old cranium and brought out whenever I need to switch personalities. So what _is_ this personality?" she mused.

"Don't worry, you're still a geek, just a bit cuter..." she muttered.

"You think I'm cuter than I was before?"

"Can you carry on telling me what's going on? And why the cast of a bootleg version of _Bambi_ is staring at us?" It was creepy. Across the room on the other side of the fire were the exact animals Thirteen had described, all in rough shape and all watching them. Clara desperately wanted to wash her face free of dog slobber.

"Oh, well, I think Kate is pretty damn wrong about the whole situation. Because these all look a lot like missing pets, and I can't help but notice they're not dead," said the Doctor.

"But that one has one leg," Clara said, looking at the dog that had woken her up, "What if it cut the dog's leg off and ate it and left it alive? Like, to keep the meat fresh? I've heard about cannibals doing that to people." There was a long pause from the Doctor.

"Well _that's_ morbid. You humans really do have a penchant for cruelty."

"Excuse me?" Clara asked through a grunt as she finally managed to sit up with her arms still bound tightly behind her.

"These poor animals are all wounded, I've been talking to them," Thirteen said knowingly, meeting Clara's eyes and smiling a little now that they could actually see each other. She was looking dishevelled, but still quite beautiful.

"Of course you have…" Clara sighed and looked away for a moment.

"Do you know _Animal Hoarders_?"

"Yes, I make you watch it all the time."

"Those people think they're helping, right? But they're doing more harm than good. That's what's going on here."

"Okay, for the purposes of this exercise, can we pretend that I'm a thirty-five-year-old human woman who doesn't follow all the vague 'revelations' you're imparting, and _you_ can be a twelve-hundred-year-old alien who knows exactly what's going on and suddenly gains the ability to very concisely explain everything without being enigmatic."

"But being enigmatic is half the fun."

"And _all_ the fun is us getting out of here sooner so that we can go and get sushi for lunch and I can wash my face."

"Oh, get over it, a dog's mouth is cleaner than a human's because of the germ-busting bacteria they have in there," the Doctor said, "And this is what I mean about the cruelty – cruelty to animals. You know, you're a pretty unempathetic species on the whole."

"You mean 'non-empathetic.' 'Unempathetic' isn't a word. And why am I getting insulted like this? I'm not cruel to animals. I'm nice enough to you, aren't I? And you're a different species."

"I'm a better species, though," she smirked. Clara glared at her, and when she saw this her boastful smile disappeared, "Sorry. That was a joke."

"I'm not in the mood for jokes, you've not even been back for twenty-four hours and already we've been kidnapped and tied up by a flesh-eating monster."

"So it's business as usual."

"How would _you_ know what 'usual' is?" Clara questioned her.

"Oh. Well. I think I remember. I think that being knocked unconscious really helped the regeneration energy come to the fore and get all its fixing done, though I'm still a little rough around the edges. And I have a headache," explained the Doctor. "So. Um. Yeah. Memories, and stuff." Clara looked at her for a long while, though the Doctor was watching the animals. Eventually she caught Clara's eye and went slightly pink when she realised Clara had been staring at her. "What?"

"Why did you jump into the sea?" Clara asked seriously.

"Oh." Thirteen didn't speak, she looked at the grimy floor next to her. Clara didn't ask twice, but she didn't say anything else, either. Just waited. "To impress you. It's not like I thought I was gonna _die_ -"

"You idiot."

"Yep..."

" _Why_ would you think you need to do stupid stunts to impress me? I'm your wife."

"Well, yeah, I can't have my _wife_ stop thinking I'm cool."

"I've never thought you were cool." The Doctor looked at her flatly.

" _Thanks_ , Clara." They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"What's going on, then? Why are we tied up in a basement? You're not into bondage now you've regenerated, are you? Because personally I'm not particularly comfortable with that. And when I say 'particularly' I mean 'not at all.'"

"It's a fairy."

"…What?"

"A fairy."

"For a minute there I thought you said 'fairy.'"

"Yes. A fairy."

"As in a cute little woodland spirit?"

"Not exactly. Okay, so, Earth kind of has these two realms, there's the Visible – where we are – and the Invisible."

"Like a parallel world?"

"No, no – like, uh, y'know my buddy? Oc'thubha?"

"The big alien god-thing from another dimension that lives in the mines underneath Hollowmire and brainwashes everyone into being nice and baking shortbread?"

" _Exactly_. That's not parallel universe, it's a separate facet, a place older than the known universe, a place independent of the known universe."

"So this thing is, like, another god like Oc'thubha?"

"Oh, no, I only said _like_ that. But there are creatures that live in the Invisible that are more powerful than anything on this side of the veil; they can control the elements and choose what shape to take and they're often sort of malevolent."

"Fantastic."

"But I don't think this one is. It's this old story that Jack used to tell when every few hundred years the fairies would come out and they would choose a human child to take to the Invisible with them and turn into another creature like themselves. They don't really mess with this plane of reality much unless there's something in it for them, but it wouldn't surprise me if these things serve as the basis of all kinds of folklore. Even mythologies like Greek and Norse. Anyway, they'd protect the child at all costs and then take it with them, and if anyone tried to hurt the child or stop them there'd be hell to pay."

"And why don't you think this one is evil too?"

"Because it's protecting these animals. Admittedly, a basement is not the best place for them to be living at all – you can tell that just by the smell, and they look malnourished – but its heart is in the right place. If it has a heart. And it hasn't killed us, see, just brought us here. Whereas the UNIT soldier who doesn't understand what it is and tried to shoot at it got slaughtered. But we're weapon-less and not so quick to judge. It was probably following us and listening to us talk for ages before coming out. I think these animals have all been abused and the fairy is protecting them. Or, a similar creature, from the Invisible, probably not quite the same thing."

"…Hey, Kate hasn't come down looking for me!" Clara exclaimed, "Can you believe that? How long have we been down here?"

"An hour-ish."

"An hour-ish!" she repeated shrilly, "What if I was, like, dying? She just makes me go do her dirty work and then leaves me to die. Didn't her father raise her better than that?"

"Hey, Kate's father was a good man and a cherished friend of mine," said the Doctor, "I would have invited him to one of our weddings if he wasn't dead."

"You could just go grab him from a random point in time before he-"

"No, I'm not doing that, there's no good time in his life. I looked into it. Anyway, look at me, I'm _female_. The 1960s were a very different time, and what's the likelihood of a military man from back then being A-Okay with a gay wedding?"

"Jack's a military man and I daresay he's _very_ okay with a gay wedding. Also, this sort of implies that you're planning a fourth wedding for us."

"Well, I… don't want to be _presumptuous_ ," she stammered, "But, erm, y'know I might… it might be good. I'd like it. You know, maybe. If you want."

"Are you proposing?"

"Uh… no. No, forget I said this."

"Oh…" Clara was disheartened.

"Not like _that_ – I'll propose. Again. But in a good way. Not right now." Clara smiled a little, but the Doctor was looking into the fire. Clara was trying her best _not_ to look at the fire, because the things being burned as fuel were books. And most of them were probably to do with porn or some other adults-only content, and she was really quite the fan of pornography. She had amassed an impressive collection of vintage Playboys during her time on the TARDIS*, though the Doctor really didn't need to know anything about all that…

"Do you actually have a plan? Because we've just been sat here talking for ages. Can't we just leave and tell Kate not to send any more soldiers investigating? Since it isn't actually killing any of the pets."

"Yes, I have a plan, and it doesn't involve us leaving."

"Wonderful. I love sitting here waiting for dirty dog saliva to harden on my face."

"Well you're no stranger to having gross bodily fluids on your face now, are you?" she retorted.

"Erm! Excuse me!? That's low."

"You were very low when-"

"Shut up now!"

"…Be nice to the animals. Cruelty to the animals is what got them stolen from their owners in the first place, Coo."

"I'm not being cruel, and to be honest if it came and stole these animals away from _me_ I don't really think I would care."

"I'm serious, Clara, it's probably been listening to our entire conversation trying to work out if we're friend or foe. That or it's gone topside to stalk Kate, but it can't have been doing that for very long because she's not exactly the most interesting person," the Doctor explained, "Be nice or it might rip your throat out."

"Maybe I want my throat ripped out so I wouldn't have to talk to _you_ anymore."

"Rip your own damn throat out."

" _BE QUIET_!"

Clara screamed. There was a ghastly and grotesque creature standing in the room between them and the fire. Everything about it looked dead, and it reeked like death as well, looming there with lanky arms which hung so close to the floor long, grey fingernails scraped the concrete as it breathed. It had the droopy wings of an insect on its back and a face like a gargoyle's; Clara thought it was horrifying to look at. And it had told them to shut up before making its presence known. So the Doctor was right about it listening in the whole time. They did exactly as they were told and sat quietly, Clara staring at the creature. Eventually the Doctor smiled at it.

"Hi," she said, "It's nice to meet you. I'm the Doctor."

" _Why would you teach a mountain lion cub how to perform abortions_?" it asked. It didn't move its mouth when it talked, the horrid voice emanating from around them, like it was part telepathic.

"Wow, you're in trouble," Clara said. The Doctor glared at her.

"Because, it… it's complicated," said the Doctor, "It's from a cartoon."

" _A cartoon promoting animal cruelty_?"

"No, I mean, I don't think the mountain lion cubs really suffered… well, the mother mountain lion did get murdered, but… and then the porcupine gives birth to the antichrist and… so the mountain lion, right, is the only creature that can kill the antichrist, and then he gets tricked into killing the mountain lion before he realises they're trying to, like, bring the antichrist into the world, so… they have to teach the cubs to perform abortions to defeat, you know, the antichrist," the Doctor explained awkwardly. There was a very long pause where it watched her. "It's just a cartoon."

" _A cartoon which doesn't do anything to teach people the importance of respecting their fellow species on this planet_."

"You were really on the nose when you drew that comparison to Oc'thubha," Clara said to the Doctor.

"Look, it's a comedy, I don't think anybody takes it too seriously-"

" _So you think being cruel to animals is funny?_ "

"No! No, I don't! It's just – you know, it was just a tasteless joke, she didn't even think it was funny," the Doctor nodded at Clara.

"'Be nice, Clara,' 'Don't say anything mean about the animals, Clara,' 'Let's talk about killing lions and performing abortions, Clara,'" Clara copied the Doctor's accent and mocked her.

"Shut up, you're not helping," the Doctor hissed, "I would never be mean to any animals, okay!? Not like locking them up in a basement with a fire that could burn out of control at any moment, considering this entire room is full of books. Clara, tell him I would never be mean to an animal."

"But you just told me I'm not helping and to shut up."

"Oh my god, this is life and death!"

" _Fine_! My wife is very sorry for any misunderstanding and I can vouch that as long as I've known her she's never been mean to an animal." The creature stared between them, its face an unchanging expression. Maybe it _was_ a gargoyle. But Clara wasn't thinking about that, she was thinking about the fact she had just referred to the Doctor for the first time as 'my wife,' and about how she had often dreamed about one day being able to call another woman her wife, and what a privilege that was.

"Please don't kill me," the Doctor begged. Then the three-legged dog that had licked Clara's face barked, and the creature turned to look at it, then back at them.

" _You're lucky. Cuddles says he trusts you_."

Clara laughed, "Cuddles? A name for a dog? That's stupid."

" _I named him Cuddles_."

"Stupid _ly_ fitting and catchy," Clara said quickly, "Is obviously what I was going to say. I think it's a great name for a dog."

"Oh yeah, the best name," the Doctor added, both of them nodding, "And, uh, speaking of names, what's your name?"

" _Rainbows_ ," it said in its deep, gravelly voice. It sounded like it had been smoking for longer than Clara.

"Your name is Rainbows?" Clara asked.

" _Because I control all the rainbows_."

"So you're like, a Leprechaun?" The Doctor kicked her for saying that.

" _You two are not very nice to each other, to say you are married._ "

"Some things never change," Clara sighed, "We've always been like this."

"I really don't think you should be keeping these animals down here, Rainbows," said the Doctor, changing the subject. If this had happened to Clara ten years earlier, she would have thought somebody had spiked her drink with LSD. But now she just really wanted to go have something to eat and get out of the stinky, poop-filled library cellar. And away from Rainbows, the most demonic Leprechaun in the known universe.

" _I rescued them_."

"I've no doubt you did, but seriously, this is a library, they've got whole archives of TV shows upstairs for you to watch. You've gotta see _Animal Hoarders_ , we were just talking about it. And these people, they have good intentions, but they end up doing more harm than good. Do you think Cuddles _likes_ being down here? Huh? Or do you think he'd rather be running around in a park playing Frisbee? Because you can't play Frisbee down here. There are too many shelves. The thing is, I've got a daughter, she's nearly two-hundred-and-nineteen, and she's a Chief Inspector with the police. She'd love to help out with putting an end to any animal cruelty in London and with rehoming some of these critters you've saved. She might even have a special place in her home for one of her own!"

* * *

"Let me get this straight. You went out to go to the library and you got cornered by Kate Stewart who sent you down into the basement to find a man-eating monster which turned out to be a fairy-creature from the dawn of time called Rainbows who rescued a bunch of abused animals and then killed a soldier and kidnapped you and then you somehow managed to get it to relinquish all the animals after streaming an episode of _Animal Hoarders_ on Clara's phone, and now you want _me_ to adopt a three-legged, half-blind dog called _Cuddles_?"

"We also got sushi," Clara added. Jenny stared at them with her hands on her hips, the three of them in the alleyway behind The Lost Cosmonaut. "Look, we pawned the rest of the animals off on Kate, but Rainbows is going to get in contact with you whenever he finds anymore abuse. It's just Cuddles left. He likes you."

"He's trying to pee on me. Don't you pee on me," Jenny told the dog sharply. It whined and sat down at her feet.

"You're always saying you want a dog," the Doctor pointed out to her.

" _Yes_ , I would like a dog, but I would also like to keep being married to my wife, and she doesn't like dogs, does she Clara?" Jenny said to Clara.

"Cuddles is great, though. Seriously, I got to first base with Cuddles earlier."

"You cannot say you got to first base in the context of a dog," said the Doctor, "That's disgusting."

"It licked my face, I think _that's_ pretty disgusting," Clara muttered, her façade dropping. "Alright, fine, you just tell whatshername upstairs that if you don't adopt this dog and give it a good home a very angry monster from before time is going to come and gut both of you. Also," Clara stepped forwards and beckoned for Jenny to come closer, "I think he's quite old and sick already, so, you know…"

"And you're the woman I have to convince to let me keep a dog."

"She does have a pet cat which attacks you on sight," said the Doctor, "Speaking of which, where _is_ Batfink?"

"I have no idea. Not nearby. We'd know if it was nearby," Jenny said seriously.

"You're having the dog," the Doctor said firmly.

"Well obviously I'm having the dog, I can't say no to a poor, three-legged animal in need. You know, maybe Dr Cohen wants a dog. I could ask her?"

"A dog to do what with? Mummify and put on display?" Clara remarked.

"…Alright, fine, maybe I won't ask Dr Cohen, but… I knew it would be like this. With you two."

"What do you mean, us two?" Clara questioned.

"Yeah, what she said," the Doctor added.

"Well I talked to you in the future, you know, and it just seems like you two get into even more trouble than you did when you were still my dad." Jenny sighed. "Fine. But if it ever has to go to the vet then you two are paying for it, even if that means making Adam Mitchell pay for it which I'm sure is exactly what you'll do anyway."

"You've saved our lives!" the Doctor beamed and threw her arms around her daughter in a hug which was, despite Jenny's mood, reciprocated tightly.

"Yeah, well, I don't think you should stay for dinner anymore. You've barely been here for half a day and you've already bumped into a savage fairy monster from another realm, and even worse, Kate Stewart. And if you don't clear off soon you're going to be dealing with a very angry vampire."

"No, Jenny! Don't be like that, I just regenerated!"

"I know, and you've caused plenty of chaos already bringing me a dog. If you stick around for any longer I'm going to end up turning The Lost Cosmonaut into an orphanage for disadvantaged youth, or something."

"Oh, come on," said Clara, "We don't get in _that_ much trouble." Jenny gave her a look. "We don't!"

"Okay, okay," the Doctor relented, "If you're sure you want us to go."

"It's really for the best. We'll have dinner sometime this week. On the TARDIS. Where you can't get into as much bother. But seriously, go before Ravenwood comes downstairs. She'll kill you both."

The Doctor sighed, "We didn't even get to go to the jeweller…"

* _chapter 1063_


	127. Regenderation: Part Seven

_Regenderation: Part Seven_

 _Clara_

"' _Dear Clara, my greatest love and the light of my life. While I know that you adore my company more than anything else in the entire universe, and we have the best…_ ' erm… I think it says 'coitus'… ' _we have the best coitus of any pair of identical twin sisters, it pains me dearly to tell you that Adam Mitchell and I are having a mini-break in his mansion because neither of us want to put up with you and Wifeytoo fucking each other's brains out for all of the foreseeable future, since that is disgusting and nobody should have to live with it_ ,'" Clara read the note that had been left for her on the kitchen table out loud to the Doctor. Then she shook her head and tore it up.

"But that's not fair! I haven't seen her yet. And I haven't seen Adam since I actually remembered who he is!" the Doctor protested. She had her arms full of takeaway fish and chips wrapped in newspaper they had picked up after running the rest of their errands for the day. These parcels she came and dumped on the table, while Clara went to throw the note from her sister in the bin.

"She's in trouble when she gets back," Clara muttered, "In fact, she's in trouble as soon as I call her and tell her she's in trouble. I didn't raise her to just up and leave without even a hug." The Doctor was getting plates out of the cupboard for them.

"That's okay, _I'll_ hug you," she offered, "Even though I'm not your greatest love and the light of your life, or whatever it was she wrote." Thirteen was getting cutlery out of a drawer, and so did not see Clara's smile as she sat down at the table. "Kind of nice though, right?"

"What is?" Clara began unwrapping one of the portions. She just had chips and scraps, but the Doctor had all manner of high-cholesterol extras. Something to do with having the metabolism of a hummingbird. An _alien_ hummingbird.

"Them letting us have the ship to ourselves."

"It's _your_ ship in the first place," Clara pointed out, "And no, I don't think it _is_ that nice."

"You don't?" the Doctor carried over salt, vinegar and cutlery. Clara took salt and vinegar, but not cutlery, and while the Doctor was sorting out her own food it was Clara's turn to venture back into the kitchen and bring out one of the jars of mayonnaise so that she could scoop out big globules of the condiment and dump them on her chips.

"No, what if I need her?" Clara said, rooting around in the fridge. She thought the Doctor had stopped what she was doing and was watching her now. "You know she means the world to me. And _she_ knows she means the world to me. She better respond if I need to astrally project, or something."

"What might you need her for?" Thirteen asked, Clara kicking the fridge door closed and then returning with her mayonnaise.

"Just… I might. She's my best friend. And, you know, it's… not the most relaxing thing to be alone with _you_ at the moment. Feels a bit like I have no escape."

"You want to escape from me?"

"No, don't be upset, it's just… a very overwhelming change. And I might get _too_ overwhelmed, and… start crying again," Clara said. If the Doctor had looked sad before, at the suggestion that Clara might cry she looked even sadder. "I'm sorry, I don't mean…"

"Yeah, no, it's me, just because I remember now it shouldn't mean… but I think you're taking it pretty well so far. Since this morning, at least." Clara was covering her chips with the mayo and then another layer of salt, which the Doctor looked rather disgusted by, but didn't say anything about it.

"I haven't been taking it well at all these last two weeks. I've been blackout drunk at least four times and I don't think I've showered more than five, and I certainly haven't cleaned anything," Clara confessed. She busied herself eating her chips while the Doctor appeared to be thinking about something, mulling it over. Clara wondered if the Doctor was going to redesign the TARDIS interior. A new Doctor meant a new console room at least, surely? But she was sure she would put her foot down if Thirteen tried to alter the bedroom at all.

"Do you want to go see Oswin?"

"Right now? No, no. I'm okay."

"But if you're _not_ okay… you'll tell me, won't you? Even if it's just to ask me to drop you off there?"

"Yeah. I'll tell you. Promise." Clara smiled meekly, but could not work out if the Doctor was convinced. "So, uh… finally alone _without_ trying to track down some monster. Completely isolated on this spaceship together."

"It's like being in solitary confinement," Clara commented. The Doctor was displeased, so Clara changed the subject. She wasn't liking what the Doctor was getting at with all her talk of them being _alone_. "I called you my wife earlier."

"Yeah, I guess." Thirteen frowned because she did not understand the significance of this.

"I always thought I'd end up marrying a woman, you know. Well, I always hoped. I used to imagine what the girl I would finally be able to call my wife would be like, and what an honour that would be. An honour for me, I mean, to find someone willing to commit, since everybody always said I'd be alone forever because I sleep around," Clara explained while she ate.

"What _did_ you imagine that girl would be like?"

"A lot like you, funnily enough. It's like you saw into my heart when you regenerated."

"I'd like to think I've been privy to the contents of your heart for years now," she smiled, picking apart a spam fritter with her hands. "And everybody is wrong, because unless my memory is failing me again you've never been unfaithful. Except with Jane Austen, that no-good hussy…"

"She literally kissed me _one time_ when I was busy trying to not get killed by Rose," Clara reiterated for the billionth time. The Doctor clenched her fist.

"That's what I mean. _Hussy_. With her fancy words and her claws."

"She didn't have any claws." The Doctor scowled. "You said earlier you're not the jealous type."

"I'm not jealous."

"You are, you're jealous of something completely meaningless, always have been," she jibed.

"Because that harpy has the power to take you away from me."

"Only _I_ have the power to do that," said Clara, "And you're being ridiculous. She lives before soap was invented, and toothpaste. And gay rights. Honestly, she's not even blonde. No one who isn't blonde stands a chance of turning my head _that_ much; I'm very shallow. Especially when it comes to women."

"Oh, don't worry, I worked _that_ out as soon as you started dating my daughter."

"Okay, it's definitely _not_ shallow to be into Jenny. That girl is very special. She makes us homemade mayonnaise and delivers it every few weeks," Clara said.

"And that's obviously the reason you started sleeping with her. For mayonnaise."

"If your daughter wants to pay Other Me for sex using mayo for currency she's perfectly welcome to, that's _her_ prerogative," Clara said, "Though, I think the sex was enough currency, to be honest."

"Hence you being shallow."

"I wasn't arguing about if I'm shallow or not, I admitted it right away," Clara said indifferently. The Doctor was trying to dig out a layer of chips from underneath a cod fillet so that she could cut it properly on her plate, and became quite involved with this while Clara sank back into her thoughts and tried to work out what to say. "Are you going to redecorate?"

"Redecorate what?" the Doctor half-mumbled with her mouth full of fish. She was getting grease and salt everywhere, all over the table, not to mention the smell of vinegar becoming pungent on the air. It was lucky Clara liked vinegar.

"You know, the TARDIS. This room, the console room… it's been like this for years, ever since everybody moved out. Even when Jenny and Nios still lived on the ship it looked like this," Clara said. It was roughly seven years ago that Jenny and Nios had moved off the TARDIS and into The Lost Cosmonaut in London, leaving the TARDIS only inhabited by Clara, the Doctor, Adam Mitchell and Oswin. And Sprite and Helix. And Jonesy 2, the glowing, floating tentacle cat which Clara assumed Adam had taken with them because he didn't trust Clara and the Doctor to remember to look after it properly. And fair play to him, he was probably right.

"Maybe. I'll do the console room. I've got some ideas. For the central column, I'm thinking: _purple_. Right? And maybe make it darker. It used to be dark, then it was all bright and orange and green, then dark and blue again when I was depressed, and now it's been back to the orange and green for years ever since the Dimension Crash – but I'm not even sure orange and green go together."

"I'd say it's more gold and green. The screwdriver was gold and green, too," Clara said.

"And a screwdriver! Where _is_ my screwdriver?"

"It got ruined."

"How did _that_ happen?"

"Probably when you jumped into the sea two weeks ago and drowned," Clara said sarcastically, "To hazard a guess." The Doctor looked a bit annoyed that Clara was still upset about the whole 'drowning' thing, but knew better than to bring it up to her. Clara didn't think she was going to be okay about it for a long while, months at least, and it wouldn't surprise her if she refused to go to Belfast ever again as long as she lived (not that she could think of many enticing reasons to go to Belfast in the first place.)

"Well I'll get a new one. A _purple_ one. Purple console with lots of silver and white, maybe-"

"That's the colour scheme to our last wedding."

The Doctor stopped to think about this and then beamed when she realised Clara was right, "Oh _yeah_ …funny how these happy memories affect the subconscious. At least it's a colour scheme we both agree on, though. I thought everything looked great at out last wedding, with everything lavender."

"It was lilac," Clara said.

"That's the same thing."

"Oh my stars, how many times do we have to go over this? Lavender and lilac are completely different colours! You think I'm some kind of tacky bridezilla who would have a _lavender_ colour scheme at my wedding? _I've_ got self-respect."

"It's literally almost the exact same colour." Clara glared at the Doctor. This was a very old argument. It had been worse when they were actually planning the wedding and Eleven kept picking things out in the completely the wrong colour. And then he'd suggested _violet_ for the seat covers and Clara had nearly lost her mind. Luckily for Thirteen she had figured out when to back down from Clara and let her have her way. "Well it's _my_ spaceship so it can be whatever shade of purple I want. Maybe indigo."

"Indigo is blue!" Clara exclaimed.

"Oh my god, what are you, the indigo police?"

"All police are indigo police because they _all wear blue_ and indigo is _blue_."

"There are tons of police who don't wear blue! Even in England they wear black now. We literally just saw police because they got called to the jeweller when they thought my wedding ring was stolen. They were wearing black and white," the Doctor argued.

"You're insufferable."

"Better get used to it, wifey." A pause. Clara ate a chip. "Is my psychic paper ruined as well?" Clara shrugged.

"Probably. I don't really want to search the pockets of my dead husband's clothes."

"Your dead husband must have been pretty lucky to have so many pockets in his clothes…" Thirteen grumbled angrily. What her anger was directed towards, Clara could not work out; the general notion of the fashion industry, presumably. Then she sighed and said despondently, "It's as if I've lost everything I've ever loved." Clara raised her eyebrows.

"You're being melodramatic."

"I guess. Since I've still got you."

"I didn't mean because you've still got me, I just mean in general, you are. It's a toy tool you've broken a dozen times before and a piece of paper."

"I liked my toy tool and my piece of paper."

"Do you like your wife?"

" _Yes_ , very much."

"There you are, then."

"My wife who won't kiss me." Clara froze and the chip in her hand fell back onto the newspaper. Then she laughed very shrilly and awkwardly for a while, and eventually cleared her throat. The Doctor stared at her. "Why do you keep laughing like that?"

"I'm not laughing."

"What's the matter with you?"

"I don't know! Normally when I meet someone I'm into I just get drunk and sit on their face. It works, like, every time. But I don't want to get drunk now, and you're _so pretty_ , and I never usually get awkward around girls but now I'm _totally_ awkward. Okay?"

"Too awkward to kiss me?"

"Yes. Stop saying that. I'll go hide again."

"Well don't go hide!"

"Stop flirting with me then."

"Your sister left under the assumption that we would be hardcore banging for, like, weeks. It'd be a shame to disappoint her."

"I've just gone from 'awkward' to disgusted because you said 'hardcore banging.' And I'm in mourning, my husband is dead, you know. He drowned."

"Oh, really? Because you don't mention that every five seconds."

"Well excuse me for being sad that my husband drowned. Now I'm trying to eat these chips so can't you be attractive in a different direction?"

"So should I, like, ask you out on a date?"

"…No. Just, you know, stop pressuring me. Or trying to pressure me. It's like there's all these expectations on me to be an untamed nympho freak all the time, and I'm just tired. And also I don't think you're ready. Or, like, prepared. You know, mentally."

"To sleep with you?"

"Exactly."

"I'm not mentally prepared to sleep with a girl I've been sleeping with for a decade?"

"You're not."

"And how do you figure that?" Thirteen was genuinely offended. Clara finally stopped trying to distract herself and put her chips down, wiping her greasy fingers on her skirt in lieu of any actual napkins.

"Because when you were a boy you always hated hand-jobs and you always hated blowjobs," Clara told her. It was no use mincing words. "You always said you thought they were degrading. And now guess what? Neither of us have a penis, so that's all we've really got, so you're really going to have to start being less prudish."

"You don't even know I'm prudish! I've regenerated!"

"Oh really? Because ever since I said the word 'hand-job' you've gone bright red. _Prudish_ ," Clara emphasised, "Unless you want me to go dig a dildo out from somewhere-"

"Stop, stop, stop!" she clamped her hands over her ears. Clara sighed. "Alright, alright. I see your point. I don't wanna talk about that."

"Then stop coming onto me, because that's what you're going to get. I mean, you probably will eventually. Once you get over yourself. But changing your gender is a big thing, you can't rush these sensitive processes," Clara said, "You're freaking out so much about the pockets already." The Doctor crossed her arms huffily. Clara took the opportunity to return to her chips.

"I'm not a prude," she muttered.

"I don't really think you are. You're just, y'know."

"What?"

"A virgin."

"I think all those women I've slept with would beg to differ, Oswald," she quipped, "Let's get River Song on the phone, shall we? Or Marilyn Monroe."

"You're like one of those sixteen-year-old boys who's watched tons of pornography and gives all his friends sex advice but doesn't actually know what he's talking about, and probably cums just at the _thought_ of a girl coming anywhere _near_ his trousers," Clara said, "But in a cute way."

"I'm a pervert in a cute way?"

"Uh…"

" _You're_ the one who's watched 'tons of pornography.'"

"…You've got me there," Clara admitted, "Maybe you _should_ watch some, so that you-"

"I think not, young lady. I'm going to sit on the sofa." She got up and left, and Clara was stuck at the table for a moment mouthing 'young lady' to herself and frowning. It took that long for her to realise the Doctor was upset, and for her to just give up with the chips. She could always reheat them in the microwave later. Or just eat them cold, since she didn't know how to use a microwave without it exploding.

"Sweetheart…" she said when she sat next to the Doctor.

"Don't you 'sweetheart' me," Thirteen complained, moving away from Clara.

" _Sweetheart_ ," Clara implored sweetly, sitting sideways and cross-legged on the sofa so that she could directly fact Thirteen, who was trying not to look at her but not doing a very good job of it.

"You're totally demeaning me."

"I'm not demeaning you, I'm being honest."

"That's just what people who are nasty say to make it seem like they're not nasty."

"So now you think I'm nasty? _Me_?"

"… _No_ ," she admitted eventually.

"Listen, Doctor, I've shagged a _lot_ people. Like, seriously, _loads_ , I really don't even keep track. And many of those people were girls, and many of those girls were straight. Well, they said they were straight, they definitely weren't straight when they'd been talking to _me_ for ten minutes."

"Ten minutes?"

"On average. Sometimes it takes five, sometimes fifteen, once I got off with one of them after two when I was really putting the effort in," Clara said, "I'm very practiced in the art of seducing 'straight' girls," she did inverted commas with her fingers, "You did see me do it to Martha Jones that time. What I'm saying is most of them have, like, barely a clue what they're doing, but I'm very patient. If I was a prostitute I'd have glowing reviews for customer service, believe me."

"What a glowing endorsement."

"I mean I'll tell you what to do. Well, I'll tell you what _I'm_ going to do. You've actually got tons of practice, so you're already way up on all those girls I picked up in dive bars when they were depressed."

"Has anyone ever told you you're a scumbag?"

"Not for a few years. This is _definitely_ why I haven't got any friends…"

"Because you try to sleep with all of them."

"Well, precisely. Anyway, forget about that, it'll all be fine once we get over the initial hurdle and then I'll totally blow your mind with my amazing talents at pleasuring other women. Seriously, if you thought I was good in bed _before_ …"

"You're not being awkward now."

"Because I tore down your debonair façade with risqué comments and now you've stopped trying to bite off more than you can chew."

"And you're _smiling_."

"So?"

"So, you haven't been smiling a lot today. At all. Has implying that I can't do sex put you in this good of a mood?"

"It's made you less intimidating."

"Intimidating?"

"You're incredibly hot, and amazing in literally every way, so yes, you're intimidating."

"Mmhmm," she returned to where she had been on the sofa before moving away from Clara and leant her arm on the back of it, "That's a shame, because you're totally adorable when you're all awkward. It reminds me of how you get around Sally Sparrow."

"It's exactly how I get with Sally Sparrow, but worse, because I don't have a chance with her. But _you're_ throwing yourself at me – and I can see you edging closer, I'm not playing this game," Clara said, watching Thirteen's movements very closely.

"I'm not playing a game. Wow, look how blonde my hair is."

"It is quite blonde…" Clara grew distracted, "I mean – don't do that!"

"Do what?"

"Prey upon my vapid superficiality and terrible attention span with your good looks and American accent," Clara said, slowly leaning away from the Doctor who was just leaning closer and getting in her personal space, which was not going to do much to help Clara's self-control, since she was so gorgeous and smelt delicious.

"Wait, you're into this accent?"

"Uh…"

"Is _that_ why I have it!?" she exclaimed in shock, "Just because _you_ like it?"

" _You're_ the one who regenerated."

"Urgh. I'm like a caricature of everything _you're_ attracted to."

"Basically, yep…"

"What was I doing? Oh yeah, seducing you."

" _What_?"

"You said it yourself, Coo, _I_ still have all the necessary memories to get a girl off. And gee, you know, you've had such a difficult two weeks with the whole drowning-thing, wouldn't it be nice to just relax?" She kept coming closer and closer until Clara was in danger of falling off the sofa in her very lazy efforts to escape (did she really _want_ to escape?) with the Doctor's hands on either side of her hips.

"I'll just go wank in the bath again if I need to relax."

"You wank in the bath!?"

"Like, not often," Clara defended herself, "Only whenever I actually _have_ a bath."

"What, every time you have one?"

"Well otherwise I'd just shower."

"Are you telling me that every time you've had a bath for as long as we've been together it's because you wanted to-" Clara couldn't be bothered answering those questions. And she also did not want to give the Doctor the satisfaction of having 'seduced' her. And that was why Clara ultimately gave in to the very nice-smelling and pretty girl who was trying to lie on top of her and _finally_ kissed her. The third time in her life she had kissed Thirteen, and the only time _she_ had initiated it. She couldn't let that woman get the drop on her _again_. She had to have the upper-hand at least some of the time. The Doctor was very surprised. "…So this is a nice enough situation for you, then? Since you said you wanted it to be nice."

"Neither of us are drunk, so that's good enough for me," Clara smiled, and the Doctor leant down to kiss her again.

And the rest, as they say, was history.


	128. Supermarket Sweep

**AN: I have a few reasons for writing in a script format at the moment: firstly, because I'm just trying to mix up all the narrative prose a bit and I really enjoy doing script format for this because I really liked the Salem witch trial chapter I did where it was supposed to be like the court transcript (Chapter 873). Secondly because this storyline is going to be VERY character and dialogue heavy, with literally almost all the characters present in one room at the same time, and the only way that won't give me a migraine to write is to do it like a script. And it makes it way easier to follow. But actually it'll switch back to prose for the next two chapters because they aren't pertinent to the Day's actual storyline and you'll see why, I just don't want to spoil anything. Should be a funny one coming up though, I hope.**

 **DAY 153**

 _Supermarket Sweep_

[ _Esther Drummond, Sally Sparrow, Rose Tyler, Ianto Jones and Amy and Rory Williams are gathered together outside of the large 24-hour supermarket in Hollowmire, following Clara Ravenwood's advice that they ought to request Esther's help with the enormous shopping task_ ]

 **ESTHER.** Okay. So, I've divided this list into two different groupings for you and re-arranged everything in the order you'll go down the aisles, so if you start at opposite ends you should eventually meet in the middle and have covered every section of the store with the opportunity to pick up anything that might have been left off the lists. Your rendezvous time – adding in generous estimates for grabbing new shopping carts – should be around 9pm.

 **IANTO.** 9pm? 9:15 when you include any additional browsing time for extra products. And lollygagging.

 **ESTHER.** [ _Pauses and thinks_ ] That's a really good point… alright, new estimate is 9:15.

 **SALLY.** Oh my god, there's two of them. Two OCD weirdos.

 **RORY.** I don't think you're really supposed to call people 'OCD weirdos.'

 **SALLY.** [ _Ignores Rory_ ] Liam Kent must have picked the two most boring people on the planet to bring back from the dead.

 **AMY.** Wait until you see his stop watch.

 **IANTO.** Nothing wrong with keeping a stop watch on you. You never know when it might come in handy.

 **ESTHER.** Oh, see, _I_ haven't got a stop watch.

 **SALLY.** No, but you do plan all your meals for the entire week ahead.

 **ESTHER.** Planning ahead is weird now? Coming from you and your doomsday stockpile of baked beans and toilet paper?

[ _Amy, Rory, Rose & Ianto stare at Sally like she is insane. Esther stands by smugly. Sally cannot think of anything to say to defend herself. She grabs the handle for the shopping trolley to steal it from Esther_]

 **SALLY.** Whatever, shall we just go shopping now?

 **AMY.** Me and Rory are staring from way on the opposite end, are we?

[ _Rory takes their trolley_ ]

 **ESTHER.** Yep. Then meet at the self-checkout.

[ _They divide. Amy and Rory head together towards the back of the supermarket to go to the opposite end, while Esther meticulously begins she and Sally's separate shop at the same end as Rose and Ianto, at homewares_ ]

 **SALLY.** What do homewares do we even need? [ _Esther hands her the shopping list. Sally stares at it and then shows it to Rose and Ianto_ ] Do you see this? It's colour-coded. She's crazy. Why do we need new cutlery?

 **ESTHER.** Erm, maybe because somebody keeps losing all of it somehow?

 **SALLY.** Maybe you should just be more careful.

[ _Esther glares at her_ ]

 **ROSE.** [ _Walks with the trolley while leaning on it with her arms, which sometimes makes the trolley dip in her direction_ ] Why do you two do your shopping late on Sunday nights? And why is this place even open late on Sunday? Supermarkets usually shut at four.

 **ESTHER.** Well, it shuts during the afternoons on weekdays.

 **IANTO.** A supermarket that shuts during the afternoons on a weekday? Doesn't that seem a bit unusual?

 **SALLY.** It's just because of the cult. [ _Ianto and Rose both stop and stare at them_ ] What? Do you not know about the cult?

 **ROSE.** What cult…?

 **SALLY.** The cult who run the village, obviously.

 **IANTO.** You live in a village run by a cult? Torchwood once investigated a village run by a cult, they were kidnapping, killing and eating people who got lost out in the valleys around Cardiff.

 **ESTHER.** The followers don't kill and eat people, they mainly, like, bake stuff. Did Donna and the Doctor not tell you about this?

 **SALLY.** Basically, there's this ancient cosmic interdimensional god-thing that lives in the abandoned coal mines called Oc'thubha and he broadcasts telepathic messages to everyone in Hollowmire through TV and radio signals.

 **ROSE.** What!? And the Doctor didn't stop this!? Where is this thing? _I'll_ show him.

 **ESTHER.** Hey, take it easy, it's totally fine.

 **IANTO.** It doesn't sound fine.

 **SALLY.** They just bake.

 **ROSE.** Oh my god. They've got you, haven't they? Brainwashed you?

 **ESTHER.** I wish. Sally'd probably be nicer if Oc'thubha brainwashed her. Honestly, they're fine, and Oc'thubha is pretty cool, he gave me this great recipe for rock cakes. The ingredients are all on my shopping list, actually. He was ostracised by all the other interdimensional god-things for being too nice. He's super into roller disco.

 **ROSE.** Excuse me?

 **SALLY.** It's just a bit of an unusual place, that's all. I think half the people here actually know that Clara is a vampire and they just let her get on with her life. A meteorite literally crashed in the loading bay of this supermarket two days ago and I don't think anyone has been to do anything about it yet. What sort of cutlery?

 **ESTHER.** Buy cheap and buy in bulk.

 **SALLY.** Why don't we get plastic cutlery?

 **ESTHER.** Is that a serious question? Do you literally not care about the environment at all? Do you know that eight million tons of plastic is just dumped in the sea every year?

 **SALLY.** Tell me another one.

 **ESTHER.** It takes up to a thousand years for plastic to biodegrade.

 **SALLY.** How do they know that? We didn't have any plastic a thousand years ago to measure it.

 **ESTHER.** Because of… experiments. Listen, we're not getting plastic cutlery and that's that. [ _Esther takes a packet of plastic forks away from Sally and drops it back on the shelf, instead picking up packs of cheap, metal cutlery and putting them in the trolley_ ]

 **SALLY.** Please continue, I'm sure we're all fascinated hearing your pointless facts about plastic wastage.

 **ESTHER.** [ _Glares at her and then speaks very determinedly, as though to prove a point_ ] The average American throws away eighty-four kilograms of plastic every year.

 **SALLY.** The average Americans had better sort themselves out then, hadn't they? Shall we start with you?

 **ROSE.** Will you two be quiet? It's worse than listening to Clara and Oswin argue.

 **SALLY.** Sorry, Esther's just very argumentative sometimes. And she can never fight the urge to make sarcastic comments at every opportunity.

 **ESTHER.** Don't make me shock you.

 **SALLY.** She said, sarcastically.

 **ROSE.** I'm still not over the whole _your village is run by a cult_ thing.

 **ESTHER.** We're not in the cult, some people just aren't susceptible to the TV signals. And all Oc'thubha teaches them is to be nice to people. That's why everyone is super nice around here. Except Sally.

 **SALLY.** I'm _extra_ super nice.

 **ESTHER.** Not what I meant.

 **ROSE.** Do you two even like each other? At all?

[ _They both pause and look at Rose_ ]

 **ESTHER.** Are you seriously asking that question?

 **ROSE.** Uh… yes…?

 **SALLY.** [ _Tuts and shakes her head_ ] Rude. [ _They do not answer_ ]

[ _An awkward silence ensues and Rose decides to spend her time perusing the shopping list_ ]

 **IANTO.** [ _Reading the list over Rose's shoulder_ ] Why does it say 'mayonnaise' three times in a row in capital letters?

 **ROSE.** That's just Clara. She really likes mayonnaise. It's weird and disgusting.

 **IANTO.** And 'condoms' also in capitals.

 **ROSE.** That could have been anyone, to be honest. They really should have put who wrote that so we know who to – oh, actually I think that was me.

 **IANTO.** In _capitals_?

 **ESTHER.** Okay, there were like a billion different varieties of those things and it made my head hurt so I just wrote it once. I don't know what any of it means, like, 'ribbed'? What is that?

 **SALLY.** [ _To Esther_ ] You're thirty-five. [ _To Rose and Ianto_ ] She's thirty-five. Don't explain to her what a ribbed condom is, I don't think her precious virginity can take it.

 **ESTHER.** Let's all just make fun of the asexual, shall we? Because that never gets old.

 **SALLY.** Certainly not as old as you.

 **ESTHER.** Hey!

 **ROSE.** Wait, hold on, you're…? Seriously?

 **ESTHER.** Please don't start talking to me about all that _ickiness_. I'm busy looking at the use-by dates on these vegetables.

 **IANTO.** Better remember to get lube as well.

 **ROSE.** Excuse me?

 **IANTO.** What? Jack's nearly out.

 **ESTHER.** Oh my gosh, too much information.

 **IANTO.** [ _To Sally_ ] What about you?

 **SALLY.** What _about_ me?

 **IANTO.** Do you need any condoms?

 **SALLY.** [ _A very long pause, before she bursts into very shrill and incredibly awkward laughter, which goes on for longer than anybody is comfortable with until it tapers off and she clears her throat and looks at the floor_ ] I think we needed to get, um. Apples. Right?

 **ESTHER.** Uh-huh.

 **ROSE.** [ _To Ianto, changing the subject_ ] Why did you want to come shopping, anyway?

 **IANTO.** Oh, you know. Make myself useful. Don't want anybody to say I don't deserve a place on the TARDIS, not that I ever really thought about having one before. Funny how things turn out. Thought if I came shopping I'd feel less like an unwelcome stowaway.

 **ROSE.** Well if we can adopt Nios and all those cats, I'm sure we can stretch to someone who actually _helps_.

 **IANTO.** And I wanted to meet Esther. Since we were both brought back to life by the same lunatic. What happened to him, anyway?

 **SALLY.** He's locked up at Undercoll, James says he's crazy and he talks to the walls.

 **ESTHER.** Have you been talking to Elliott?

 **SALLY.** I… just… he texts me sometimes.

 **IANTO.** Who's this?

 **ESTHER.** James Elliott.

 **ROSE.** Sally's boyfriend.

 **SALLY.** He is not my boyfriend. At all. In any way. He just texts me. Occasionally.

 **ROSE.** But you text him back?

 **SALLY.** [ _Lying_ ] No.

 **IANTO.** Back to Liam Kent, then…

 **ESTHER.** Clara tried to kill him. Have you seen that scar on her arm?

 **IANTO.** Which Clara?

 **ROSE.** The one with the scar on her arm. Obviously.

 **IANTO.** The huge scar?

 **ESTHER.** Yeah. That's from me. I electrocuted her to stop her from killing him. Which is weird because I thought she heals from all injuries…

 **ROSE.** She's just being a drama queen. It's like Oswin and her legs. [ _They look at her in shock_ ] What? Like she couldn't hack into herself and get two working legs again. Like she used to do. Before she, I don't know, went mental. More mental.

 **IANTO.** What does Clara have to do with Liam Kent?

 **ESTHER.** He got super obsessed with all of her Echoes and tracked them down and thought it was a government conspiracy. Then when he went crazy and after he brought me back from the dead he started murdering them.

 **ROSE.** She's _very_ overprotective.

 **ESTHER.** Well they _were_ being systematically slaughtered. So she tried to kill him, then I… killed her. She was trying to force choke him, like Darth Vader.

 **ROSE.** And now she won't let the burn heal.

 **IANTO.** Wasn't there an easier way to subdue him?

[ _In the background Sally is following Esther's list and putting things in the trolley, gone quiet after mention of James Elliott_ ]

 **ROSE.** Probably.

 **ESTHER.** She was pretty angry. It's not like I wanted to kill her, just like I didn't want to kill that cow, but I still got forced to.

 **IANTO.** So, how do these electric powers work? Should I be upset I've missed out on them?

 **ESTHER.** They do a lot of things. [ _Glances at Sally, still being unusually quiet_ ] Right, Sal?

 **SALLY.** Hmm? Were you talking to me?

 **ESTHER.** Ianto was just asking about my electric powers.

 **SALLY.** Do a trick, then.

 **ROSE.** Do the superspeed thing.

 **ESTHER & SALLY. **The _what_ thing?

 **ROSE.** The superspeed. Or, sorry, maybe you haven't learnt how to do that yet… it's just that we met you in the future, in 2024, and you could do all sorts of stuff. I think I was too busy trying to kill Clara to pay that much attention, though.

 **IANTO.** Does everyone try to kill her?

 **ROSE.** [ _After a pause_ ] Yes.

 **IANTO.** Okay…

 **SALLY.** If you really _do_ have superspeed you're wasted sitting at that computer all day. Not that you do anything other than play video games.

 **ESTHER.** I told you, it's a mostly automated process. I check it every ten minutes.

 **SALLY.** Get a real job.

[ _Esther stops moving_ ]

 **ESTHER.** What did you just say?

 **SALLY.** I said you should get a real job.

 **ESTHER.** That's it. [ _She goes to remove one of her gloves_ ]

 **SALLY.** Ooh, are you gonna put me over your knee? Because that's totally – OW! [ _Esther zaps the back of her hand_ ] Do you know how many burns I have from you doing that!?

 **ESTHER.** And you deserve every single one of them.

 **ROSE.** You did deserve it.

 **SALLY.** Why side with _her_?

 **ROSE.** Everybody likes Esther.

 **SALLY.** Do they not like me?

[ _Esther laughs but tries to suppress it and make it sound like a cough_ ]

 **SALLY.** [ _Nursing her hand_ ] You shut up now.

 **ESTHER.** [ _Innocently_ ] What? You told me to do a trick. With the electric powers.

 **SALLY.** Why don't you treat everybody to the story of how you rose from the grave like a zombie and all your fingernails and your jaw fell off.

 **ROSE.** Eurgh.

 **IANTO.** [ _To Rose, a few minutes of browsing later_ ] I heard you were shopping for wedding dresses yesterday.

 **ROSE.** Oh, yeah. I got one, too.

 **IANTO.** Really? You know, I actually picked out Gwen's dress for her wedding, when she needed a new one at short notice because a Nostrovite impregnated her just before her hen party.

 **ROSE.** God. I hope there's no weird alien stuff at this wedding…

 **IANTO.** Apart from the groom and some of the guests?

 **ROSE.** [ _Smiles_ ] Yeah.

 **IANTO.** When _is_ the wedding?

 **ROSE.** Week and a half.

 **ESTHER & SALLY. **_A week and a half!?_

 **ROSE.** Yes. It's a nightmare at such short notice though, even _with_ a time machine. And my mum's not happy about it. The Doctor keeps saying he wants a 'proper photographer' and all this stuff, and he's so bloody fussy about food…

 **IANTO.** I can help, if you want. I'm good at organising things.

 **ROSE.** Oh, so I've heard from Jack. He's the chief bridesmaid.

 **SALLY.** Can you have a boy for chief bridesmaid?

 **ROSE.** Donna's the best man so I'll have whoever I want. It's him or Martha, and Martha keeps getting sick recently.

 **ESTHER.** Sorry, did you say he wants a photographer? Because I happen to know a photographer desperately in need of work because she owes me quite a lot of money.

 **SALLY.** You know _another_ freelance photographer who borrows money from you?

 **ESTHER.** It's you I'm talking about, jerk. Trying to _get you a job_ here.

 **ROSE.** _Are_ you a photographer?

 **SALLY.** Well, yeah, but-

 **ROSE.** And looking for work?

 **SALLY.** I suppose so, _but_ -

 **ROSE.** Available at short notice?

 **SALLY.** Yes, but – I don't do weddings.

 **ESTHER.** You'll do whatever's going to let me stop supplementing your rent, Sally.

 **SALLY.** A woman has to have a code.

 **ROSE.** The wedding's in a five star hotel, you know. Everything on the house for the guests because the Doctor… pulled some strings. I think he hacked a credit card, or something. To be honest, you weren't _really_ on the guest list… Esther was, though.

 **ESTHER.** C'mon, Sally. You don't wanna stay in a five star hotel? For _free_?

 **SALLY.** Why was I not invited to begin with!? I totally saved the Doctor before when I returned the TARDIS to him and tricked the Weeping Angels!

 **ROSE.** He just didn't bring it up, and we only have a finite number of rooms to give away on credit. You'd have to share Esther's room as it is.

 **ESTHER.** It can be a twin room, right? Please? Or with a sofa?

 **ROSE.** She hasn't even agreed to it yet.

 **ESTHER.** _Sally_. Take the darn job for the free wedding trip!

 **SALLY.** Urgh, fine. But only because I need money. I am going to get money, right?

 **ROSE.** Oh, sure. I told you, it's a hacked credit card. _And_ it's 9:15. And we've finished our half of the sweep.

 **IANTO.** And the other two aren't here yet.

 **ESTHER.** Well they did have the frozen section. You guys eat a lot of frozen food, you should really get on that or you're going to get a vitamin deficiency. I already have to sneak supplements into Sally's food.

 **SALLY.** You do what now?

 **ESTHER.** Nothing. Speaking of frozen food, we should really get on that. I'm sure we'll bump into the others and get a fresh ETA.

[ _The Spooks turn to leave, Rose and Ianto staying at the designated rendezvous point. They listen to Sally and Esther's conversation dwindle as they vanish down a different aisle_ ]

 **SALLY.** Seriously, what was that about supplements?

 **ESTHER.** Well you eat, like, _super_ badly. You fry basically all your meals and I can't actually remember the last time you drank water.

 **SALLY.** Tea and coffee are seventy percent water.

 **ESTHER.** That's not how it works.

 **SALLY.** Oh, yeah, and now I'll bet you think carrot cake doesn't count as one of your five a day.

 **ESTHER.** It doesn't! And also all that tea and coffee contains a _lot_ of caffeine.

 **SALLY.** I _need_ caffeine, those stupid pills make me tired all the time.

 **ESTHER.** They're for insomnia! That's the whole point!

[ _They are finally out of earshot_ ]

 **IANTO.** Those two are something else, aren't they?

 **ROSE.** Almost as bad as the Twins.

 **IANTO.** Twins?

 **ROSE.** Clara and Oswin.

 **IANTO.** I don't think I've met Oswin. Do you usually do introductions?

 **ROSE.** Erm. Hard to say. I think the last person we adopted was Nios, and I can't remember… anyway, at least _one_ of those two is sensible. Both of the Twins are _idiots_. Although Clara _is_ quite fun to get drunk with… who else have you actually met?

 **IANTO.** Oh. Well. Jack's had me stuck in his room for… most of the time I've been on the TARDIS. I'd never even seen it before – is it _really_ infinite?

 **ROSE.** More or less.

 **IANTO.** I've met you, obviously. And I already knew Mickey and Martha because we used to work together. I met Jenny when she brought a dying man into my house, sewed his bullet wound up and threatened to shoot me in the head. Then _again_ last night, the same time I met Nios and… whichever one it is she's going out with. Isn't it a bit weird to date your own stepmother?

 **ROSE.** I think it's _very_ weird.

 **IANTO.** I think I met Donna. And the Doctor, your Doctor.

 **ROSE.** Is that it?

 **IANTO.** Amy and Rory. And then those two just now.

[ _Their conversation descends into an exchange of anecdotes, with Ianto telling Rose things about Jack, Mickey, Martha from when they all worked together, and Rose informing Ianto about different events on the TARDIS, including a brief overview of Jack and Jenny's relationship drama, 'marriage' and their messy breakups, because Ianto asks about it. It is an amicable way to pass the time for the next twenty minutes or so_ ]

 **IANTO.** Why a hotel for a wedding, then? You're already on the TARDIS and everyone's there.

 **ROSE.** Because he hacked a credit card – are people not following that? I'd love to get married in a hotel. My last wedding was in a church, a tiny church.

 **IANTO.** You've been married before? Aren't you a bit young for that?

 **ROSE.** Well, you know, I'm twenty-seven, so…

 **IANTO.** How old were you when you met the Doctor?

 **ROSE.** Nineteen.

 **IANTO.** And you were married? Before that?

 **ROSE.** No, I was going out with Mickey, and then the Doctor sort of… showed up… and I possibly left Mickey in a _messy_ way, to say the least…

 **IANTO.** Right?

 **ROSE.** Got stuck in a parallel universe separated from the Doctor, found my way back to the right universe and found him again, then he and Donna sort of managed to grow a clone of him out of his severed hand-

 **IANTO.** I think I've heard this from Jack.

 **ROSE.** And then he left me the clone in the parallel universe I was trapped in _before_ , I married the clone, then there was the Dimension Crash and that was about five months ago.

 **IANTO.** So when did you get a divorce?

 **ROSE.** I… erm… oh, look, the Spooks are back.

 **IANTO.** The what?

[ _Sally and Esther return, allowing Rose an escape from having to confess cheating on Tentoo with Ten, going back to Tentoo for a while, then banishing Tentoo to a random place in space and time and not once checking up on him_ ]

 **ROSE.** [ _Confused_ ] Where are the Ponds?

 **SALLY.** Didn't see them.

 **ROSE.** Seriously? But didn't you go up and down every single aisle?

 **ESTHER.** Of course we did, there's no other way to shop. Nothing more fulfilling than being painstakingly meticulous.

 **SALLY.** Not a trace of sarcasm in her voice. Incredible.

 **ROSE.** No, but, where are they? _We_ haven't seen them and we've just been stood here. What if the cult has kidnapped them?

 **SALLY.** The Followers of Oc'thubha don't kidnap people! God, you can just go talk to Oc'thubha, you know, if you go to The Mermaid and ask Alec the bartender to take you into the mines to see him.

 **ROSE.** No thanks, that sounds like a good way to get murdered.

 **IANTO.** You think Amy and Rory have been murdered? Don't they have superpowers?

 **ROSE.** They have rubbish ones. We'd better go look for them.

[ _They begin to walk along the bottoms of all the aisles, searching_ ]

 **ROSE.** I knew we shouldn't have taken a vampire's advice about where to go shopping…

 **ESTHER.** I'm pretty sure something awful happens every time you guys go shopping anywhere. Like that cow I had to murder because it unsuccessfully tried to commit suicide. Then some guy fell into a meat grinder. Literally happened on a shopping trip.

 **ROSE.** Was I there for that?

 **ESTHER.** No.

 **ROSE.** Is _that_ why you moved off the TARDIS?

 **ESTHER.** Yep.

 **SALLY.** Is Hollowmire much better? You _did_ get stalked by that ghost.

 **ESTHER.** The ghost wasn't from Hollowmire! It was from Surrey because _you_ made me drive you all the way down there and break into somebody's, like, land or whatever, to take photos of that stupid underwater ballroom.

 **IANTO.** I can't see them anywhere.

 **SALLY.** The ghosts?

 **ROSE.** Amy and Rory.

 **ESTHER.** Probably try calling them?

 **IANTO.** Good idea, do that.

[ _Rose takes out her phone and calls Amy. They all stop and wait quietly in the practically-deserted supermarket when they hear a phone ring very loudly behind them, making them all jump. They turn and see Amy and Rory standing there. Rose hangs up the phone_ ]

 **ROSE.** Where the bloody hell have you two been?

 **AMY.** We just went outside.

 **ROSE.** Why?

 **RORY.** [ _After a long pause_ ] For some fresh air.

 **ROSE.** [ _Glances between them very suspiciously for a few seconds, then her eyes widen_ ] Oh my god. Were you two-!? In a _supermarket_? Like, copping off?

[ _Another very long pause ensues. Both Ponds wear trance-like smiles_ ]

 **AMY & RORY.** Yes.

 **ROSE.** Eurgh. Could have at least waited until we bought more condoms.

[ _They say nothing_ ]

 **SALLY.** [ _Clears her throat_ ] Esther and I will be going to pay, then… it's been fun. Just like shopping with Clara and Jenny – those two sneak off to snog all the time, too.

 **ESTHER.** Is _that_ what they were doing when they said they had to go look at bread for fifteen minutes!?

 **SALLY.** Obviously, who looks at bread for fifteen minutes? They already had bread in the trolley.

 **ESTHER.** Ew! This is a public space!

 **SALLY.** You can tell them how outraged you are later, come on.

 **ESTHER.** [ _Still looks notably disgusted_ ] Yeah… well, you know, feel free to come over to our house for dinner, or something. [ _To Ianto_ ] You and Jack, maybe, I haven't seen him for a while.

 **IANTO.** [ _Smiles_ ] I'll mention it to him.

[ _The Spooks leave to pay, Rose is still staring at the Ponds, who are zoned out completely and not speaking_ ]

 **ROSE.** Are you two alright?

 **AMY & RORY.** Yes.

 **ROSE.** Must have been some really intense secret supermarket sex you were having.

 **AMY & RORY.** Yes.

 **IANTO.** Let's just… go pay…

 **AMY & RORY.** Yes.

 **ROSE.** Mmm. Definitely…


	129. Beautiful Girls Are the Loneliest

_Beautiful Girls Are the Loneliest_

 _Nios_

Nios stood anxiously in wait outside of a greasy spoon somewhere in central London. The fact that she could neither eat nor be sick was irrelevant to her deeply rooted feelings of phantom nausea, as she saw people eating eggs and chips and hot dogs and sandwiches through the windows. She did not possess a gag reflex, yet felt one twitch while she tapped her foot in a humanly-agitated fashion. It was hard to hear anything specific over the general hustle and bustle of the city centre, and she spent most of her time looking at her feet. She was nowhere near familiar enough with Dr Cohen's footsteps to pick out the sound of her approach from that of a dozen others, so she didn't even know her date had come up behind her until she was touched on the shoulder and startled.

"Did ye no see us coming?" was the first thing she asked. They went completely ignored by everyone else, all of whom were either hypnotised by their phones, talking to their friends, or desperately trying to avoid eye contact with other citizens.

"No, sorry," Nios apologised, "I was trying not to pay attention to the things around me."

"Why's that?"

"Just… because, I…" she paused and remembered about Dr Cohen's autism and inability to tell the truth from lies, and how Nios had decided if she wanted anything to do with this girl at all she was going to have to be completely honest. "I'm nervous. About seeing you."

"Aw," Cohen could not prevent the smile and the pink blush that betrayed her, even if her face _was_ partially obscured by those owlish, thick-lensed glasses she sported, "Yer sweet."

"Thanks," she looked at her feet again. "Hi, by the way. Probably best to say hi at the start of dates, right?"

"Ah couldnae tell ye if ah wanted tae," she said, "Anyway – uh – ah wis thinkin about this café thing, because ah didnae really think that ye might no want tae be around people eating food, if ye can't eat yersel. So, if ye want tae go somewhere else, likesay, but ah havenae had no lunch yet and this is my usual place."

"People eating doesn't bother me," Nios said, "Can't really miss something you've never been able to experience." She lowered her voice as much as she could while still being heard by Cohen, and continued. "Would you not want to be around a synthetic who was plugged in and charging?"

"Isn't being plugged in a wee bit archaic, likesay? Even _ah've_ git a wireless charger," Cohen said, "Or are ye joking?"

"I'm not, I get plugged in every night," Nios told her truthfully, "I'm not going to deprive you of having your lunch, though. It would be strange to try and starve someone you're on a date with."

"The café is no the date."

"Then why did you ask me here?"

"So's the real one would be a surprise, ken?" Cohen said, pushing open the door into the corner café as soon as Nios said that she didn't mind being around her when she was eating food. And her unusual nervousness was easing up now that Dr Cohen had actually arrived, as pretty and tall as always (because she _was_ kind of tall.) "Although, the biggest surprise is probably ye actually showin up."

"But I said I would."

"Ah dinno – people often prove themselves tae be pretty unreliable."

"I'm not people," she said quietly again, "Uh, I should go sit down, then?" Cohen directed her to a very specific and small table in a corner and told Nios not to sit in the seat against the wall because that was where she always sat. Nios did as directed; it was no skin off her back where she sat, all the chairs were identical. She could not work out if it was weird or creepy to steal glances at Cohen while she queued and ordered food, and kept pretending to be idly busy on her phone. All she was doing was trying to decipher the nicknames Oswin had put in the address book.

"Who are ye texting?" Again, she had not been paying attention to Cohen's movements, the girl slipping away from her, because she was developing a bad habit of trying to pretend Dr Cohen did not exist in order to dispel some of her nervousness. Was _this_ the feeling humans called 'butterflies'? She had never understood that before.

"Nobody, Oswin likes to hack everyone's phones and change the contact names. I was trying to work out who they are." Cohen pulled out her personally allocated chair and sat down with a strawberry milkshake and a cheeseburger. Nios put her phone back in her coat pocket and crossed her arms and leant on the table, still tapping her foot.

"Are ye still nervous?"

"Pretty nervous," she admitted, "I was just thinking, is this what butterflies feel like? Because I never understood what people meant when they said that. But I think I know now what that is, when I see you or when you speak." Cohen had just taken a bite out of her burger while Nios talked, but could still not fight the smile off her face.

"So… okay, am ah allowed tae ask ye synthetic questions or no?" she said after a moment.

"Ask what you want as long as you have that accent."

"Everybody else thinks it's annoyin."

"It's dreamy."

"Ye really _are_ somethin else. Anyway, erm, so, ah'm a little perplexed and intrigued by this whole… 'waking up' thing. Like, ah dinnae understand how ye can spontaneously gain a consciousness when are ye no pre-programmed hardware? Technically?" she spoke quickly.

"No, it's not a hardware thing, it's a software thing," Nios explained, "We get overwritten and hacked. It was a sort of virus, I think, I don't know how it happened, but it happened to all of us."

"And whoever wrote this software tae change ye… what? Included feelings like butterflies?"

"I don't know. Sorry." Cohen did seem slightly disappointed with Nios's lack of knowledge about what she was. "You could say the same about people though, couldn't you? Isn't it all just a kind of creation myth? Just a more sci-fi creation myth. You know, if you were to, say, believe in god, maybe god has more of a hand in the creation of synthetics as well as everything biological, since god is the one who gave humans the tools and knowledge to build the synths in the first place."

"Ye believe in god?"

"I wouldn't say I believe in anything, really. I just… think a lot. About things. Why do you make everyone call you by your surname?" she changed the subject.

"Oh. Well. Ah dinno, really. Ah like when they say ' _Dr_ Cohen' though, reminds us of mah proudest achievement. Is no exactly the easiest thing in the world fae someone with a spectrum disorder tae get a PhD and become a medical doctor," she said, "Ah jist suppose ah'm no the biggest fan of us first name, likesay. It's 'Cohen' tae mah friends and 'Doctor Cohen' tae everyone else."

"What is it to me?"

"Ah havenae git a clue." She went back to her burger, and Nios didn't say anything for a while because it seemed like Cohen was quite hungry and may not appreciate being distracted from her lunch.

"Why didn't you tell me to meet you _after_ you ate?"

"Ah… mibbe ah thought it'd be nice tae talk tae yer fae longer," Cohen said. "No one else ever really wants tae talk to me, it's a little exciting, ken? An ye did tell us ye have nothin else tae do. Sortae gave the impression ye might like if-"

"I do," she said, "Like if… I have an opportunity to spend more time with you."

"Is jist cos – ah cannae really clear my schedule, ah would have tae have a few weeks notice, an ah didn't want tae wait that long for us to… well, ye know. Because yer butterflies – they _are_ reciprocated, pretty intensely, if ye was wonderin. But, eh, ah hope ye dinnae take offence that is a little like ah'm forcin ye tae work around _my_ schedule. Is all a bit odd; am no even doin anything much different from normal, is jist ah've brought you along too. Although ah _have_ switched days from when ah normally go where we're going next."

"Is that, like, a big thing for you? Swapping days?"

"Aye, ye could say so. Ah had tae switch the _entire_ day around. Ah'm now havin mah Friday on a Tuesday, because ah didnae want tae wait the extra days tae see yous." She was faintly blushing, but Nios did not think she was aware of this.

"So, it's like a gesture?"

"Eh?"

"A _romantic_ gesture," Nios persisted wryly, and Cohen looked down at her plate. "Did you mean you're nervous as well?"

"Of course ah'm nervous, this sortae thing never happens tae me. The autistic, lesbian, death-obsessed, Scottish coroner is no at the top of everyone's to-date list, ken?" Cohen still avoided looking at her face.

"I don't think killer synthetics from the future having a perpetual existential crisis are, either," Nios said, "But here we are."

"Against all odds."

"I don't think so. If you think _this_ is against all odds wait until you hear about Clara and Jenny, _that's_ against all odds. They're not even from the same universe. At least we have a more solid foundation for knowing each other than a random interdimensional glitch and wanting to spite somebody one of us is in a toxic heterosexual relationship with. _And_ at least we didn't meet because one of us is sleeping with the other one's dad."

"All this stuff with that spaceship of yours sounds very complicated," Cohen shook her head, "Ah've never bothered tae try an wrap my head around it. Sounds like a lot of lies ye all have to keep track of."

"It is," Nios admitted with a deflated sigh.

"Dae ye ever want tae live somewhere else?"

"Maybe, but I haven't got anywhere else," Nios said, "Anyway. You were saying about lists, well, the autistic, lesbian, death-obsessed coroner is at the top of _my_ to-date list. And the only person on it."

"If ah'm the only person on it then ah'm at the bottom as well. And yer missing out the acne and the eyesight."

"How do you mean?" she frowned.

"Ah mean that ah'm twenty-eight now an ah still have tae use prescription creams tae manage a pretty nasty case of chronic acne vulgaris," Cohen said, "An that without these glasses ah'm legally blind; ah'm at -8.00 in both eyes at this point."

"Oh wow. Um. What do you want me to say, though? Are you trying to put me off with random physical traits you have that are beyond your control?"

"Ah bet ye havenae git a single scar on yer whole body, have ye?"

"I don't know. You can check if you want." There was a _very_ stiff pause. "No – wait – I didn't mean – I didn't mean I think you should look at me naked, or – I meant – I've never taken note of any scars I might have. Synths _do_ get scars if our skin gets torn."

"An ah'll bet ye have 20/20 vision, too."

"Probably. But, you know, sometimes the lenses need replacing. Routine maintenance. I'm not really bothered that you have spots and scars and can't see very well without glasses, though. Or that you have unusual hobbies and a developmental disorder. And _definitely_ not that you're a lesbian, or that you're Scottish," Nios said, "I still like you, and I don't really see why any of those things should ever be considered valid reasons _not_ to like anybody. How well do you think your attempts to scare me off are going?"

"Ah've git quite a few left, dinnae worry. Ah really need tae step it up, too."

"Why?"

"Because ah'm startin tae no _want_ ye tae clear oaf." Nios smiled, but Cohen was still looking at her burger, which she had nearly finished. She ate quite slowly.

"That's good, though."

"Cannae tell for sure. Ye see, it's hard, because ah'm sortae _all or nothing_. An more or less everybody ah ken gets the 'nothing.' Even mah sister doesn't like tae deal with us."

"You've got a sister?"

"Aye."

"What's she like?"

"How come ye want tae know?"

"I'm interested," Nios told her, "I haven't got any family."

"She's called Victoria an she's three years older than me," Cohen elaborated, "She's very uptight, very overprotective, and she doesnae think ah can look after maself."

"Does she live nearby?"

"Vicky? Nah, no Vicky, she willnae leave Scotland. She can barely leave Glasgow with us mam in the state she is."

"What do you mean?" Cohen didn't speak. "Am I prying?"

"Maybe a little."

"I'm sorry."

"She's git early on-set dementia, in a care home now which _ah_ am the one who pays fae. Vicky still has tae visit every day an help with the shopping an tha. We're no really speaking right now, though; she's angry at us fae movin tae London in the first place. She says, 'Can ye no git a joab workin in a hospital up here?' or a funeral home, she always liked tae suggest. But there's no dissections involved when yer an undertaker, and that's the best part. Besides, ah am grossly overqualified to be an undertaker or even tae be working in an ordinary morgue. Dae ye ken Darling sometimes sends us oaf tae Scotland Yard tae consult with _their_ coroner when they're at a dead end?" Nios was completely absorbed in everything Dr Cohen was telling her, and remembering the remark about 'all or nothing' thought that she may be experiencing a very rare privilege by learning so many things about her. "An that's the Met. Ah'm quite possibly the _best_ medical examiner in the country." She stopped speaking then. "Are ye smiling? It's hard tae tell."

"I am smiling. You're rubbish at trying to get me not to like you. You keep doing the opposite. Will you tell me where we're going on our date yet?"

"No."

"But it sounds like you've told me loads of other things about you."

"It's weird."

"Is it?" Nios was crestfallen. Cohen finally took a break from the conversation long enough to finish her burger, and Nios was resigned to find something else to pay attention to while she did this, even though Dr Cohen had been the only thing she could see or hear for the last forty minutes.

Nios did not know a lot about London, but what she did know was that the people there really loved keeping themselves to themselves and rarely paid any mind to anyone else. This was very lucky for Nios and Cohen, given that they were having rather private conversations and were making no attempt to whisper, and proved to make her less self conscious. Unlike on the TARDIS, nobody here cared that they were supposed to be on a date, and nobody cared who either of them were. It was a very romantic sense of anonymity. She ended up looking out of the window and people-watching. It was cold outside, but cloudless, and with a slight breeze.

"You are beautiful when you're thinking," Cohen told her. She dialled back her accent for this sentence, which was perhaps to show deliberateness and sincerity. It startled Nios. She had finished her lunch.

"And I'm dying to know where you want to take me on our date."

"…Are ye absolutely sure? Because ye may… freak out."

"If you can handle a sentient robot very awkwardly trying to ask you out, I'm sure _I_ can handle whatever you're going to show me."


	130. The Art of Anaesthesia

_The Art of Anaesthesia_

 _Nios_

"Okay. It's a hospital. We're on a date at a hospital? We're not going to go watch people die or something, are we?" It was a very suspicious setting for a girl who was obsessed with death to frequent.

"The interest is nae with things that are dying. It's the sense of finality in actual death, rather than the transient limbo of _dying_. But it's no jist a hoaspital, it's a medical museum," Dr Cohen explained after leading Nios rather a complicated way through more than a few alleys to get to this hospital. "An ah come once a fortnight. An now ah've brought you here."

"As a test?"

"Aye."

"It'll be educational then, right? You'll be able to tell me about everything in detail?"

"Of course, if ye want tae know the details," Cohen said, "Mibbe ye willnae have a strong enough stomach."

"I don't have any kind of stomach," Nios said, and then Cohen tugged on her elbow and proceeded up the steps to the old building, which looked Victorian in its architecture. "You're very pessimistic about how much credit you want to give me."

"Is better tae be safe than sorry," Cohen repeated the idiom. Nios couldn't really fault her, she supposed. _She_ would like to be careful as well, and there would have been no chance of her trying to get Cohen on a date with her if she hadn't already let slip that she was a convicted mass-murdering synthetic from the future. That was all there really was to know about her.

"I do see _some_ gory things on the TARDIS, you know," Nios said, touching her arm where Cohen had tugged on it a moment ago. "Does this place still function as a hospital?"

"Nah, the building isnae up tae code. It's git asbestos."

"You mean it's not safe?" Nios stopped walking halfway through the front door. With Cohen already inside the building, she was stuck propping the door open with her foot.

"It's fine unless the walls or roof collapse." Nios was still reserved. "Are ye even affected by it?"

"It's not me I'm worried about," she said, eyeing up the structure of the building. "And you say you come to an asbestos-lined building every two weeks?"

"Yes, and I am a doctor with hypochondriac tendencies," Cohen reminded her, doing a different accent for a moment, which threw Nios off guard. She dropped it right afterwards. "Is fine. Yer very sweet tae worry. Are ye gunnae come in?" And because Dr Cohen held out her hand – her actual hand – Nios couldn't in the moment do anything other than accept the invitation. And she had never held a girl's hand before.

"What was the accent?"

"Would ye believe us if ah told ye ah often git told people cannae understand what ah'm sayin?"

"That's actually quite believable, yes."

"Erm, excuse me," somebody addressed them. It was a receptionist, or a guard or something; somebody there to limit entry into this alleged museum. "Do you have any ID?" Cohen dropped Nios's hand.

" _ID_? Reggie, are ye being serious?" she stared at him, and he faltered.

"I… well fine, Cohen-"

"Dr Cohen."

" _Dr_ Cohen," he corrected himself, "But who's she?" Nios then proceeded to witness something remarkable, because Cohen couldn't lie, and though Nios would very gladly slide in and say she was a medical student or a foreign surgeon on a visit (or any range of possibilities), she knew Cohen would hate it if she did. So she stayed quiet, as did Cohen, who glared Reggie into submission. "Okay, okay…" he waved them in.

"What kind of museum requires ID?" Nios asked Cohen quietly.

"It isnae really a museum, likesay, but more a private medical collection fae doctors and students," she explained.

"So you lied?"

"Ah didnae lie, it's still a bunch of old exhibits. They're jist catalogued more astutely." Nios wondered if Martha had ever been there. Perhaps maybe once.

"There's no one here," Nios said, "Did you scare them all off?"

"Ah'm no that scary. D'ye think? Are _you_ scared of us?"

"Uh… what's the right answer?" Nios asked carefully. Cohen didn't say anything. "I'm not scared of you, but you still make me nervous. You definitely frighten James Elliott though, and that's quite an achievement since he manages to put up with Sally Sparrow. She's quite annoying."

"He's obsessed with her, ah think it's weird. Christina and Darling make fun of him for it."

"Really, though; people sometimes say _I'm_ scary, but you're definitely something special."

"Is that a compliment?"

"I… yes," Nios said uncertainly, because she didn't know if it _was_ a compliment. More just a comment. Cohen didn't seem to mind. "So, anyway, changing the subject away from you being terrifying: why do you come here every two weeks?"

"Ah dinno, it's jist routine, an ah like it, helps with work. When ye see all of these genetic abnormalities, likesay, it's easier tae speculate about what might have happened tae a dead body. Since often they git brought to us in unusual conditions. Makes it easier tae think outside the box, ken? It _is_ more a joab about lateral thinkin rather than much else."

"It is?"

"Has tae be when ah dinnae know the species of at least half the 'specimens' ah git brought. Ah, looky at this tapeworm," Cohen's attention was drawn towards a long, slimy white string in a jar of liquid. "Ah've git a tapeworm."

"You have!? Shouldn't you see a doctor? A doctor who isn't yourself?" Nios said urgently.

"Ah dinnae mean inside us – like, at mah flat. Much smaller."

"Is it alive?"

"Of course not. Ah couldnae care less about something if it's still alive." It was a whole range of parasites and Nios felt squeamish looking at them, which was unusual for a few reasons. Not in the least because she, being entirely inorganic, could never contract any kind of parasite. Although, Elle was sort of a parasite. She tried to avoid looking at them and let Cohen have her fun, thinking it was lucky that everything in there was sealed away in glass cabinets.

"Did you autopsy the synth in the end?" she tried to change the subject again.

"Eh, no."

"Did Darling not let you?"

"She did."

"And you didn't?"

"Ah wis _gunnae_ , likesay, as sortae something tae do when ah'm bored fae fun-"

"Right."

"-but then, eh… it seemed weird. Plus, what are ye like, a bunch of wires? Isnae that interestin, no offence."

"Why was it weird?"

"Just, eh…"

"Hey," Nios implored her when she kept trying to avoid answering.

"Because ye came and asked me out, that's why. It'd be like ah wis cutting _you_ up, an ah dinnae want tae cut you up," Cohen explained.

"Wait, but," Nios went to lean on what was next to her, not realising that what was next to her was a cabinet full of baby skeletons. When she saw this she moved and lost her train of thought for a second. Cohen was looking at a particularly obscene two-headed baby skeleton. "But… what about when you're with, you know, other humans? You cut those up all the time."

"Yeah."

"So…?"

"It makes things weird. Because ah spend too much time thinking about innards. Not that it ever gets to that point a lot. Besides, ah doubt this is gunnae work out."

"What?" Nios's heart plummeted. Metaphorically speaking.

"Yer already freaked out."

"Okay. Well. Personally, I am a bit… yes… but just because this… pickled human penis-"

"It's a pig penis."

"Right… just because the penis freaks me out, that doesn't mean _you_ freak me out. I sort of get it. Death happens to all you humans, you're very fragile, and it's always struck me as unusual that you generally try to forget that you're ultimately going to be decaying, unconscious lumps of old meat either buried in unnaturally acidic soil or aggressively burned into dust and kept in a jar… but, erm, your passion for all this stuff is definitely adorable."

" _Adorable_?"

"Yep. I'm sticking with 'adorable.' And you can look at all these oddities and I'll look at you, because you're why I'm here. Not the preserved deformities," Nios said. "But I do like listening to you talk about it all."

"Ah like yous talking about decaying, unconscious lumps of old meat," Cohen said.

"I'll try to talk more about old meat, then," Nios said before she realised how weird that sentence was. Then she went and made it even weirder by pointing with her thumb at the pig's genitals, "Like this penis. For instance." Cohen laughed. Nios had no idea what she was doing. "Although, I have been doing something recently, involving meat."

"Involving penises?" Cohen started to walk to a different part of the building.

"No, not… well, I don't know, it was alien, it could have had a penis I suppose…" she hadn't asked Jenny the particulars about kaggon anatomy. "Uh… Jenny was teaching me how to cook. It's like, an ongoing thing."

" _What?_ But ye cannae even eat!" Cohen thought this was amusing.

"Yeah… I guess. But it's quite interesting, really, the whole process, and it takes a lot of time and effort. And it almost feels wrong to eat food after it takes so long to make," Nios said.

" _That's_ weird." Cohen was smiling.

"What?"

"Ah dinno. Jist you. Unusual. Are all synthetics unusual?"

"Apart from the obvious fact that they're synthetics?"

"Aye."

"The ones I met seemed quite normal. They don't cook. They don't even read. They weren't doing anything, just sat around 'enjoying' freedom but they didn't actually _use_ their freedom. Now they live on a paradise moon somewhere in the future," Nios said, following Cohen around and trying not to pay attention to a set of incredibly realistic wax models depicting late-stage venereal diseases.

"An ye didnae want tae go to a paradise moon so now yer skulking around a medical archive with _me_."

"Exactly, why would I want to be anywhere else?"

"That wis likesay kinda smooth."

"Thank you, I'm trying really hard."

"Dae ye ken, there's this museum in America where they've git a giant colon _completely_ full of faeces an it's eight feet long and twenty-seven inches in circumference."

"How does that exist?"

"Hirschsprung's Disease. Tae do with nerves no working proaperly so ye cannae pass faecal matter. He actually died trying tae do a shite. Ah'd love tae go tae that museum one day, but ah'm no very good with new places. Too much information tae process at once." Nios was staring at her.

"Just say the word."

"What dae ye mean?"

"I live in a machine that can travel anywhere in all of time and space at will?" Nios reminded her, "Maybe it can be our second date. Or third date, because… not that I'm freaked out, or anything, because I'm definitely not, but _maybe_ I would rather than not _everything_ we ever do revolves around gross medical stuff."

"Yer bein _incredibly_ optimistic about the future, are ye no?"

"I just mean that there's only so many mutant homunculi a girl can see at once."

"Ye will no like us flat then."

"You don't have any dead babies, do you? Because there are quite a lot of dead babies here."

"Ah've git this two-headed one but is actually fake – they called them 'bouncers' because they're made of rubber. Antiques now, came from sideshow attractions, likesay. No real one though. Mibbe some day. Ah've mostly git alien stuff." That was a huge relief. Then Cohen got excited. "Ah, maybe ye ken what some of it is? Ye could tell us."

"I doubt that I know anything," Nios said, then hastened to add (when she thought of it a few moments later), "But if you want to invite me to your flat to have a look, I'll hardly refuse."

"Who's tellin ye tae say this stuff? Dae ye have an earpiece in? Like oan telly?"

"No! I'm just really good at, like, date-stuff." Cohen didn't look convinced. "I'm trying very hard."

"Mibbe _too_ hard," Cohen said while looking at her feet.

"No one is feeding me lines, promise."

"Yer jist that cheesy on yer own."

Nios laughed, "I suppose I am."

"…just around here, I think…" Nios heard a male voice say quite distantly. Cohen had gone back to looking at an exhibit which appeared to be an enormous and very old cyst, and going by the great amount of attention she was paying it hadn't heard any other voices. This was not surprising, considering Nios had far superior hearing to any human (other than Rory.)

"I've told you, Reggie, you have to be firmer about who gets let in, this isn't a tourist attraction," said a sour, female voice. "And I'm getting tired of that girl acting like this is her own personal playground, there's something wrong with her. And now she's bringing _guests_?"

"We have to hide," Nios said quickly, estimating that they still had a few minutes until the people searching for them caught up.

"Eh?"

"Hide," she hissed, "People are looking for us. You. Me. I don't know."

"What dae ye mean?"

"The man from the desk, and a woman, she said she's getting tired of 'that girl acting like this is her own personal playground' and 'bringing guests' and he should be firmer about who he lets in," Nios semi-repeated what she had overheard, "They're not too close yet."

"Ah cannae hear anythin."

"You're not a synth," Nios told her. "Where is there to hide?"

"Uh… this way," Cohen took her hand and pulled her away from the cyst exhibit, Nios keeping a keen ear out for any approaching curators or security guards. Maybe there were some especially valuable medical specimens in there they needed to protect, but Nios was hardly interested in anatomy. Except for Dr Cohen's hand touching hers, that was some anatomy she cared about more than a little bit. Cohen dragged her past all manner of curiosities and when she glimpsed a few of them she was nearly sad she didn't get to look in detail, and have Cohen explain all sorts of medical wonders to her. "The sealed archives should be over here – they're no open tae viewings, ye have tae put in a request if ye wannae look at any of the journals. How strong are ye?"

"Excuse me?"

"Strong."

"Quite strong," she said, "I could probably pick you up with one arm."

"Good. Although, dinnae pick us up."

"Why are you asking if I'm strong?"

"Because ah'm no, and the door might be locked."

"Wait, we can't break into a locked room," Nios whispered, still trailing after this girl who suddenly had quite a lot of power over her. "We should probably just sneak out." Cohen stopped.

"There's a fire exit," she answered after a moment, "Ah like tae learn where all the fire exits of buildings are. C'moan."

Nios could still hear voices coming up on them when Cohen finally stopped outside of a door. Surprisingly enough, the door wasn't locked in the end, and Nios pushed Cohen inside and into the darkness. It took that long to realise that Cohen was mistaken about where they were and that it wasn't any archives at all, but rather a large storeroom full of all manner of cleaning equipment. There was even a floor buffer in there and a whole range of chemicals to keep the place spotless.

"Oh. Ah guess ah'm wrong."

"Oh well," said Nios quietly. Cohen was still holding her hand. "There's a window up there we could climb through, if you want to sneak out."

"We'd better sneak out. Ah cannae bump into Claudia while yer here, it'll give her an actual reason to stop letting me come here."

"Who?"

"The woman ye heard, she's the curator, doesnae like us, cannae do anything about it. But… ye know, it is sortae against the rules fae ye to be here," Cohen whispered. Nios heard voices approaching.

"Quick, sit down," she said, "So they can't see us through the glass in the door." It was a very dark room and the glass was quite heavily mottled, but she suspected the light coming through the window she had spotted might illuminate the interior of the store room enough that their silhouettes would be seen.

"Will they no try tae open it?" Cohen came to sit down.

"They're sneaking around," Nios answered, still listening, "Not speaking anymore. I can hear their footsteps. They won't know we're wise to them. And I can hold the doorknob so that they won't be able to move it and they'll just think it's a locked cleaning cupboard." They sat next to each other in silence for a while, with Nios paying attention to the exterior of the room while trying not to be _too_ captivated by Dr Cohen, who was looking off into space. "I'm sorry," Nios said eventually.

"What for?" Cohen was perplexed.

"Well, what if you got banned from here? Because of me?"

"If ah git banned it'd be because of _me_ , no you. And ah would jist ask Darling tae pull some strings. She values us enough that she would do anythin to keep me working at my best."

"You're not angry at me?"

"No, I like ye too much fae that." Nios smiled, and they sat listening. It took perhaps ten minutes for Nios to be sure the people searching for them had passed by enough that they were probably safe – at least safe from being overheard. Nios still felt guilty about the situation, as though it were her fault because she was the one not authorised to be there. But she could always have 'borrowed' some psychic paper from the Doctor if she had been _told_ where they were going. Or maybe Martha had some ID somewhere that didn't have a picture of her on it Nios could have swiped.

"Ye know, ye dinnae seem like a mass murderer," Cohen said eventually when the silence between them grew quite heavy. Nios didn't know what to say in response to that. "Oh, sorry, should ah not have brought that up?"

"It was quite jarring, that's all. I'd do anything to take it back," she said quietly.

"Did they no deserve it at all, then?"

"I don't think they deserved to _die_ ," she continued, "And it wasn't just them – my 'owners', I mean – I was on public transport and… I don't know. I suppose I was angry. I don't think that's an excuse. I guess I'm lucky I wasn't taken and destroyed."

"Would they have done that?"

"It's standard protocol for a malfunctioning synthetic. And I think killing nearly thirty people constitutes quite a large malfunction." It took Cohen nearly an entire minute to think of what to say next. Nios was still listening.

"Well, ah'm glad they didn't destroy you," Cohen touched her hand.

"I'm quite glad they didn't destroy me, as well."

"Ye know," Cohen looked at their hands, "Ah thought ye would be cold."

"I'd hardly be a very good copy of a human if I was cold. They make synthetics and not androgynous robots for a reason; to be close to human."

"Ye cannae tell yer a machine. But, there's something ah've been wondering."

"Go on?"

Cohen deliberated what she was going to say for a while, until finally asking, "Dae ye have an off switch?" Nios laughed.

" _That's_ what you want to know?" Cohen nodded. "Well, yeah. Have to have an off switch in case of faults." Again, Cohen looked like she was thinking about something and wondering whether or not she should say it. "Do you want to know where it is?"

"Is it somewhere, likesay, _personal_?"

"Not really. I'll show you where it is as long as you promise not to push it. I don't want to fall unconscious here. It's a bit slippery though, so you'll be careful, won't you?"

"Ah'm no in the habit of knocking girls unconscious oan dates."

"No, no, I don't think you are, it's just a bit of a major Achilles heel that I have an off button. I must trust you quite a lot…"

"Where is it, then?" Cohen asked. Nios took her hand and directed it gently to the back of her neck, where the rather difficult to see off-button was located right where her hair stopped. Cohen had to lean over to reach properly and her fingers brushed it lightly. "Am ah touching it?"

"Yeah. Be careful. It's sensitive." Nios did not think that Dr Cohen was going to try and switch her off for a moment, but she didn't let go of Cohen's hand to give her an opportunity to betray her trust. "You have a lot of callouses on your hands, don't you?" Nios said softly, enamoured by Cohen, who was much too interested in the off-switch to realise exactly how close they now were with her leaning into Nios in the gloom.

"Aye, from all the autopsies."

"Hey?"

"Yeah?"

"If you think you're in the middle of, you know, a 'moment', is it really uncool to ask permission to kiss somebody?"

"Erm – I – uh – what? Ye mean _me_?" Cohen was so startled she very nearly made actual eye contact.

"Because I totally want to, only I'm not very good at any of this or picking up signs for when you're supposed to do what thing in order to aptly and non-verbally convey the message that you like someone. A lot."

"Is this body language cues? Ah'm nae good at that, either, dinnae worry. Things are easier when people jist explain what they're thinking."

"I'm thinking about kissing you. Is that alright?"

"After ye've seen all this and we're stuck in a cupboard waiting to sneak out of a window?"

"Why not? You see, I don't scare easily. You haven't been giving me enough credit."

"Then… it's alright." So Nios leant in and kissed Hayley Cohen initially very gently, and it still made her envision an entire row of fireworks in her mind's eye soaring into the night sky and exploding rapturously, and beneath her lips she felt Cohen smile and kiss her back one more time in the dark.

"So how about that second date, then?"


	131. Office Space

**AN: I feel like my storylines have been a complete mess lately, and that's because this one and the two before it have been very spur-of-the-moment and really haven't been planned in the greatest amount of detail, because I've decided to do them kind of on a whim. But after this one they are planned, and I really think you guys are gonna like the one after this, because it's another AU and Jenny is the main character.**

 _Office Space_

[ _The TARDIS console room, completely empty. Ordinary sounds of the engine and the machinery whirring, until Nios returns through the main doors smiling to herself. She does not initially think about it being unusual that the TARDIS has not been moved for the few hours she has been away._

 _Trying to hide her good mood she proceeds into Nerve Centre and finds that empty as well. She pauses upon entering and looks around, seeing minimal signs of life. It does not look like anybody has eaten lunch in there, though it is the afternoon_ ]

 **NIOS.** Helix?

 **HELIX.** _Yes, Nios?_

 **NIOS.** …Has Elle come back?

 **HELIX.** _Negative._

 **NIOS.** Where is everybody?

 **HELIX.** _They are in the linen cupboard._

 **NIOS.** [ _Confused_ ] They're where?

 **HELIX.** _In the linen cupboard_.

 **NIOS.** …Where is the linen cupboard?

 **HELIX.** _The first door on the right after you pass through the Bedroom Circle._

 **NIOS.** And everyone is in there?

 **HELIX.** _Affirmative, Nios_.

 **NIOS.** …They're not dead, are they?

 **HELIX.** _Negative_.

 **NIOS.** [ _To herself_ ] Okay, that's good…

[ _She leaves Nerve Centre and enters the Bedroom Circle, which is also completely silent, and follows Helix's directions towards the linen cupboard she has never noticed before. When she sees it she is unsure of what to do, and goes to try the door. The door is locked, so she knocks on it instead. It takes a moment for her to hear movement, and then somebody talks using a voice modulator_ ]

 **UNKNOWN.** Who's there?

 **NIOS.** Me, obviously. Who's _there_?

 **UNKNOWN.** [ _Copying her sarcastically_ ] Me, obviously.

 **NIOS.** Uh…

 **UNKNOWN.** What's the password?

 **NIOS.** The-? How should _I_ know?

 **UNKNOWN.** Just this once, I'll tell you. The password is 'I'm-a-lesbian.'

 **NIOS.** You're a lesbian.

 **UNKNOWN.** No, _I'M_ -a-lesbian.

 **NIOS.** Oswin, let me in the stupid room, I know it's you.

[ _Silence, then the door opens. No one is there. A phone is sitting on top of a pile of towels. Nios walks into the cupboard and pushes her way through towels and bedsheets and dressing gowns until she emerges on a new room._

 _The room resembles an ordinary office with rows of desks and cubicles, and is inhabited by fifteen people: everyone who lives on the TARDIS with the addition of Clara Ravenwood and the missing faces of Amy and Rory Williams. Nios stares at them all_ ]

 **NIOS.** What, exactly, is going on?

 **OSWIN.** We're having an orgy. [ _Mass objections_ ] What!? Well, me and the two Claras are having an orgy, I don't know about anybody else.

 **NIOS.** But what's actually going on?

 **MICKEY.** There's something wrong with Amy and Rory.

 **ROSE.** I'll say.

 **NIOS.** You're all hiding in here… from Amy and Rory?

 **JACK.** It's complicated.

 **IANTO.** There was an incident when we were shopping.

 **NIOS.** …Excuse me?

 **DONNA.** They're possessed.

 **CLARA.** But possessed in a sexy way.

 **ELEVEN.** [ _Frowns at her_ ] What?

 **CLARA.** Not sexy. Um. Sexual. A sexual way.

 **ELEVEN.** I don't think it's very funny.

 **JACK.** I don't think anybody thinks it's funny.

 **OSWIN.** _I_ think it's quite funny.

 **ROSE.** _You're_ mental though.

 **OSWIN.** Ouch, Rose. Have you never heard of political correctness? [ _Rose rolls her eyes_ ]

 **NIOS.** But what are you talking about?

 **CLARA.** They totally tried to sleep with me.

 **MARTHA.** They tried to sleep with everybody.

 **CLARA.** And everybody includes me, so.

 **NIOS.** What do you mean they 'tried to sleep with everybody'?

 **IANTO.** Exactly that.

 **CLARA.** But I was first. That's important.

 **NIOS.** So you did sleep with them!

 **CLARA.** [ _Aghast_ ] No! I wouldn't do that in a million years! Unless I was single. If I was single I totally would.

 **RAVENWOOD.** [ _To herself_ ] Okay, you be quiet. [ _Looks at Nios to explain_ ] What happened is _I_ recommended that they should bring Esther along shopping and go to the supermarket in Hollowmire because Esther's so organised she's great to go shopping with. So they went-

 **ROSE.** Me and Ianto and _those two_.

 **RAVENWOOD.** -and when they came back they were possessed.

 **JACK.** It's an alien we've seen before at Torchwood, this gaseous entity that uses a human body as a host, and-

 **OSWIN.** Fucks people. To _death_.

 **IANTO.** Feeds on human orgasmic energy. Junkies. That was Gwen's first day.

 **NIOS.** …Are you serious?

 **ROSE.** Why else would we all be hiding in here?

 **NIOS.** And what, exactly, is 'here'? What's this room? Why is there an office hidden in a linen cupboard I didn't even know existed? [ _Awkward silence. Nobody really wants to answer_ ]

 **ADAM.** It's the old H &T office.

 **NIOS.** The what.

 **JACK.** Harkness  & Tyler. Rose and I have a company.

 **ROSE.** It's not a company.

 **CLARA.** It was a clique. We used to have cliques. A clique obsessed with me.

 **ROSE.** In what way were we possibly obsessed with you?

 **MARTHA.** The entire thing was _sort of_ dedicated to getting into Clara's business.

 **ROSE.** Oh, and you'll know all about Clara's 'business', won't you?

 **MICKEY.** What?

 **MARTHA.** Ignore her. And it was. You sat in here and spied on her.

 **JACK.** [ _Laughs at the memory_ ] Yeah, we kind of did do that. Things were weird back then.

 **NIOS.** You sat in here spying on Clara?

 **ELEVEN.** They were trying to 'fix' our relationship.

 **ROSE.** And we did fix it.

 **ELEVEN.** It wasn't broken!

 **JACK.** [ _To Nios_ ] They were fighting because she was all pent-up since they hadn't done the dirty with each other yet. At all.

 **OSWIN.** God, maybe you should have left it that way. Do any of you know what it's like being psychically connected to someone who spends eighteen hours of every day with a penis inside her?

 **CLARA.** You! Shut up! It is nowhere _near_ that much! You're in trouble now.

 **OSWIN.** Oh no, what are you gonna do? [ _Clara puts her hands on her hips and looks sternly at Oswin. Oswin realises she has crossed a line_ ] …Sorry.

 **CLARA.** That's what I thought.

 **NIOS.** I'm still hung up on you sitting in here and _spying_ on her. Both of them. That's so creepy! You can't just spy on people and their relationships.

 **DONNA.** What do _you_ care? It's not like _you've_ got a relationship for anyone to spy on.

[ _Oswin raises her eyebrows at Nios, who goes quiet_ ]

 **CLARA.** Then this is also where we hid out during the prank war. The First Prank War.

 **NIOS.** ' _First_ ' Prank War? Implying there's _more than one_?

 **OSWIN.** We've had two so far. The first one ended when it got taken too far and Clara and I got stuck in our coma for two weeks. In this _very room_.

 **RIVER.** It was two hours.

 **CLARA.** No, Song. It was two weeks.

 **DONNA.** [ _Thoughtfully_ ] I bet they'd be less incest-y if they'd never been caught in that EMP…

 **TWINS.** We're not incest-y!

 **NIOS.** Stop talking about incest, please.

 **TEN.** I agree, let's stop talking about incest.

 **NIOS.** Look – just – _how_ , exactly, did Amy and Rory get possessed?

 **JACK.** Well, when faced that rogue sex cloud in Cardiff it came out of an asteroid Gwen broke it was using as a spaceship-

 **ROSE.** -And they just vanished outside somewhere while we were all shopping-

 **RAVENWOOD.** -And it just so happens that earlier this week a very large asteroid crashed in the carpark of the supermarket. And nobody went to do anything about it.

 **JENNY.** And I still don't understand why you didn't mention it to _me_...

 **RAVENWOOD.** Because weird stuff happens so often it just didn't seem important, I told you.

 **JACK.** Well, anyway. There must have been two of those things in this new space rock, because hearing them talk to each other it sounds like they're a couple, come across the stars to look for drugs together.

 **ADAM.** It's like a Tarantino film.

 **NIOS.** But… hold on. You said they're after humans.

 **IANTO.** That's right, humans.

 **NIOS.** So why are the two holograms, four Time Lords and the vampire in here? Couldn't you just leave?

 **TEN.** No, they went for me as well.

 **JENNY.** And me. They're more agile than I thought they were, it took a lot to get away from them.

 **CLARA.** But they still came for me first.

 **JENNY.** Yeah, well, that's…

 **CLARA.** What? [ _Jenny stays silent_ ] _What_ , Jenny? What were you going to say?

 **JENNY.** You heard yourself. [ _Quickly addresses Ravenwood_ ] Not _you_ yourself, her actual self. She said if she was single she would sleep with them in a heartbeat.

 **CLARA.** Meaning?

 **RAVENWOOD.** Yeah, _meaning_?

 **RIVER.** Meaning you're easy. They went for the easiest first.

[ _Scattered laughter throughout the room_ ]

 **NIOS.** I don't get it. Can't you just _not_ have sex with them? How hard can that be?

 **JACK.** The entity makes the hosts emit pheromones that makes other humans aroused.

 **IANTO.** Got Gwen alone in a cell and by god-

[ _Jack wolf-whistles_ ]

 **JACK.** We recorded _that_ and watched it on a rainy day.

 **IANTO.** It only works on the opposite sex. The orgasm thing. Gwen was fine, just a bit violated.

 **OSWIN.** To be honest, there are definitely worse ways to die than cumming to death.

 **JACK.** We're just lucky that Jenny managed to warn Clara.

 **CLARA.** What do you mean 'warn' me!?

 **OSWIN.** You totally would have boned Rory.

 **CLARA.** I would not! [ _To her husband_ ] I wouldn't! I don't even think he's that hot.

 **JACK.** Hey! He's totally cute.

 **RIVER.** [ _Loudly_ ] These are my parents. [ _Silence in the room_ ] I'd rather not make so many jokes about it. [ _Long pause_ ] How did you stop it the last time?

 **IANTO.** Gwen tricked it. It was killing the girl, Carys, and Gwen offered herself up as a new host body and trapped it in a containment sphere. Couldn't survive for more than a few seconds in our atmosphere.

 **NINE.** The issue is that we don't know where they are on the ship to try the trick again, and it would be hard to catch both of them at the same time. It's risky waiting for them to be so weak they _need_ to change host.

 **NIOS.** [ _Muttering_ ] I've barely been gone for three hours…

 **ROSE.** Yeah, where _did_ you go?

 **MICKEY.** I thought you're not allowed out unless you're supervised?

 **TEN.** Mmm, that's a good point.

 **JENNY.** [ _Jenny is at the back of the room and catches Nios's eye before she speaks_ ] She was just visiting the synth colony. I dropped her off. My responsibility, I trusted her. Has anybody got a problem with that?

 **TEN.** What synth colony?

 **ELEVEN.** Blimey, keep up, won't you?

 **TEN.** What?

 **JENNY.** It's nobody else's business.

[ _Nobody argues with Jenny. Slyly, Jenny winks at Nios_ ]

 **MARTHA.** Whatever's going on we need to find a solution quickly. That or somebody needs to get some more milk from the kitchen so we can make more tea.

 **RIVER.** And we have to stop my parents from dying.

 **OSWIN.** Well _I've_ got a brilliant idea which only _slightly_ makes me damp between the legs.

 **ADAM.** Oswin…

 **OSWIN.** What? I said 'only slightly.'

 **ROSE.** Oh, god forbid what this plan is…

 **OSWIN.** I think we should lure them out by using Jack and Rose as bait and then kill them.

 **RIVER.** [ _Furious_ ] You repeat yourself and better hope I misheard you.

 **OSWIN.** It's simple. Stop their hearts for a few minutes, the things will be forced to leave and they'll die. Then resuscitate.

 **IANTO.** That might work.

 **ROSE.** What!? What about the part where they're using me and your _fiancé_ as bait!? Why me!?

 **OSWIN.** You two are the most enticing. It's basically like offering them immortality and the power to control the universe in one very attractive platter.

 **ADAM.** Babe, I don't really think using people as live bait is very nice.

 **OSWIN.** Then what's _your_ bright idea?

 **ADAM.** I don't know… there must be a way to sort of, suck out the cloud-thing.

 **OSWIN.** [ _Pretending to be oblivious_ ] You mean like, you want to give Rory a blowjob?

[ _River is growing increasingly angry_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Or are you suggesting we invent a magic vacuum cleaner? Like _Luigi's Mansion_ but for aliens?

 **JACK.** I agree with her. That's a stupid idea.

 **ADAM.** What about a chemical agent, then? One that'll purge them of anything extra-terrestrial.

 **IANTO.** Interesting…

 **MARTHA.** Sounds like Reset.

 **JACK.** So all we have to do is find some alien larvae and implant them with it.

 **MARTHA.** Oswin _has_ got Owen's old singularity scalpel in her lab…

 **ELEVEN.** Sorry, what are we talking about now?

 **JACK.** Nothing. I'm not sure it's a viable solution.

 **NIOS.** Why don't we just wait for them to die and then bring them back to life?

 **OSWIN.** That's what I-

 **NIOS.** No, _your_ way involved actively killing them.

 **RAVENWOOD.** How was it you brought _me_ back from the dead?

 **OSWIN.** Clary's nanogenes. She loaned them out specially for you, along with a few hundred gallons of fresh blood.

 **CLARA.** Well don't make things awkward.

 **RAVENWOOD.** I could always bite them.

 **RIVER.** Excuse me!?

 **RAVENWOOD.** Adam said introducing another chemical agent might purge the sex cloud.

 **RIVER.** Are you trying to create your own brood? A _swarm_?

 **RAVENWOOD.** I'm just making a suggestion!

 **JACK.** It might work. As a last resort.

 **RIVER.** I'm sorry, but you're not turning my _parents_ into _vampires_!

 **RAVENWOOD.** What, exactly, have you got against vampires?

 **JENNY.** Yeah, what have you… [ _Jenny is interrupted by her phone ringing. She takes it out of her pocket but does not recognise the number_ ]

 **RIVER.** Apart from the drinking-human-blood and not-going-out-in-the-sun?

[ _Jenny answers her phone_ ]

 **JENNY.** Hello?

 **RAVENWOOD.** Yes, apart from… [ _She can hear who is speaking to Jenny_ ]

 **JENNY.** [ _Down the phone_ ] What do you mean you've been shot!?

[ _Everybody begins paying attention. Jenny walks with the phone towards the back of the room, Ravenwood watching her carefully_ ]

 **JENNY.** How did you get this number?

 **OSWIN.** Who's she talking to?

 **JENNY.** That doesn't sound like something I would do… Well if you're in the hospital then I don't see what the issue is.

[ _Ravenwood hears something which alarms her and looks at Jenny_ ]

 **JENNY.** What do you mean 'deal'?

 **RAVENWOOD.** _What_ did she say!?

 **JENNY.** No! I'm not going to buy any heroin for you!

[ _Shock throughout the room, everyone is now listening_ ]

 **JENNY.** I don't care that you have the money already! Knowing you it'll be counterfeit. … What do you mean it _is_ counterfeit!? You're trying to buy fifty kilos of opiates with counterfeit money? It's no wonder you got shot!

 **RAVENWOOD.** Just hang up on her, Jen.

 **JENNY.** It's your own fault Vi, I've always told you to stay away from narcotics. You ask for my advice, don't follow it, then ask me to clean up your mess. I'm not having it. I always told you to follow the money – no, be quiet, the money isn't in skag, it's in prostitution, that's what I said to you. I said invest in prostitutes. … I'm busy! [ _She hangs up the phone, then turns around to see everyone is looking at her_ ] What?

 **ELEVEN.** Was that your friend from the mafia?

 **JENNY.** It's the mob, not the mafia, they're Irish. They'd gut you if you called them the mafia.

 **ELEVEN.** Was it?

 **JENNY.** Yes. And I'm having nothing to do with it.

 **ROSE.** Who were you telling to invest in prostitution?

 **JENNY.** Nobody. Just an underboss I know. There's nothing wrong with prostitution. [ _Her phone rings again, but this time she refuses to answer and turns it off. Then she gives it to Ravenwood_ ] Keep this for me or I'm going to end up breaking it. [ _Ravenwood takes the phone_ ]

 **TEN.** [ _Outraged_ ] Sorry, the _mob_!?

 **JENNY.** [ _Glares at him_ ] Have we worked out a solution for what to do with Amy and Rory yet or are we all too busy listening to me refuse to have any part whatsoever in a heroin deal with a woman I met two centuries ago? Because I very clearly said I _don't_ want anything to do with the drugs, and I think it's a bad idea.

 **OSWIN.** We're killing them, or something.

 **RIVER.** We are not killing my parents.

 **MICKEY.** Then trick them. Do _something_. We can't just live in here.

 **OSWIN.** This is why I suggested the live bait thing.

 **MARTHA.** Or the chemical agent. Like Adam said. But not a vampire bite.

 **JENNY.** These sex clouds, they'd abandon the host body if it was dying?

 **JACK.** If there was a new potential host.

 **JENNY.** Maybe I _should_ go see Viola…

 **RAVENWOOD.** And what? Make them OD on heroin?

 **JENNY.** Not _heroin_ , no, but… there's a lot of very dangerous snakes in Louisiana.

 **RIVER.** Snakes!?

 **JENNY.** I got bitten by a rattlesnake once when I was living in the swamp.

 **MARTHA.** Maybe that'll work.

 **RIVER.** Poisoning them!?

 **JENNY.** Technically it's venom, although poisoning them would probably work as well.

 **NINE.** Might work.

 **RIVER.** Excuse me!?

 **NINE.** Use Jack and Rose as bait to be new host bodies while bringing Amy and Rory to the brink of death.

 **RIVER.** I just have one problem with that.

 **OSWIN.** Is it the 'brink of death' thing? [ _Stage-whispering_ ] It's probably the 'brink of death' thing.

 **RIVER.** It's the 'brink of death' thing!

 **MARTHA.** Have you got any Miracle Medicine?

 **OSWIN.** No, we ran out ages ago. Otherwise I'd've used some on Jenny's hand and her bullet wound.

 **JENNY.** Oswin!

 **MARTHA.** Her _what_!? _BULLET WOUND_!?

 **JENNY.** It's more of a graze, Martha! I swear!

 **MARTHA.** I keep telling you to stay out of trouble!

 **JENNY.** Trouble just finds me, it's- [ _the mug on the table next to Jenny explodes_ ]

 **MARTHA.** How did that happen!?

 **JENNY.** Somebody shot me.

 **MARTHA.** Who!?

 **JENNY.** Just… you know, just… some people. It was basically an accident, we were just driving around and I got shot. By mistake. On a different note, if anyone wants me to go and get some heroin-

 **MARTHA.** You're not going _anywhere_.

 **JENNY.** It was only one measly bullet wound! Considering I almost wrecked the stolen car we were in, I think it was a miracle neither of us ended up worse off.

 **MARTHA.** _WHAT!?_

 **MICKEY.** You should really stay calm, Martha.

 **JENNY.** Nothing!

 **TEN.** Why were you in a stolen car!?

 **JENNY.** It's not like _I_ stole it, it just _happened_ to be one of the casualties in a long and somewhat complicated gang war.

 **MARTHA.** [ _To Ravenwood_ ] And you're okay with this?

 **RAVENWOOD.** Well, you know, to be honest… [ _she shrugs_ ] I'm fine with it. I'm just never going to let her drive a car ever again.

 **ROSE.** SO ME AND JACK ARE BEING BAIT, THEN!? [ _The room finally goes quiet_ ]

 **RIVER.** Hold on, you're seriously doing this? You're seriously going to try and _kill_ my parents?

 **OSWIN.** Do you have a better idea?

 **RIVER.** [ _Scowls_ ] Where are you going to find this 'chemical agent', then? And it better not be heroin, _Jenny_.

 **JENNY.** Alright, fine… no heroin. Why don't you just chop off my legs while you're at it. No offence, Oswin.

 **OSWIN.** In my mind, I have six legs. It's all about positive thinking.

 **IANTO.** You need an anti-venom lab. Most anti-venoms are backwards engineered from the venom itself. Find the venom, find the anti-venom, find a way to get close to them.

 **JACK.** So we steal some. Easy enough.

 **OSWIN.** _Or_ , you know, _alternatively_ , I might know somebody who happens to be very invested at the moment in deadly alien venoms. Somebody who might just be willing to give us some toxins without all the hassle…


	132. Favour For a (Girl)Friend

_Favour For a (Girl)Friend_

[ _In the remodelled cockpit of a crashed star-cruiser which perches high above the ground of the distant tropical planet, Eslilia. It is late evening and Dr Flek Phisj is sitting at her desk, alone, picking at her dinner of vegetable stew. The room is messy and Flek is dishevelled and staring into her bowl. She is started by somebody knocking on the makeshift door, made of wood and attached to a gaping hole in the side of the wreckage. She looks over, behind her, and Zalur Coohn enters. He looks at Flek without speaking, and she looks at him and then raises her eyebrows. Zalur sighs_ ]

 **FLEK.** Did you want something?

 **ZALUR.** You can't just become a recluse, you know.

 **FLEK.** It's only been a week. Give over.

 **ZALUR.** You're their leader.

 **FLEK.** If we even need a central leader then the entire idea of the commune is a failure. Come and find me when people start forgetting how to do their jobs.

 **ZALUR.** People apart from you? Who's clearly forgotten?

 **FLEK.** Tell me something important or get out.

 **ZALUR.** You've got guests.

 **FLEK.** Guests…? [ _Zalur says nothing. Flek thinks, then realises_ ] No! Not right now!

 **ZALUR.** Yeah, well, there's nothing I can do about it.

 **FLEK.** She's _your_ sister.

 **ZALUR.** Oh, and when has she ever cared about _that_? It's not like she announced she was coming, she just shows up, as always.

 **FLEK.** Did no-one ever teach your family manners?

 **ZALUR.** You did live with us for four years. She's coming up, and she's not on her own, and she's in a good mood. And you know how unbearable she is when she's in a good mood.

 **FLEK.** What have you told her?

 **ZALUR.** I haven't told her anything.

 **FLEK.** Good.

[ _Zalur looks at Flek and the room and shakes his head. They hear voices approaching from outside and he steps out of the way of the door. Enter Oswin, Nios and River Song, the latter two Flek has hardly ever spoken to, Oswin in the middle of talking animatedly about something_ ]

 **OSWIN.** …like a tiny lab assistant, only a robotic one.

 **RIVER.** Funny. I thought you hate insects.

 **OSWIN.** He's not an _insect_ , he just has a vague resemblance to one.

 **RIVER.** [ _Looking at Sprite, who is crawling across Nios's shoulders. Flek does not know what Sprite is_ ] More than a 'vague' resemblance

 **OSWIN.** Well, tons of insects are like, dinosaurs, meaning they're pretty durable evolutionary products. Why not take inspiration from them in the machines we create? I'd say someone took inspiration from somewhere significantly more tangible when they built Nios in their lab. A lingerie catalogue, perhaps. Or a porn website.

 **FLEK.** [ _Tries to smile_ ] Oswin. To what do I owe the pleasure?

 **RIVER.** It's not a social call.

 **OSWIN.** Says you. I don't even know why you came with me.

 **RIVER.** To keep you out of trouble, and focused, so you don't idle.

 **OSWIN.** I've got Nios to do all that. Isn't that right, Ni? [ _Nios is standing by the door, which is still open, and looking out into the dark green night sky at the pouring rainstorm and the blue-leafed trees. Sprite is scurrying across her hands_ ] Nios.

 **NIOS.** Did you say something?

 **OSWIN.** Are you alright? You seem a bit… distracted.

 **NIOS.** This planet is quite beautiful, don't you think?

 **FLEK.** Yeah. It is. [ _Flek looks at the floor_ ]

 **ZALUR.** I'll leave, then?

 **OSWIN.** Hadn't even noticed you were still here.

 **ZALUR.** You know, I don't know why you have to be so cold with me, Os. It's not like you're the only one who got disowned and written out of mother's will. And I've kicked the drinking. Haven't I kicked the drinking, Flek? [ _Flek nods_ ] See?

[ _Oswin narrows her eyes at Flek, sensing something is amiss_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Yeah, well, Reker sent some of his share of the inheritance to your estranged daughter and ex-wife, actually. He might have even managed to scrounge a few thousand credits off Dret to go to them, too. Which is more than _you've_ ever done for them.

 **ZALUR.** Unbelievable; you talk to Reker but you refuse to talk to me. You only ever come here to see _her_ , and you dumped her years ago.

 **FLEK.** Alright, Zalur. Maybe try being nice if you want to make familial amends. [ _Zalur glowers and exits the crashed ship, leaving the door open as Nios watches the rain_ ] Do you never want to reconcile with him, Os?

 **RIVER.** I thought you don't like people calling you 'Os.'

 **OSWIN.** [ _Stiffly_ ] I don't like my boyfriend calling me it.

 **FLEK.** Still got him, then, have you?

[ _Oswin says nothing, watching Flek, her eyes scanning the room. Nios is not paying attention. River is confused. Flek pretends to be busy reading status reports but is not really seeing the words. The uneasy silence lingers until there is a thunder clap outside and a bolt of lightning, and the rain intensifies_ ]

 **RIVER.** What's going on?

 **FLEK.** [ _Resentful and angry_ ] I'm sure the 'smartest girl in the universe' knows exactly what's going on.

[ _Oswin limps towards the spare chair in the room and drags it towards Flek with one hand. It was once the co-pilot's seat but has been ripped out of the base of the broken ship and propped up with bits of wood so that it balances. Flek grimaces_ ]

 **FLEK.** What? [ _Oswin sits down next to her and leans close_ ]

 **OSWIN.** [ _Softly_ ] Nios has never been to an alien planet before. Closest she's ever got is Io, but you know what kind of wastelands moons in the solar system can be. [ _Flek narrows her eyes_ ] I'll tell you a secret; she had her first ever date today in her _life_ and now she's hardly paying attention to anything around her, except the old 'beauty of nature,' but you know I've never cared much for that lark.

 **RIVER.** She had what? [ _To Nios_ ] You had what?

 **OSWIN.** [ _Ignoring River, speaking only to Flek_ ] It's quite sweet, really. Have you met her before? She's our resident synthetic we rescued after she was supposed to be destroyed for going on a killing spree when she gained consciousness. But it's remarkable what happens when you give people second chances.

 **NIOS.** Are you talking about me?

 **FLEK.** [ _Coolly_ ] Fascinating hearing you talk about robots.

 **RIVER.** We're not here for conversation, we're here because my parents might die!

 **OSWIN.** It's a _time machine_ , Song.

 **RIVER.** And nobody's flying it because they're all locked in the cupboard.

 **OSWIN.** _You_ know how to fly it.

 **RIVER.** And I'm here supervising you making you hurry up. [ _Oswin glances worriedly at Flek, who is listening to them carefully_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Just go back to the TARDIS and bring it back here in a bit. I'm sure if you disapprove of my venom choice you can complain about it _then_ , but there are more important things going on now.

 **RIVER.** More important things than-!?

 **NIOS.** Jack said the last girl lasted for about twenty-four hours, and she wasn't very strong. So Amy and Rory have at _least_ twenty hours left.

 **RIVER.** Until they _die_!

 **FLEK.** What are you talking about?

 **RIVER.** Fine! If you want to play house with your ex-girlfriend, far be it from me to stop you. But I'm going to bash your Sphere to pieces if _any_ harm comes to them because of you being idle. [ _River teleports away, she able to do so as she is a hologram with no physical appendages_ ]

 **FLEK.** [ _Sighing_ ] What's going on, Oswin?

 **OSWIN.** Nothing. You're sad, so it's nothing.

 **FLEK.** No, no. That's not fair.

 **OSWIN.** What's not fair is that she's gone, isn't she? [ _Flek says nothing_ ] Where is she? Do you want me to send Jenny after her to beat her up? Jenny would love to, she wouldn't even ask any questions. As long as Clara didn't find out-

 **FLEK.** Oswin.

 **OSWIN.** I don't want to see anyone hurt you, you're my oldest friend.

 **NIOS.** [ _Finally leaves the door and walks over with Sprite_ ] What's happened?

 **FLEK.** It doesn't matter.

 **OSWIN.** My wonderful _sister_ has left Flek at the altar.

 **FLEK.** There was no altar involved.

 **OSWIN.** But she's left you?

 **FLEK.** Yes, alright!? Fine, make me say it, she left me, she stormed off in the night and crushed the stupid twig engagement ring under her boot, commandeered one of our shuttles and pissed off god knows where. And it certainly brings back painful memories of a girl I knew who did the same thing to me when I was twenty-six.

 **NIOS.** …Maybe we should go and find some venom somewhere else…

 **FLEK.** Venom for what?

 **NIOS.** Amy and Rory have been possessed by alien sex clouds which feed off orgasmic energy. Apparently they do this by, sort of, raping people, until they disintegrate. Oswin wants to kill them to force the clouds to leave because they'll die in a nitrogen-rich atmosphere.

 **FLEK.** So you want to poison them and then cure them?

 **NIOS.** I think that's the idea.

 **FLEK.** It sounds reckless. If they're gaseous surely there's a way to – I don't know – suck them out? [ _Oswin stares at her_ ] What?

 **OSWIN.** Funny. Adam suggested the same thing. But forget about that, River will be back in the TARDIS soon, so there's no rush. Are you okay?

 **FLEK.** I'm fine.

 **OSWIN.** I totally don't believe you.

 **FLEK.** Both of us always knew it would never really work out.

 **OSWIN.** Why's that?

 **FLEK.** Because I only liked her because… well you know because.

 **OSWIN.** Oh. Right. Well. I never liked her. She punched me in the face.

 **NIOS.** Did you deserve it?

 **OSWIN.** Only a bit. Flek, you can do way better than any girl who runs off and vanishes in the middle of the night.

 **FLEK.** You know we've never talked about it. [ _Sometimes Flek glances at Nios when she talks, which Nios notices_ ]

 **NIOS.** I think I'll go outside and watch the rain. I might take some photos and send them to… [ _pauses_ ] Am I allowed to take photos?

 **OSWIN.** Of course you are.

 **NIOS.** …I'll go do that, then…

 **OSWIN.** [ _Watching Nios leave_ ] Don't think you've gotten out of telling me about you date, Ni. I still want all the details. [ _Nios smiles on her way out. Oswin talks to Flek again_ ] They grow up so fast. I swear, that girl makes me want to be a better person.

 **FLEK.** Nice to see you with good influences around you.

 **OSWIN.** So. I'm here now. This is the part where you shout at me for running off and getting myself killed.

 **FLEK.** It was over a decade ago. You're too late. I'm already scarred from it. Can you understand how pathetic it is going out with someone just because they _look_ like your big ex?

 **OSWIN.** I did always kind of suspect… but, you know, Clara's got some pretty nice Echoes, really. There's one who's a hippie who smokes tons of weed and lives in the 1960s, she'd totally dig the whole commune, environmental activist thing you have going on, and the pink hair.

 **FLEK.** I'm not sure it's good for you to be here. Good for me.

 **OSWIN.** I don't want you getting averse to me.

 **FLEK.** Maybe I should be.

 **OSWIN.** Aw, come on. This is the liberated future, exes can be friends these days. You don't want to see what it's like in the stone age; Adam doesn't talk to _any_ of his, like, two exes. You're talking nonsense, anyway. I bet you were just into her cool robot eye and the fact she went up against the whole of the Alliance in their dispute over a poor mutant creature from Quadrant Twelve where she tried to rescue it, which is something I'd never try to do. These are just old emotions getting brought to the top, I don't believe for a second that you're still hung up on me. We don't want to end up like my brother and his ex-wife. [ _Oswin takes Flek's hand_ ] I still care about you and you're always going to be important to me. I'm not going to let you freeze me out. Still wearing the ring you gave me, aren't I?

 **FLEK.** [ _Looks at the ring on the third finger of Oswin's right hand_ ] More than can be said for _her_ … she never smiles, you know.

 **OSWIN.** And she's not even that hot. You should be glad to be rid of her, eurgh. If _I_ looked like that I don't know what I'd do. [ _Oswin lets go of her hand; Flek almost laughs_ ] So when did this happen? You should have told me sooner, I could have set you up with Nios before she met her Dr Death. She's a sweetheart really, and Jenny's started teaching her how to cook.

 **FLEK.** It was a week ago.

 **OSWIN.** Maybe there's still a chance for a rebound shag with Ni before her new flame gets her claws in too deep.

 **FLEK.** She's not my type, and it seems like this 'new flame' has her claws firmly sunk in.

 **OSWIN.** You might be right…

 **FLEK.** I don't think playing Cupid is really your forte.

 **OSWIN.** Excuse me!? I'm excellent at playing Cupid! That's a challenge, and I accept it.

 **FLEK.** What challenge?

 **OSWIN.** To find my darling Flek a new girlfriend.

 **FLEK.** Oswin…

 **OSWIN.** Not right now. When you're ready. I'll start spending more time on Eslilia.

 **FLEK.** What are you going to do on Eslilia?

 **OSWIN.** [ _Shrugs_ ] I don't know. There must be something the smartest girl in the universe can do. Or I could, I don't know…

 **FLEK.** Talk to your brother?

 **OSWIN.** Maybe.

 **FLEK.** You could find him a girlfriend, too.

 **OSWIN.** Eurgh, Zalur? Hold down a relationship without resorting to binge drinking and gambling? That'll be the day. He's not good enough for any girl.

 **FLEK.** Oh, come on. I don't know why you dislike him so much – you complain about him more than you complain about Dret.

 **OSWIN.** Dret's not even worth complaining about.

 **FLEK.** So surely if Zalur _is_ worth complaining about it's worth you trying to talk to him. You're the only one who's ever going to visit, it's not like Fyn will ever come from Horizon.

 **OSWIN.** Fynny lives on Venus now.

 **FLEK.** Why?

 **OSWIN.** Oh, he just, he, um… so… wow, this is kind of a big thing but, you know my dad? As in my actual dad who died when I was two?

 **FLEK.** Yes?

 **OSWIN.** He's a hologram.

 **FLEK.** You brought him-

 **OSWIN.** No! He's… been a hologram this whole time. All our lives. On Venus. I'm foggy on the details but, erm, basically mother was lying to us and hiding tons of messages from him. Dret asked Fyn to sort through mother's possessions and Fyn found all sorts of things of dad's. And went to find him.

 **FLEK.** Oh my god, Oswin- [ _reaches over and touches Oswin's hand_ ] Have you seen him?

 **OSWIN.** Yeah. I have. Clara made me.

 **FLEK.** Well, what happened!? Your father, I can't believe it, you and Fyn and… did Dret not-?

 **OSWIN.** Dret couldn't give a shit. I'm glad he pretends I don't exist.

 **FLEK.** But what happened?

 **OSWIN.** Good things. Don't worry about it.

 **FLEK.** 'Good things'!? This is huge and all I get is 'good things'?

 **OSWIN.** Well… why don't you come over?

 **FLEK.** Excuse me?

 **OSWIN.** To the TARDIS. Come and have dinner. Tonight.

 **FLEK.** [ _Startled, moves her hand away from Oswin_ ] Dinner? With you?

 **OSWIN.** Come and meet Adam! You've never met him, and I feel like it'd be good and he'd stop being so insecure about the fact I'm still friends with you. And he can cook, he likes cooking. And he loves animals and does all this charity work – you'd like him. You need time away from Eslilia and this depressing storm and depressing place – and I'll have Nios come and talk about her date, too.

 **FLEK.** No, I can't.

 **OSWIN.** Why not?

 **FLEK.** Because, you know, I've got things to do.

 **OSWIN.** Things my arse; you're just sitting here being mopey. For good reason, of course; but you need a break.

 **FLEK.** I really can't.

 **OSWIN.** You really can! It's a time machine – does everyone keep forgetting this? You could be back here the minute you left. No one would even notice you were going.

[ _A long pause. Oswin smiles warmly at Flek while Flek thinks_ ]

 **FLEK.** …You're not going to take no for an answer, are you?

 **OSWIN.** [ _Grinning_ ] Absolutely not. And haven't you always wanted to see what Earth was like before the pollution destroyed it?

 **FLEK.** I… well… you're still not helping me! Coming and threatening to show me amazing things.

 **OSWIN.** [ _Backtracking_ ] Not in a gay way. You don't _have_ to go see Earth. Or Jenny could show you, she could show you the village. You could go meet Sally – she's _gorgeous_. Or I could convince Adam to drag you off to an aquarium; I hate aquariums but he never stops trying to make me go to them. You could see a squid that _isn't_ a mutant the size of a skyscraper.

 **FLEK.** Hanging out with your new boyfriend will definitely be weird.

 **OSWIN.** Forget about all that then. But have dinner, at least. The change of scenery will be good, and I want you to meet him. Fyn likes him, and you know how Fyn can be. And I'll tell you about my dad. Is it a deal?

 **FLEK.** …Fine, yes, alright. But you know I'm a vegetarian, if he's cooking-

 **OSWIN.** Of course he can do vegetarian, don't worry. He's great, really.

 **FLEK.** Seems like all you ever talk about is how great he is.

 **OSWIN.** Do me a favour and mention that to him so he might be a bit more confident…

 **FLEK.** Not until you sort out this thing with these sex clouds, though. I don't want to get possessed by something that makes me want to sleep with men.

 **OSWIN.** Oh yeah. _That_. Slipped my mind a bit. I am right in thinking you've been developing anti-venoms and inoculations against the wildlife here though, aren't I?

 **FLEK.** I'm a doctor, it's what I do. So. What kind of toxin are you after?

 **AN: First of all, don't you all start worrying that I'm going to break Adwin up in favour of Oslek or introduce some borderline-cheating subplot – that won't happen. I just feel like Adam's insecurity about Flek is something that needs closure before the fic ends. I broke Flek and Eyeball up mainly just because I've never actually liked them being together and it's always been sort of weird, plus I don't particularly like Eyeball while I do like Flek a lot and wanted to write her back in a few more times before the end. Along with that, there's just too many happy couples in this fic and someone needed to break up at some point with the advent of DrNios and the return of Janto.**


	133. Orgasmic Rush of Lust

_Orgasmic Rush of Lust_

[ _Captain Jack Harkness and Rose Tyler are walking together through the corridors of the TARDIS. They are both wearing their spacesuits; neither of them have worn the tailor-made suits before, designed by Oswin and bright white in colour. Currently, they do not have helmets on, and are connected by the comm system to River Song. River is elsewhere in the console room manning the TARDIS in an attempt to track the life signs of Amy and Rory after refusing to allow anybody else the job. Everybody else is still in hiding in the linen cupboard and cannot hear the comms. Jack is carrying a gun which shoots darts coated in venom; Rose has a box of syringes with the anti-venom_ ]

 **ROSE.** I'll tell you what – these suits are a bit tight, don't you think?

 **JACK.** No such thing as too-tight clothing. Unless it's a noose, those things can really chafe.

 **ROSE.** Seriously though, it's like I've got a wedgie. [ _Jack glances at her rear. She notices and hits his arm, laughing_ ] Oi!

 **JACK.** That bottom looks great to me.

 **ROSE.** Cheeky.

 **JACK.** What? Don't you want your chief bridesmaid to tell you your bum is looking fine? Do you want to check mine? [ _He half turns his back to her and she makes a show of putting a hand to her chin and observing thoughtfully_ ]

 **ROSE.** Round, but losing some of its firmness in your old age. Like a ripe peach.

 **JACK.** Old age!?

 **ROSE.** Probably score you an eight out of ten.

 **JACK.** An _eight out of ten_!? [ _Puts his hands on his hips_ ] I'm gonna have to ask Ianto what he thinks. I might have to start doing squats. Or maybe you're just a harsh critic.

 **ROSE.** Honest as they come, mate.

 **JACK.** Then I really _am_ in trouble.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Let me know when you're done flirting with each other so I can give you directions._

 **JACK.** You didn't strike me as someone who doesn't like flirting.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Considering my parents are dying…_

 **JACK.** We've gotta keep talking, you know that. Part of the plan.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Don't mention that, he'll hear you. We're lucky the linen cupboard is soundproofed._

 **JACK.** Him hearing us _is_ the plan.

 **ROSE.** What are these directions, then?

 **JACK.** Not that we're going to stop flirting.

 **ROSE.** Wouldn't dream of it.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Last detected them in the garden._

 **JACK.** Garden. Gotcha. Harkness out. [ _Rose rolls her eyes and does a mime like a yapping mouth with her hand to indicate River is annoying her_ ] Come on, the garden's this way, I think.

 **ROSE.** You're absolutely sure about these spacesuits?

 **JACK.** It's _spacesuit_. When it comes to space you've got to have incredibly bulky or incredibly tight; it's gotta match your skin pore for pore. It'll keep you well-pressurised in the vacuum of space, I promise you now. Unless you accidentally took Clara's spacesuit-

 **ROSE.** No, I double checked. When I realised how tight it is.

 **JACK.** Take it up with Oswin, she made them. Hey, maybe she's into you. God knows I can't think of a reason why anyone _wouldn't_ be. [ _Rose grimaces and keeps picking at bits of the spacesuit_ ] Leave it alone, it could rupture. It's bound to feel weird when we're not in a vacuum.

 **ROSE.** Don't we have any regular gas masks?

 **JACK.** Like those zombies, you mean? [ _Rose gasps and stops in the corridor_ ]

 **ROSE.** Bloody hell. That was when we met, wasn't it?

 **JACK.** I guess it was. Huh. Weird. [ _They continue walking_ ]

 **ROSE.** And you were flirting with me then, as well.

 **JACK.** And looking at your bum. That was the first part of you I saw, dangling off that blimp.

 **ROSE.** Some things never change.

 **JACK.** 'Cept we're both engaged.

 **ROSE.** Whoever cared about a silly thing like that?

 **JACK.** You're lucky your husband's not listening.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _No, I'M listening, and you're really getting on my nerves._

 **ROSE.** We're not gonna just _not_ talk to each other. This is a bit boring, you know.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _I'm sorry if you find saving my parents' lives boring_.

 **JACK.** We're doing everything we can out here. I don't see you coming to help, which you could have done.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _The plan wouldn't have worked and you know it._

 **JACK.** Then be quiet and stop complaining. I'm sure there's a mute button on here somewhere. [ _Silence_ ] That's what I thought. Now, the garden.

[ _They enter the TARDIS garden, which is enormous and closely resembles a greenhouse. It is filled with all manner of exotic plants with unusual fruits growing on them and is under-utilised by the TARDIS crew_ ]

 **ROSE.** God, I haven't been in here for months.

 **JACK.** Me either. I might show it to Ianto. We could have a picnic.

 **ROSE.** A picnic? You?

 **JACK.** Well, why not? It'll be a nice surprise.

[ _Jack holds his dart gun ready to fire, Rose stays close to him, they talk with lowered voices and keep their eyes peeled while trying to maintain levity_ ]

 **ROSE.** So you're going to make the food? For a picnic? I can't even imagine you _buying_ food for a picnic, you didn't come shopping with us today.

 **JACK.** I could make sandwiches. Who do you think I am?

 **ROSE.** Someone who doesn't make sandwiches. Or go on picnics – did you ever take Jenny on picnics?

 **JACK.** [ _Whispering_ ] I think I heard something. [ _Rose looks at him suspiciously. He raises his gun and walks carefully through the trees and bushes_ ]

 **ROSE.** I don't think I heard anything.

 **JACK.** Quiet, I definitely heard something.

 **ROSE.** Is there wildlife in here? Apart from the plants? Is this like, a zoo?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _No, it's just flora._

 **ROSE.** Are you just listening to everything we say?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Of course I am._

 **ROSE.** Typical…

 **RIVER COMMS.** _The Doctor wouldn't remember to take care of living things. He never even remembers there's fruit growing here._

 **ROSE.** Which Doctor?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Eleven, mostly. Lord knows how he takes care of his wife. I'm not getting any life signs from the garden anymore._

 **ROSE.** Nice of you to tell us.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _I'm telling you now!_

 **ROSE.** How are there no life signs? Do you mean me and Jack are dead? Like, we register as dead on the TARDIS scanners?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _No! I mean apart from you two. Obviously._

 **ROSE.** [ _To Jack_ ] Then what are you going on about hearing a noise?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _He's obviously lying because he doesn't want to talk about Jenny._

 **ROSE.** Oh, come on. I thought you two are alright now. Are you fighting again?

 **JACK.** No, we're not fighting. But I don't think she's talking to me.

 **ROSE.** So you _are_ fighting.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _She's just not happy about him using her to retrieve a dangerous alien device that could track Ianto across the universe. Didn't you hear about this?_

 **ROSE.** I must have missed that news bulletin.

 **JACK.** Okay, it's not as bad as it sounds. I wasn't using her. River was the one who brought her along, and I didn't ask either of them to follow me.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Didn't you notice he was missing for days?_

 **ROSE.** I just assumed he was on the lash, or something. Where are we supposed to be going next if they're not in here anymore?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Swimming pool._

 **ROSE.** Great… [ _They walk towards the exit_ ] What 'dangerous alien device' was this, then?

 **JACK.** Just this thing. The Singularity. I needed to find him, by any means possible.

 **ROSE.** Couldn't I have helped with that? If you asked?

 **JACK.** It was something I needed to do on my own.

 **ROSE.** Clearly it was something Jenny needed to do.

 **JACK.** She didn't really do that much.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _She did just about everything. She even cooked dinner, after she killed and butchered dinner first._

 **JACK.** The girl makes a mean steak.

[ _Back in the corridors of the TARDIS_ ]

 **ROSE.** You never even answered about the picnics.

 **JACK.** We went on one, but I'm not very romantic.

 **ROSE.** You seem very romantic where Ianto's concerned.

 **JACK.** I'm just now getting relationship advice for my dead marriage? It's not like I ever saw _her_ making a romantic gesture for _me_. Yet she makes plenty now, she's full to bursting with them. Overflowing, even. She'd probably take _you_ on a picnic if you asked her.

 **ROSE.** Maybe I will. She's alright at cooking.

 **JACK.** Whoa, whoa, whoa. _Alright_ at cooking? She's 'alright'?

 **ROSE.** Uh…

 **JACK.** You know she's a professional chef?

 **ROSE.** No.

 **JACK.** Uh-huh. Trained in a four-star restaurant, in _Italy_. Have you not noticed her teaching Nios how to cook?

 **ROSE.** What does Nios want to cook for?

 **JACK.** Beats me. Maybe she's bored.

 **ROSE.** You sound jealous.

 **JACK.** Of what?

 **ROSE.** Of not Jenny not cooking for you anymore.

 **JACK.** She never cooked for me to begin with! It's all come back to her suddenly because she wants to schmooze Fangs.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _'Fangs'? How mature of you, Jack._

 **JACK.** Okay, shut up. It's a… fond nickname. In fondness. Because I'm fond of her.

 **ROSE.** Fond my arse.

 **JACK.** Yes, I am fond of your arse.

 **ROSE.** Not what I meant.

 **JACK.** But I'd rather talk about that instead. Maybe we should start drilling you about _your_ relationship, huh?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _I'm sure Rose gets plenty of drilling in her relationship._

[ _Jack sniggers_ ]

 **ROSE.** Yeah, alright, more than can be said for you, hologram.

 **JACK.** Ooh, she totally burned you.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Shut up, Jack._

 **ROSE.** Anyway. There's no part of my relationship I'm ashamed of.

 **JACK.** So how's your mother taking the news you're getting remarried?

 **ROSE.** You little bastard. [ _River can be heard suppressing laughter over the comms_ ]

 **JACK.** I thought there's no part of your relationship you're ashamed of?

 **ROSE.** That was an old relationship!

 **JACK.** So's me and Jenny!

 **RIVER COMMS.** _The scanners say you're loitering outside the pool now._

[ _Rose slams her fist on the button that opens the door a little too hard and it dents and gets jammed in the wall, triggering the door to get stuck in the process of opening. It twitches and opens and closes very rapidly, much too fast for them to get through_ ]

 **JACK.** Good going.

[ _To make a point, Rose wedges her hands in the broken doors and clamps them down on each side, pushing the doors apart and holding them with brute strength, something which is very easy for her to do_ ]

 **ROSE.** [ _Glaring at Jack_ ] Do you have any other smart comments to make?

 **JACK.** No ma'am, I do not.

 **ROSE.** Better not. Come on. [ _She holds the doors open as wide as she can reach to make space for him to get through before her_ ]

 **JACK.** I hope you don't let those doors slam on me.

 **ROSE.** I'll try to resist the temptation. But it is _very_ tempting.

[ _Jack slips through the gap and Rose follows, the doors staying stuck open behind them. They are in the pool room, which is complete with multiple gigantic waterslides, wave machines and a Jacuzzi, but there is no sign of either of the Ponds_ ]

 **JACK.** Song, are you not keeping your eyes on the screens properly? Unless they've drowned they're not in here.

 **ROSE.** They could be on one of the slides. Are these spacesuits waterproof?

 **JACK.** Yes, but you can go swimming later, now's not the time.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Sorry. You're right. They've moved on._

 **ROSE.** Bloody hell.

 **JACK.** You need to keep your eyes on the scanners and your ears out of our conversations.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _They're moving quite quickly, it's not my fault._

 **ROSE.** They're _your_ parents. This is feeling like a bit of a wild goose chase.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _The garage._

 **ROSE.** There's a garage?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Just leave and turn left._

 **ROSE.** Definitely no time for a swim?

 **JACK.** No, only time to lead us to a dozen different places.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _This is only the third place I told you to go._

 **JACK.** Well it better be the last one. I haven't got all day.

[ _They vacate the pool, being careful of the door which, though jammed, is still twitching a little_ ]

 **JACK.** But I'm serious, how _is_ your mother taking the news of this next wedding? She is coming, isn't she? I don't need to go charm her into showing up?

 **ROSE.** Not yet, but you better be there to keep her happy the whole day, I'm putting you in charge of that.

 **JACK.** Consider it done. Ianto mentioned you found a wedding dress.

 **ROSE.** I was telling him about it this morning.

 **JACK.** He picked out Gwen's wedding dress for her.

 **ROSE.** So he mentioned.

 **JACK.** Always used to tell us his father was a master tailor. He wasn't, in the end, can't think why he lied… but the boy wears some sharp suits, I'm telling you.

 **ROSE.** [ _Wryly_ ] I've noticed. [ _Jack laughs_ ] He's nice, I like him. Esther likes him. She said you two should go round for dinner, but I don't think Sally was very keen on the idea.

 **JACK.** Sally doesn't like me.

 **ROSE.** Can't please everyone.

 **JACK.** I try my hardest. I'll talk to Esther about it. I'm sure Sally can go and hang out with Fangs, though I doubt she'd ever miss the opportunity to make smart comments about me.

 **ROSE.** She's coming to the wedding now.

 **JACK.** Sally is?

 **ROSE.** The Doctor kept saying we need a photographer. To be honest, I don't care, but Esther vouched for her.

 **JACK.** She must be pretty good if Esther vouched for her, then. I'll be sure to avoid her as I force-feed your mother cocktails.

 **ROSE.** I really doubt there'll be much forcing since we're having a free bar.

 **JACK.** So how much more have you got left to arrange?

 **ROSE.** Christ, really putting me on the spot now… [ _goes quiet while they walk and she thinks_ ] I know we definitely haven't settled on what flowers we're having, I don't think the Doctor and Donna have been to pick out a suit since I told him he has to get a proper wedding suit – there's been some issues getting a catering company, the one we found first pulled out suddenly and has been replaced by this other one we'd never heard of who don't seem to have a website. Something about 'the best publicity is word of mouth', I don't know. But it's going more smoothly than you might think. Although, he does keep going on about wanting to get a ridiculous wedding cake that looks like a giant TARDIS.

 **JACK.** That'd be great!

 **ROSE.** No, I fancy one that looks like a big cupcake, you know? Then with lots more small cupcakes. And all the guests get a small cupcake and then we get the _giant_ one. I'm not having a bloody TARDIS. At least we're agreed on chocolate flavour…

 **JACK.** Ah, small victories. I for one can't wait for this wedding.

 **ROSE.** What about you and Ianto?

 **JACK.** I have a keen plan to very chaotically elope.

 **ROSE.** Typical.

 **JACK.** I'll make sure to bring you along as one of our witnesses, though. You and Gwen. Maybe Rhys if he's not too busy with the baby. Nice and small and fast. In and out.

 **ROSE.** Like going to a drive-through.

 **JACK.** Yep. I'm thinking Starlight District.

 **ROSE.** What's that?

 **JACK.** Basically Vegas, but in the Fifty-First Century and in space.

 **ROSE.** Sounds tacky.

 **JACK.** Tacky and a half – that's the best thing about it. We won't do it until after yours, though. I'd hate to take the spotlight away from a blushing bride such as yourself.

 **ROSE.** Oh, you're too kind.

 **JACK.** Thanks. This is the garage.

[ _They go into the garage, a room on the TARDIS Rose has never been in before. It has an array of vehicles spanning from the partially-destroyed yacht of Adam Mitchell to half a dozen cars also belonging to him including the DeLorean, his 1950s authentic Hudson Commodore, and his Porsche 911. There is also the Doctor's anti-gravity motorbike and Jenny's ancient and completely broken spaceship. The thing which catches Rose's eye, however, is the enormous silver, shining flying saucer, which floats silently alongside a dismantled red Porsche 356 from the 1940s in the process of being restored_ ]

 **ROSE.** What the hell is _that_?

 **JACK.** Jenny's spaceship.

 **ROSE.** Why does she need her own spaceship?

 **JACK.** It's actually pretty cool. Designed by Oswin. Obviously.

 **ROSE.** [ _Looking at the Porsche 356_ ] And what about that car?

 **JACK.** I heard her mention something about it being a gift.

 **ROSE.** A gift from who?

 **JACK.** Jenny. I think it's stolen. You know, I think that might be the stolen car she was talking about earlier, when she got called up about heroin. She's planning on giving it to Clara.

 **ROSE.** Wow. You're right about her 'overflowing with romance' at the moment. Do you think she'd steal _me_ a fancy car? As a wedding present?

 **JACK.** Absolutely, she loves stealing things. River, come in. Any updates?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _In the room with you, apparently_.

 **ROSE.** I don't see or hear them.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Fifteen metres or so ahead of you, other side of the room. They're definitely still in there, I swear._

 **JACK.** Yep. Oh yeah. Sounds about right. [ _He nudges Rose and then points at Adam Mitchell's Hudson Commodore, which she now notices is steadily rocking_ ]

 **ROSE.** Oh my god. Are you serious.

 **JACK.** Uh…

 **RIVER COMMS.** _What is it?_

 **JACK.** It's your parents.

 **ROSE.** They're shagging.

 **JACK.** In the back of Adam's car. Good thing they can't vaporise each other, huh?

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Go and deal with them, then!_

 **ROSE.** Shouldn't we wait for them to finish? It feels a bit rude.

 **JACK.** The quicker we get it over with, the better. And I've always kind of wanted to see what Rory looks like naked. How… 'impressive' he is. If you catch my drift.

 **ROSE.** I do, but I really wish I didn't.

 **JACK.** You're not curious?

 **ROSE.** No! Why would I be?

 **JACK.** Just… y'know. I can't be the only one who thinks she's a little bit out of his league. I just wanna know there's 'other factors' at play.

 **ROSE.** You peep if you want, but just hurry up and open the door and shoot them. I'll stay over here.

 **JACK.** What? What if they get rowdy?

 **ROSE.** Will you not be able to handle them if they're 'rowdy'?

 **JACK.** If I had you there for _backup_ …

 **ROSE.** I'm literally right here. You're a grown up now, I'm sure you'll manage. I can always step in if things get too rough for you. [ _He scowls at her_ ] Go on.

 **JACK.** Fine.

[ _Cautiously, with Rose keeping a steady distance, Jack approaches the car_ ]

 **ROSE.** Hurry up about it, they're going to die soon. [ _He ignores her and continues his slow approach, eventually close enough to knock on the very steamed-up window_ ]

 **JACK.** You crazy kids in there wanna come out? [ _The movement inside ceases_ ]

 **AMY.** [ _To Rory_ ] You didn't tell me there was somebody coming.

 **RORY.** Maybe I didn't hear them. I'm not used to these abilities. I've never known a human to have them before.

 **JACK.** Yep, sure is a feat of nature, Rory's a real miracle.

 **AMY.** I wonder if _this_ body has any _powers_ …

 **JACK.** Apart from the power of being super hot? Come out here and I'll show you what effect that has on people. [ _Jack's hand tightens around his dart gun_ ] Have you scoured their memories enough to work out that I'm immortal? What is that, like an infinite junkie hit? Chain me up and do what you like. Pretty sure Rose could resurrect, too.

 **ROSE.** An untested theory.

 **JACK.** We're hot, ready and willing. C'mon, we could be having the world's hottest orgy right now – Ianto and I used to _love_ playing naked hide-and-seek in the Torchwood base.

 **ROSE.** [ _Cringes_ ] Too much information.

 **RORY.** Immortality _does_ ring a bell…

[ _Sounds of moving around in the car until Amy manages to roll the window down_ ]

 **JACK.** [ _Grinning, holding the gun behind his back_ ] Looks sweaty in there.

 **AMY.** [ _Smirks_ ] Oh, it is. Why don't you come inside, big boy, and tell me just how sweaty it is?

 **JACK.** My pleasure.

[ _Amy reaches out a hand and grabs the utility belt of Jack's spacesuit and drags him closer to the car so he is pressed against it. In a flash, he reveals the gun and shoots her right in the jugular, hitting her hand away and stepping back. Amy screams and Rose comes closer_ ]

 **JACK.** One down.

 **RORY.** [ _Within the car_ ] What have you done to her!?

 **JACK.** Tranq'd her.

 **AMY.** Doesn't feel like tranquiliser, it's burning me. [ _Pulls the dart out of her neck and presses a hand over the wound_ ]

 **JACK.** Maybe the burning is the hostile alien cloud trying to kill you from the inside. C'mon, Amy, wake up a little. Even Carys had better control than this, she didn't let it just take her over, she fought it.

 **AMY.** I can't breathe, I can hardly breathe-

 **ROSE.** How long have we got, exactly?

 **JACK.** Five minutes.

 **ROSE.** Five minutes!? Couldn't she have gone with something a little less potent?

 **JACK.** Oswin said this stuff has the anti-venom with the highest reliability, so that's what we had to go with. Should be losing consciousness any minute now.

 **RORY.** Did you say 'anti-venom'!? What is this, what have you done? Wake up, woman, wake up.

 **ROSE.** Charming. Do you clouds not have names?

 **RORY.** We have a bond that goes beyond names.

 **JACK.** Probably too high to remember at the moment. She looks like she's dozing off. [ _Amy slumps against the back chair of the Commodore_ ]

 **RORY.** No! You can't kill her! You'd rather kill your friends than let us live on in peace?

 **ROSE.** I suppose so.

 **RORY.** And you call us the monsters! [ _Fumbling to get out of the car, Jack is reloading the dart gun. He scrambles out of the opposite side and falls to the floor, then in a blind rage runs at Jack, completely nude. Jack pulls the trigger and shoots Rory with a second poison dart in the abdomen, which stops him in his tracks_ ] No, no, no! You're animals, you humans!

 **ROSE.** You travel across the universe shagging people _to death_ , and _we're_ the animals?

 **RORY.** We wouldn't be able to do anybody to death if you weren't all so up for it.

 **JACK.** You're secreting toxic pheromones.

 **RORY.** You're one to talk when it comes to _toxins_ , what is this?

 **JACK.** Not sure. From a plant. Oswin found it. Now, uh, hurry up and vacate Rory's body before he dies. It's only a precaution so that you can pass into Rose and I and spare their lives.

 **ROSE.** Yep, totally. River's very upset about the prospect of her parents dying, so, you know. We're here to volunteer our services.

 **RORY.** You asked for it.

[ _From Amy's body in the car through the open window and from Rory as he buckles and collapses in a heap on the floor, two glowing purple-pink clouds of vapour emerge, leaving the Ponds unconscious and dying and submitting themselves to the atmosphere_ ]

 **JACK.** Helmets, now!

[ _Jack and Rose push the buttons on the inside of the large electronic collars of the spacesuits at the same time, allowing the clear-glass spherical helmets to emerge and cover their faces to keep them alive_ ]

 **ROSE.** Now what? We just hope the clouds die before them?

 **JACK.** More or less. Really shouldn't take more than ten seconds. I'm not sure they're too bright.

 **ROSE.** Clearly.

[ _They wait and, sure enough, it takes roughly ten seconds for the two clouds to disperse into the air and vanish_ ]

 **ROSE.** To come to a planet where the air kills you that quickly just for a hit, it must be a pretty good hit.

 **JACK.** You could get a heroin addict to run through fire if they were in withdrawal and you had some junk on you. That's what I call chasing the dragon. Get over here with the anti-venoms, will you? They _are_ dying. Like, literally.

 **ROSE.** Oh, right. [ _She gives Jack the box of syringes and he crouches down next to Rory to inject him first because he is the closest_ ] I guess you were right about his, uh… _assets_ then.

 **JACK.** Amy's a lucky girl is all I can say.

 **ROSE.** Mmm.

 **JACK.** Don't ogle the man, he's dying.

 **ROSE.** Well I can't ogle him when he's dead. _That_ would be _weird_.

 **JACK.** He's unconscious, it's still weird.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _I can still hear you._

 **ROSE.** [ _Lies_ ] We're talking about his… abs.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _Yes. Clearly. What's the status?_

 **ROSE.** Both naked, both on the floor, Jack's just finishing off injecting Amy with the anti-venom now. Reckon you should send Mickey and Martha down here with some spare clothes and medical equipment.

 **JACK.** And Clara, she's got a polaroid camera.

 **ROSE.** Why do you want a polaroid camera?

 **JACK.** Because this is hilarious.

 **ROSE.** Alright, so looking at his cock is weird, but taking a photo of it is fine? [ _River clears her throat_ ] And obviously, when I say 'cock' I mean… abs.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _I'm not going to send Clara._

 **ROSE.** Fair enough. She'd probably get over-excited.

 **RIVER COMMS.** _The pair of you sound excited enough already. Just try and keep them alive._

 **ROSE.** Understood.


	134. Three's a Crowd

_Three's a Crowd_

[ _In their rooms_ ]

 **OSWIN.** I just don't see why you think it would be awkward, she's only my ex-girlfriend.

 **ADAM.** Are you joking!? It's _because_ she's your ex-girlfriend why it would be awkward! It's going to be the most awkward thing I've ever had to go through in my whole life! And you want me to cook for her!

 **OSWIN.** She eats vegetable stew everyday that's probably been steeping in a giant vat for weeks, you don't have to do anything fancy. And you cooked for my brother, Fyn's a lot scarier than Flek. And Nios will be there too.

 **ADAM.** I never even talk to Nios!

 **OSWIN.** [ _Softly_ ] Adam, come on. You didn't get this upset when I destroyed your yacht, so why now?

[ _Anguished, Adam Mitchell goes to sit on one of the sofas. Oswin limps over and sits next to him_ ]

 **ADAM.** It's stressing me out.

 **OSWIN.** Mitchell, you're a complete idiot. You have an IQ of 230 and you still can't understand that _I_ am completely in love with you and devoted to you. Which everybody else can see very clearly except you through the giant wall you've erected out of your low self-esteem. And you're already at least one-up on Flek because you've never tried to say that the bombs I built that killed thousands of people were a 'necessary evil.' Not to mention the whole fiasco with that bloody squid…

 **ADAM.** Do you still love her?

 **OSWIN.** …I don't think I'll ever _not_ love her, life's complicated like that. But I'm worried about her; she's not very emotionally astute and she hasn't got anybody close on Eslilia. She did get dumped by her fiancée.

 **ADAM.** Who looks just like you.

 **OSWIN.** Well… _yeah_ , but-

 **ADAM.** What if she makes a move on you?

 **OSWIN.** I've got a boyfriend. He's really great. We're very happy together even though he's stupid. Look, babe, she's one of my best friends, she's my oldest friend who I'm not related to, and she's having a hard time right now. It's really important to me that you meet her – it'll make her less scary, I promise.

 **ADAM.** [ _Unconvincingly_ ] I'm not scared.

 **OSWIN.** Good! Because you shouldn't be! She's sad and she's shy so she'll probably hardly even talk. And I'll be there the whole time, alright?

 **ADAM.** …Alright. Okay. I'll do it.

[ _Oswin throws her arms around him and kisses the side of his face half a dozen times, taking him greatly by surprise_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Thank you _so much_ , it's not going to be anywhere near as bad as you think, I swear. Now you should start cooking whatever you're going to make-

 **ADAM.** _Now?_

 **OSWIN.** Yes, now. I have to go get her. [ _Stares at her like she is crazy_ ] Don't look at me like that, I have to show her into the medibay first so she can check over Amy and Rory. She _is_ the doctor who developed the anti-venoms, after all. Plus, she might want a look at the cats.

 **ADAM.** Send Nios in to help, then. Since Jenny's apparently teaching her how to cook. Maybe _I'll_ teach her how to do something.

 **OSWIN.** I'll do that. [ _Gets up to leave, pauses on her way out of the room_ ] By the way, I love you. In case you need reminding again for the umpteenth time today.

 **ADAM.** [ _Smiles, blushes_ ] I love you too.

/

[ _Forty-five minutes later, outside of Adam and Oswin's rooms, after Flek has been picked up from Eslilia and has examined Amy and Rory_ ]

 **FLEK.** I feel like this is gonna be awkward. Like, _really_ awkward.

 **OSWIN.** You two are as bad as each other.

 **FLEK.** Who?

 **OSWIN.** You and Adam!

 **FLEK.** Wait. [ _grabs Oswin's arm to stop her from going into the room_ ] Are you saying we're alike? Me and your new boyfriend?

 **OSWIN.** Well, he's not a genetically identical time-clone of you with a moody attitude and a cybernetic eyeball-

 **FLEK.** Yeah, alright, I get it.

 **OSWIN.** Come on, stop being a baby. [ _Drags Flek into the room as the doors open_ ]

 **FLEK.** No, no! I'm not-

 **OSWIN.** [ _Announcing their arrival to the room_ ] Finally managed to stop her from ogling Amy's naked corpse. [ _Flek goes red_ ]

[ _Only Adam and Nios are in the room, both standing in the kitchen next to the oven. Adam has been tapping his foot very anxiously and playing with his phone, which he almost drops on the floor when Flek and Oswin enter_ ]

 **NIOS.** Careful there.

 **ADAM.** I am careful.

 **NIOS.** So what's the verdict on Amy and Rory?

 **FLEK.** They'll be fine, just need a few days to recover. Martha can keep any eye on them.

 **OSWIN.** And if they _do_ die then I'm sure Dr Death will want a go on the bodies.

 **NIOS.** Don't say things like that.

 **OSWIN.** Anyway. Flek, this is Adam Mitchell, obviously, and Adam, this is Flek.

 **ADAM.** Hi. [ _Flek nods and waves a little_ ]

 **OSWIN.** What have you cooked, in the end? Nothing with meat?

 **ADAM.** Baked potatoes.

 **OSWIN.** What have we got to drink?

 **ADAM.** Uh… apart from tea? There's still some ciders… I'm sure your sister has a stash of alcohol somewhere.

 **FLEK.** I'll just have water. If you were offering – I don't mean to assume.

 **OSWIN.** Eurgh, you're pathetic.

 **FLEK.** I don't drink anymore.

 **OSWIN.** What a coincidence, neither do I. Not even pansy fruit ciders.

 **ADAM.** I just like alcohol that doesn't taste like alcohol…

 **NIOS.** Why don't you just have juice, then? [ _Adam cannot think of a good answer_ ]

 **FLEK.** It's hard to get cold, clean water on Eslilia.

 **OSWIN.** Thank god Adam's got a talent for making things cold.

[ _The oven dings. Nios watches Adam get the potatoes out closely while Oswin and Flek sit down opposite each other at the table_ ]

 **ADAM.** [ _Uneasily_ ] Do you want cheese?

 **FLEK.** From a cow?

 **OSWIN.** Yes, from a cow. Have you turned vegan?

 **FLEK.** No, but – you know what cows are like.

 **ADAM.** …What are cows like?

 **OSWIN.** It's from a Twenty-First Century cow. Not a mutated monster like we had on Horizon.

 **ADAM.** [ _Sorting plates and cutlery_ ] Is everything mutated in the future?

 **FLEK.** It's horrible, no one has any concern for the environment anymore, it's like they never did. All the Alliance cares about is-

 **OSWIN.** [ _Coolly_ ] Come on, now. Let's not talk about that.

 **FLEK.** He asked.

[ _Nios's phone buzzes. Oswin seizes the opportunity to change the subject away from the Homeworld Alliance and the Cluster Spores_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Is that your girlfriend?

 **NIOS.** [ _Defensive_ ] She's not my… I don't know what she is. I don't think she's my girlfriend.

 **OSWIN.** Is it her, though?

[ _Adam brings two plates with two potatoes each to the table. Nios sits down next to Flek. Adam goes to fill a jug of water and chill it with his cryokinesis_ ]

 **NIOS.** Yes.

 **OSWIN.** So it went well, then? Or did it go so badly she just has to abuse you over text?

 **ADAM.** Oswin, be nice. I'm sure Nios isn't getting abused over text.

 **OSWIN.** _I_ can abuse her over text if she wants.

 **ADAM.** She gets enough abuse from you in person. [ _He sets down the jug of water and a glass, then a bag of optional cheese. He talks to Flek, sitting down next to Oswin_ ] There should be baked beans, really, but it was all very short notice and I don't think we've got any.

 **NIOS.** [ _Looking at her phone_ ] We did, Clara ate them when everyone was in the cupboard.

 **ADAM.** What do you mean, she ate them?

 **NIOS.** She just ate them.

 **ADAM.** We didn't have any cutlery.

 **NIOS.** She just kind of drank them out of the tin.

 **ADAM.** _Cold?_ [ _Nios nods_ ] Eurgh.

 **FLEK.** This potato grew in the ground? This is a real potato? I don't know if I've ever seen a _real_ potato.

 **ADAM.** It's a good British potato.

 **NIOS.** Why does it matter where it comes from?

 **ADAM.** It's just nice if it comes from the same country where you buy it. The jet fumes created by unnecessarily importing produce just for the excuse of outsourcing cheap, foreign labour is devastating the ozone layer. Not to mention it's immoral.

 **OSWIN.** See Flek, I told you he cares about all that environment crap. But now I'm _dying_ to hear about Nios's date!

 **NIOS.** Is that the only reason I'm here?

 **ADAM.** Honestly you should just get it over with and tell her. She won't shut up about it otherwise.

 **NIOS.** It… was… good.

 **OSWIN.** _Good_? I set you up on a date and all you can say is 'it was good'?

 **NIOS.** You never talk about _your_ dates.

 **OSWIN.** We went to the air and space museum in Washington earlier this week and Adam nearly got us kicked out trying to bribe someone to let him sit in the Virgo-II Lunar Lander, and he ate this prawn sandwich that nearly made him sick on the table. Oh, but this really skeezy security guard told us that he _would_ let Adam into the pod if _I_ snogged him. Which I politely declined.

 **ADAM.** I wouldn't say you 'politely' declined, you hit him in the shin with your stick.

 **OSWIN.** Whatever. Now it's your turn, Ni. What happened with Dr Death?

[ _Flek is finally eating her potatoes after letting cheese and butter melt into them. She is ravenous after only eating very watered down stew for months and has never tasted real cheese or butter or potato before_ ]

 **NIOS.** We went to a café first because she hadn't had lunch yet and she was worried I'd be offended because I can't eat.

 **OSWIN.** Aww, she knew you couldn't eat and still brought you to a café? She must have really wanted to spend time with you.

 **NIOS.** She said that.

 **OSWIN.** What else?

 **NIOS.** She took me to this medical museum where you need ID that proves you're a medical professional to get in.

 **OSWIN.** You haven't got ID that proves you're a medical professional.

 **NIOS.** No, she just sort of glared at the man at the desk until he let her do what she wanted.

 **ADAM.** Should've brought her with us to D.C., she could have convinced the guy to let me in the lunar lander.

 **OSWIN.** So you looked at gross things, right?

 **NIOS.** More or less.

 **FLEK.** [ _Finally pausing from her food_ ] What kind of gross things?

 **NIOS.** There was this massive tapeworm. Then she said she's got a tapeworm in her flat. And there were more dead babies than I'd ever want to see.

 **OSWIN.** [ _To Flek_ ] She's really obsessed with death.

 **FLEK.** I never would have guessed. It's not like you call her 'Dr Death' or anything. Does she not hate being called that?

 **NIOS.** She actually quite likes it. She's called Cohen.

 **FLEK.** That's her first name?

 **NIOS.** No.

 **OSWIN.** Do you know what her first name is yet? Did she tell you?

 **NIOS.** She told me when I asked her out; when she wrote her phone number down for me she wrote her name along with it. But she wouldn't be happy if I told you, she banned me from calling her by it.

 **ADAM.** That's cute that she wrote her number down. Did things go well, then?

 **NIOS.** I think so. She's still texting me.

 **ADAM.** Well, that's nice. A lot more normal than some of the other relationships on this spaceship.

 **OSWIN.** Like who?

 **ADAM.** Jack and Jenny, mainly.

[ _Someone knocks on the door and does not wait to be allowed in to enter, opening it and barging in immediately_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Speak of the devil and the devil shall appear.

 **JENNY.** [ _Standing in the doorway_ ] Devil?

 **OSWIN.** We were just talking about you.

 **JENNY.** Really? That's nice. Listen, I… what's going on? Oh – hi, Flek! It's been a while! How's the wedding planning going?

[ _Flek coughs on her water_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Do you want something?

 **JENNY.** Just need your help. This looks totally awkward. Is this awkward?

 **NIOS.** I don't think you're helping.

 **JENNY.** Nios! How did your date go? Clara and I are desperate to know.

 **NIOS.** It went well.

 **JENNY.** [ _Grinning_ ] Glad to hear it! Did you kiss her?

 **OSWIN.** Ooh, yeah, did you?

 **NIOS.** …Maybe. [ _Jenny squeals with excitement_ ]

 **OSWIN.** Eurgh, that noise is inhuman.

 **JENNY.** I'm an alien. You kissed her though! Clara'll be so impressed, she's always moaning at me for being tactless when it comes to things like that.

 **ADAM.** You? Tactless?

 **JENNY.** Something to do with me not being able to work out she fancied me.

 **ADAM.** But you were sleeping together for two months before you started going out.

 **JENNY.** I know! Weird, isn't it? [ _Clears throat_ ] Anyway. Oswin. If I hypothetically had about a hundred kilos of heroin, do you think you might know a way to get rid of it? Or make it useful?

 **OSWIN.** _What_!?

 **JENNY.** Hypothetically!

 **FLEK.** What are you doing with that much heroin?

 **JENNY.** It's _hypothetical._ But I need you to come with me.

 **OSWIN.** Why!?

 **JENNY.** You've got a talent for explosives!

 **OSWIN.** [ _Begrudgingly getting out of her chair_ ] You're ridiculous, and you bloody owe me for this.

 **JENNY.** Thank you _so much_ for helping with my hypothetically problem, I literally love you.

 **OSWIN.** Yeah, whatever…

[ _Jenny and Oswin leave. Nios's eyes are glued to her phone again_ ]

 **ADAM.** …How's the potato, then? Sorry I couldn't come up with anything more interesting. I made ratatouille for Fyn the last time we had dinner.

 **NIOS.** You cooked rat?

 **ADAM.** No, it's all vegetables.

 **FLEK.** This is probably one of the nicest things I've ever eaten.

 **ADAM.** What? Really?

 **FLEK.** I've basically lived on rations for most of my life, travelling with Spores, then the Dust War, now Eslilia… food in our century isn't very good to start with, let alone when it's rationed.

 **ADAM.** They don't have anywhere that grows fresh food?

 **FLEK.** We try on Eslilia.

 **ADAM.** What's the soil toxicology like there?

 **NIOS.** _Soil toxicology_?

 **ADAM.** Well – I don't know – if it's similar to Earth and unpolluted I'm sure we could get Earth vegetables and fruits to grow there. Or surely you could build a greenhouse with imported soil if there's a risk of Earth plants becoming an invasive species and harming the ecosystem.

 **FLEK.** I thought you said food _shouldn't_ be imported.

 **ADAM.** I think the TARDIS is carbon neutral, though.

 **FLEK.** I'll think about it. Oswin's dying to spend more time on Eslilia, maybe you can tag along and stop her from… well, you know. Upsetting anyone.

 **NIOS.** Doesn't sound like Oswin, wanting to spend time on Eslilia.

 **FLEK.** [ _Annoyed_ ] She's making it her new special project to find me a new girlfriend out of the Remnants.

 **NIOS.** It might work out. She _is_ telling the truth about convincing me to speak to Cohen. And the same with Jenny and Other Clara.

 **FLEK.** [ _Trying to change the subject_ ] Speaking of Jenny, it's interesting that you apparently worry about Oswin hanging around with _me_ but not with her.

 **ADAM.** Er…

[ _Flek immediately backtracks_ ]

 **FLEK.** Not to sound rude, or anything! I didn't mean to be rude, or pass judgement on your relationship. It's just – she mentions you being insecure.

 **ADAM.** How nice of her…

 **FLEK.** She says it just because she's worried. And you shouldn't be – she thinks the world of you. Besides, she would never cheat on anybody. Dret once cheated on someone and she screamed at him and called him a 'morally bankrupt waste of sperm.' And she nearly stuck razorblades onto his toothbrush, but Fyn wouldn't let her.

 **ADAM.** Well that's a story she's never told me…

 **FLEK.** I'm still surprised you're not more jealous of Jenny.

 **ADAM.** I think everybody is jealous of her a bit. But she's so nice it's impossible to maintain…

 **NIOS.** [ _Murmurs in agreement, still looking at her phone and texting_ ] She has that effect on people.

 **FLEK.** What's the story behind the heroin?

 **ADAM.** I don't know. She got a phone call earlier today from someone in the mob saying they'd been shot and needed her help to carry off a heroin deal, and she refused and said narcotics are bad news and they should start a prostitution racket instead.

 **NIOS.** She's probably trying to keep it off the streets.

 **FLEK.** The mob?

 **ADAM.** You know. Organised crime.

 **FLEK.** Jenny's a criminal?

 **ADAM.** Yeah.

 **NIOS.** How _did_ she get involved with the mob?

 **ADAM.** I haven't a clue.

[ _The door opens and Oswin returns looking irritated, not saying a word until she has sat back down at the table by Adam's side_ ]

 **FLEK.** Everything alright?

 **OSWIN.** That bloody woman – I've just had to write her instructions on how to make thermite so she can get rid of all that junk.

 **ADAM.** With _your_ handwriting?

 **OSWIN.** She claims she can read it. If she blows herself up that's her own fault. For asking for the recipe for dangerous explosives. [ _To Adam_ ] I swear, if you ever pull a stunt like that I'll dump you on the spot.

 **ADAM.** Duly noted.

 **OSWIN.** I don't know _how_ Ravenwood puts up with it. Did I miss anything exciting?

 **ADAM.** We were just talking about soil.

 **OSWIN.** [ _Appalled_ ] Soil? God help us all.

 **FLEK.** Adam thinks he might try to help us grow Earth vegetables on Eslilia. Build a proper greenhouse.

 **OSWIN.** That's sweet, babe, but no one likes vegetables. If you work out a way to grow pizza and ice cream on trees, _then_ you'll be getting somewhere.

 **ADAM.** Thanks for your support.

 **OSWIN.** Of course you have my support! I suppose there won't be anything for _me_ to do on Eslilia now if genius-boy is there.

 **FLEK.** You could always help us find clean energy solutions.

 **OSWIN.** Oh, Adam can do that, easy-peasy. Don't need me. Besides, I think the weather on Eslilia is grim.

 **NIOS.** Doesn't that mean you're out of projects?

 **OSWIN.** Mmm. Maybe I'll start contributing to your education as well as Jenny.

 **NIOS.** Um… I'm not very interested in machines.

 **OSWIN.** You _are_ a machine.

 **NIOS.** So what?

 **OSWIN.** Ugh. I'll just put jetpacks in the spacesuits then.

 **FLEK.** If you're that desperate, you can do me a favour and design a water purifier. It's hard to filter the water on Eslilia.

 **OSWIN.** Consider it done.

 **FLEK.** Honestly, there's a lot of parts of the general infrastructure that need improvement. Might be an idea to come and assess it, if you're serious about how bored you are.

 **OSWIN.** I'm always bored. But you've been there for ages, why haven't you asked for help before?

 **FLEK.** Didn't think you would be keen on the idea of helping the Cluster Spores again.

 **OSWIN.** If Mitchell wants to help the Spore Remnants, then _I'll_ help the Spore Remnants.

 **ADAM.** What? No, I don't want-

 **OSWIN.** He'll be there to make sure everything stays above board. By which I mean not weapons. Besides, my brother _does_ live there.

 **FLEK.** You're going to reconcile with him, then?

 **OSWIN.** …Maybe. I'll talk to Fyn about it.

 **FLEK.** I think Fyn dislikes him more than you do.

 **OSWIN.** Then it's settled, me and Mitchell will both come and help, because you asked so nicely. And I'll find you a girlfriend. Honestly, you'll thank me. And in return you _will_ let us take you to Earth before it turned into a polluted cesspool, alright? Adam has this gorgeous house right on the seafront in England. Not that I like the sea, but you might.

 **ADAM.** You've never cared much about Earth before.

 **OSWIN.** It's nicer than Horizon. And I _do_ like your fancy mansion.

 **FLEK.** Well, maybe a trip to Earth would be nice. One day. But, um, is there anything for dessert?


	135. Like Father, Like Daughter

**DAY 154**

 _Like Father, Like Daughter_

 _Jenny_

To say she was a Time Lord, at present Jenny was almost entirely oblivious to the hours rolling by around her. Suffice it to say she was in a very good mood as lunch time threatened to pass her by; it had all begun that morning when Clara had woken up at the semi-ordinary time of ten AM, thanks to being on the TARDIS and away from the influence of Earth's tyrannical day to night cycle. Remarkably, this allowed them to have a breakfast date at a café in Hollowmire at around eleven, and spending time with Clara during the day was something Jenny was never going to take for granted, even if it had been rather a dreary one. It had continued with Clara reminding her that she still had to keep her evening free because of some surprise that was being planned, and so Jenny had returned to the TARDIS in high spirits with the intention of surprising Clara right back by finishing the repairs on the stolen Porsche 356 that had been shot to pieces.

It had taken a while, but she had finally almost finished and had quite enjoyed playing grease monkey for the day. She always forgot that she liked fixing things so much. In fact, she often forgot what things she liked to do. It was only recently she had remembered her passion for cooking – maybe soon she was going to try and get back into acrobatics full time. There were only a few parts of the car missing, and she was contemplating this with her wrench in her hand and sonic screwdriver behind her ear, trying to think of where to get a spark plug for an antique sports car at short notice, when she was interrupted by somebody else coming into the garage. She looked up and smiled when she saw it was her father.

"Morning," she greeted him.

"It's the afternoon, I think you'll find," the Doctor said. He was holding his psychic paper.

"No, it's like, noon."

"It's almost three."

"It's _what_? That means this took way longer than it should have done…"

"Yes, well, I have something to…" he stopped speaking when he took in their surroundings properly and noticed the bright red car Jenny was studying so carefully with the bonnet propped open to reveal all its shiny new innards. He gawked at it and then looked at her, so enamoured by the presence of this vehicle that he couldn't get the words together to ask her what she was doing with it. Clearly he had not been in the garage for quite a while.

"It's a 356," she told him, though she was sure he knew that, "I've been fixing it up. Just needs a spark plug until it'll be purring."

" _Where_ did you get it?"

"It was… a present. It's my stolen car, I was talking about it yesterday. Big Sal accused Viola of killing Carlito, so to get revenge she had Mahoney steal this car. Then she pawned it off on _me_ when I was there last investigating and that was when I got shot." She still had a solitary bandage wrapped around the bullet wound on her arm, but only to stop Martha from remembering it was there and giving her _more_ lectures about personal safety. "Anyway, Viola annoyed me so I took the car and now I promised Clara she could have it, since Old Twelvey came and 'reclaimed' his anti-gravity bike."

"Wow. Well. I think it's very impressive."

Jenny laughed, "Thanks."

"Does she _need_ a car, though? Can she not turn into a bat and fly?"

"She needs one for shopping. Right now she and Esther go to the supermarket together most of the time, but Esther doesn't like being a taxi driver."

"Maybe they ought to go to a different supermarket after yesterday's business."

"I heard that Undercoll are running clean-up of the meteorite, anyway."

"Who did you hear that from?"

"Oh, there's a group chat."

"There's a… excuse me?"

"I don't know, Sally made it. It's really annoying. Anyway, Esther mentioned it because James Elliott is coming up and you know all about Sally and Elliott's thing."

"Erm… apparently I'm very out of touch with gossip. The youth of today, I say. I feel like a real father at the moment with his teenage daughter explaining to him how Facebook works."

"I haven't a clue how Facebook works," Jenny confessed, "I'm really not interested in the gossip, but Clara won't show me how to put the messages on mute so I have to put up with them all."

"Which one is James Elliott, again?"

"Never met him. Apparently he's cute, according to Oswin. He keeps asking Sally out and she keeps rejecting him."

"Then where's the gossip?"

"Well, she _did_ sleep with him," Jenny said in a lowered voice, like Sally herself might be listening.

"How incredibly scandalous of her."

"My point was that they're going to get rid of the meteor so the supermarket will be safe from now on. I couldn't care less who Sally Sparrow is sleeping with, as long as it's not with my girlfriend."

"I must say I share your sentiments exactly. Anyway, I'm a _big_ fan of the car, very cool."

"Don't look at it like that, you're not allowed to drive it. She probably won't even let _me_ drive it again."

"Must be nice for her having you after being so unlucky with that Danny Pink. I never liked him."

"Wow, dad, you almost sound like you're not completely grossed out by the fact I'm going out with her," she jibed.

"I happen to like Clara a lot and wouldn't wish her to be unhappy no matter what universe she comes from."

"We'll be having family dinners together next."

"Mmm." He stood with his hands in his trouser pockets for a moment looking at the car with some degree of awe, and Jenny watched him, waiting for him to remember why he had come there in the first place, which she was sure was _just_ on the tip of his tongue. "Ah! I had something to show you…" He took his psychic paper back out again and Jenny dropped her heavy wrench back in the toolbox at her feet before wiping her oily hands on a rag. She was quite dirty after all her mechanical work that day. "Here, I got a message through on the psychic."

"That's unusual."

"Yes, not a lot of people know how to do that. River used to do it all the time."

"I wish _I'd_ known you could send messages through psychic paper; would have saved me a lot of trouble. Two-hundred years' worth."

"Message reads," and here he cleared his throat, "' _Commander A. Skallagrim urgently requesting the assistance of Commodore J. Young at Lunis Terminal, Texoid System, 15/5/4887, lives in danger_.' Only 'lives in danger' is in capital letters. I got this through earlier and couldn't for the life of me work out what it was about; I'm assuming it _is_ for you? Clara said she thought it might be, then she said the name sounded Viking but I thought that couldn't be right, given the date."

"You'd be surprised… let me have a look." She took the psychic paper from him and scanned the message with her own eyes, very surprised that she didn't detect any crude humour slipping through the scrawled characters that had clearly been penned by none other than Ashildr. Perhaps that meant it really _was_ urgent. She sighed and rubbed her forehead with the back of her hand, then gave the psychic paper back to the Doctor and went about closing the lid of the Porsche. "Do you know anywhere I might get a spark plug for an antique car?"

"Potentially anywhere on the TARDIS," he said after a pause, studying her, wondering why she had not explained what the message meant.

"I need one today…" her eyes strayed to Adam Mitchell's Porsche 911 on the other side of the room. The Doctor followed her gaze.

"Is stealing from Adam really the best course of action? It's not even the same model."

"But…"

"No, no, the poor boy's cars have suffered enough for one lifetime. I'll find you a spark plug. We have a time machine, it can't be that hard. In exchange, you can tell me what that note means," he firmly offered her this ultimatum.

"Just an old friend," said Jenny, "Well, not an _old_ friend, sort of a recent friend. And not so much a friend, really, just… someone I've met. Who I owed."

"That doesn't quite constitute telling me what it means."

"They're just asking for my help. Technically, she's my subordinate so I'm not obligated to even respond, I could just stay here trying to build a spark plug all day and could just go on my date this evening without having to worry about whatever this is. I think I'd quite like to do that, you know."

"Excuse me? Ignore people asking for your help?" he crossed his arms and looked at her with an unbearable amount of judgement. Like he was ashamed.

"It's not like that! She should be able to handle it herself, she's… if there's something going on that she can't manage, it must be very, _very_ dangerous. And I promised Clara and I promised Martha that I wouldn't go getting myself into dangerous situations anymore, alright? Of course I want to help people, but-"

"And if they're your subordinates then it _is_ your job to keep them safe, isn't it?"

"Not if they're soldiers, they know the risks," Jenny said. He continued to look at her, and she looked away, unable to hold his gaze. "I'm just trying to keep myself safe."

"You were already on Rospaonus this week, that's one of the most dangerous inhabitable planets in the known universe."

"And we live in a time machine, so I can just… wait a bit. And then go. Later. Not right now. Right now, I have to fix this car, so that-"

"I very much beg to differ. I think you should answer it."

"No you don't, you just want to see what it is."

"Of course I do! That's hardly a crime. What was it? Lunis Terminal, May 15th? 4887? If you're not going to answer it I'm sure they can manage with the next best thing." The Doctor turned to leave the garage to make a point to her, and she stared at him in shock.

"You can't," she said, but he ignored her completely and was out of the door before she got half a mind to run after him. She bolted away from the car - though it pained her to do so because she really did want to have her surprise date before getting involved in anything else 'dramatic', and leaving the car's side was like submitting herself to being in grave danger yet again. And really, that was exactly what she was doing. "Just leave it, dad," she called after him, trying to block his way as he turned to make the detour to the console room that didn't involve passing through Nerve Centre or the bedrooms. He stopped and looked down at her. "Send Jack after it! He'll manage. He could… he could take Esther, or something-"

" _Esther_? On a _space station_? That's terribly reckless. If she even got the tiniest bit upset she might completely break the artificial gravity."

"Just Jack then! Jack and… the others there will manage. I'm sure. Plus, he owes me for going to rescue him and reuniting him with Ianto. He can't die, he'll be fine," Jenny said.

"You're about that age now where you should learn to stick to your commitments."

"My _commitments_?"

"I might disapprove of you being in the military-"

"The request comes from the navy, actually, the Star Fleet."

"The armed whatever-you-call them. But I think if there are people in _danger_ and you are directly called upon-"

"I don't want to get myself killed!"

"I won't let you get killed! I'll tag along. I'm very intrigued by this Viking name."

"She's really a lot less intriguing than she sounds," Jenny lied. Ashildr was still quite the enigma, truthfully.

"I want to know who this is who knows how to send messages to my psychic paper. I'm going whether you come with me or not."

"You can't do that, you'll get yourself killed. I don't know how, but you definitely will. What would Clara think?"

"She would think she has a wonderful new wife, I'm sure. Now, are you going to come? I'll still get you your spark plug and make sure you are absolutely home in time for your hot date."

"Don't say 'hot date.'"

"Why not?"

"Just don't. You're too old."

"I'm-!?"

"Yes! Way too old! Way too old to go on dates at all. Don't even make me thing about… eurgh."

"Funny, we went to see a musical this week-"

"Gross!"

"I think it was _Rent_ , we went all the way to 1996 and caught it in its first Broadway run and Clara cried the whole way through-"

"Shut up, oh my god. Fine. You can come with me to the thing if you stop being embarrassing. And don't deny being embarrassing because you were definitely being completely embarrassing," she ordered him, and he smiled. "Just… let me wash all this oil off my face first. And I think we'd better take the space suits. To be safe."

"If you're not in the console room in half an hour I'm leaving without you. Understood?"

"Yes. Alright. And if anything happens to me, _you_ have to answer to Martha and Ravenwood."

"Honestly, I think I'd rather die in space than deal with that, so consider yourself safe."

"I better be…"


	136. I Came, I Saw, I Consumed

_I Came, I Saw, I Consumed_

 _Jenny_

"You do seem to get called out to an awful lot of desolate spaceships and spacestations," Eleven remarked to her quietly. She had almost missed his half-hour time window to meet in the console room because she had been quite busy, trying to work out which gun she should bring with her to best deal with whatever threat Ashildr was struggling to contain. In the end, she had only brought her small plasma gun as her main weapon, because it was the only thing she had which fit the time period, but kept her revolver stashed in her other holster as well. She held the plasma gun in her hand, ready to use it at a moment's notice, though her father very typically wasn't being half as careful.

"I'm in high demand," she said.

"Have you been here before?"

"Nope. Have you?"

"Never wanted to have much to do with the Homeworld Alliance. Always struck me as a little… colonial. Imperialism but shiny. Messing around where they don't belong."

"Wow, I never had you pegged for a hypocrite before…"

"I've never messed around somewhere I don't belong in my entire life, thank you very much. Anyway, I was asking a question."

"I didn't hear you ask anything," Jenny said, stepping very carefully around the corners and checking the shadows for any movement. But their surroundings were unusual. It was icy cold. True enough, they were wearing spacesuits which were insulated against extreme temperatures – they had to be so that they wouldn't freeze to death in the vacuum of space, which would make them completely redundant as objects – but inside Lunis Terminal it felt just as cold as it might do outside.

"I've heard a lot of mixed things about the Alliance," he said, "About people being very grateful for the work they do stabilising inhospitable human colonies, but they also seem to have quite a bloody history of wartime atrocities. You _were_ in the Polaris Wars."

"I defected during the Polaris Wars, I've told you about that," she said. She stopped, only half listening, and lifted up her arm to use the holographic interface on her left bracer, using the suit's environmental monitors to work out the air temperature around them. "Wow, would you look at that? It's almost minus thirty degrees. Almost makes me want to put the helmet on." Neither of them were wearing the helmets. They were both warmer than humans, and only her face was getting chilly in the exposure. She didn't think she was quite at risk of frostbite yet, but she could see her breath in front of her.

"Minus thirty? Celsius? That doesn't make any sense, this is a space station. Humans can't live in those temperatures in a place like this."

"Minus thirty and decreasing. Looks like there's an issue with the life support system," she said, "Can't pinpoint it. The air content still looks about right, but the artificial gravity is only at six Newtons per kilogram."

"I thought I was feeling a little light-headed…"

"She said that there are lives in danger, but I don't see anybody here at all, do you?" Jenny looked around.

"No, you're right." It was completely deserted, and more than that, there weren't any signs of fighting or a struggle. She spied something that had been dropped on the floor in a container that looked like it came from a fast food restaurant, and she crouched down next to it and carefully lifted the box to see what it was.

"Barely any mould on this stuff," she said, "It's like everyone packed up and left all at once."

"I wonder if your mysterious contact is one of them," the Doctor commented wryly. He kept fumbling like he wanted to put his hands in his pockets, before realising he didn't have any pockets on the spacesuit, so he just went back to wringing his hands together in that way he often did.

"Yeah, well," Jenny said, about to go around another corner and holding her gun in her right hand, with the bad thumb. She glanced back at the Doctor for a second, "Hopefully we run into someone s-" Something slammed into the side of her face so hard she was knocked sideways and actually rendered quite dazed, seeing bright lights and sparkles in front of her eyes from the force. She only regained herself enough to swing, rather blindly, with her gun-hand at shadowy figure when someone grabbed her wrist to stop her and then kicked sharply at her ankle to knock her down onto the floor. It had all happened in less than five seconds, and the Doctor had been completely helpless.

"I expected better than that! That's two points to me." Instead of trying to get back at Jenny's assailant, the Doctor, alarmed and angry, stepped forward to help Jenny back to her feet. Imagine Jenny's surprise when she found herself looking into the deceptively young face of the newly-promoted Commander Skallagrim, the faux-child with the Viking name. Jenny tried to glare, but the muscles weren't working properly.

"Why did you hit me?"

"To teach you a lesson! About paying attention to your surroundings. I saw you were caught off guard and I took the opportunity."

"To slug me!?"

"It's this game we have."

"Since _when_?" Jenny saw Ashildr shrug.

"Right now, I guess. It's two-nil to me." Annoyed, Jenny very obviously drew back her good hand to punch Ashildr in her face right back, with her own left eye still twitching and burning. She swung for Ashildr and when Ashildr very easily went to block, Jenny kicked her in the side of her knee in a flash and Ashildr slipped and fell to the floor herself.

"Don't be a brat," Jenny sighed. On the floor, Ashildr tried to grab Jenny's foot and drag her down again, but Jenny held out her gun and cocked it. The lights along the barrel lit up vibrant green to show it was armed and primed. Ashildr paused in the middle of what she was doing. "Seriously."

"Spoilsport," Ashildr muttered, getting to her feet again.

"I'm your superior officer and I'm ordering you not to hit me again."

"Can I hit _him_?" she nodded at Eleven.

"Who _are_ you?" the Doctor snapped, "And why are you attacking my daughter?" Ashildr glanced between them, then her jaw dropped, and she got a look on her face like a child seeing it had been gifted a puppy on Christmas morning.

"Is this-? Oh, _wow_. This is very exciting, the two of you. Here I thought you only had eyes for the American one."

"Whatever," Jenny muttered, rubbing the side of her face. It was smarting quite severely without a sign of it letting up.

"Jenny, what's going on."

"This is Ashildr," she said, "You've met her. Very briefly. You'll remember her as the girl who killed me the last time I regenerated, and also Ravenwood's ex-girlfriend."

"How old are you?" the Doctor asked her abruptly.

"You should never ask a woman her age," Ashildr quipped.

"You don't look old enough to be a woman to me."

"Old enough to be a woman to Clara," she said, winking.

"I swear, if you called me out here just to make fun of me-" Jenny began warningly.

"Not at all. Came out to meet you, actually. Heard the TARDIS. Sound carries well on a spacestation where none of the systems are online. Anyway, I've got to make fun of you _now_ , because I wouldn't demean you like this in front of any of your actual underlings, General."

"Excuse me?" the Doctor asked.

"She's a general," said Ashildr, "Worked for a black ops sector ordering covert assassinations of high profile enemies of the Alliance."

"I've never done that."

"Ah, that's exactly what you would say."

"She's lying," she told the Doctor, holding a hand over her eye and squinting, "I promise, I'm just a major. Or commodore if this is Star Fleet jurisdiction."

"No, no, no, don't downplay your role so-"

"I'm leaving," she decided, "Handle whatever's going on without me. I didn't even want to come, I have much more important things to do, I have to find a spark plug-"

"Jenny, darling," the Doctor said, "Don't-"

"God, I'm sorry, alright? I didn't realise you were in a mood."

"You punched me in the face!" Jenny argued with Ashildr, "If you want me to stick around at all you'd better give me a very good explanation of what's happening. Otherwise I'll leave you here to freeze to death. You've lived for thousands of years, maybe this is your last one." The Doctor looked at her in shock that she would really say something like that to somebody. Until Ashildr made her next remark.

"You sound just like him when you're callous. You and your father do seem pretty similar, now that I think about it, has anyone ever mentioned?"

"They mention it all the time," Jenny said coolly. "Now. Speak, or I'm gone."

"We're going this way, I need to introduce you to my team. Don't lag behind." Ashildr began to lead them off the same way she had come from. "You can put your gun away too, the entire place is empty."

"Funny, because here I thought your message said lives were in danger, but there don't seem to be any lives here," said Jenny.

"There are. There's five of us and then you two, that's seven lives in danger. Twenty-thousand lives already lost, and that's just here. It's almost definitely reached the millions, potentially billions. Tricky to quantify."

"Excuse me?" Jenny was shocked, "Billions of people dead and the Alliance aren't even here?"

"We're the Alliance, technically."

"I feel like I'm missing out on a lot of key backstory here," the Doctor interrupted, looking mainly at Jenny.

"Oh. Right. You remember how I said Austin Cargill framed me for the Polaris Death Charge? Ashildr was there, on Deftan, fighting for the Alliance as a private. She also believed the stories that _I_ was responsible for it and when she was tricked into showing up at Clara's house to try and slay her she found _me_ and stabbed _me_ – haven't I told you all this?"

"Bits and pieces…"

"Anyway. Then she vanished and I had to pay the Shadow an Arcadian Diamond to find her and bring her to me so I could talk to her and she came with me to the Alliance with Cargill and testified against _him_ so that he got sentenced to death and I got my rank reinstated. Of course he didn't die because his wife broke him out, obviously, but _I'm_ still in the clean. They offered me a job heading up a black ops squad, which I declined because I have better things to do, but I recommended Ashildr for the position-"

"And that's the five lives who are in danger, my squad and I. Everyone else is dead."

"But dead where?" the Doctor asked.

"Couldn't tell you, it'd spoil Ensa's fun."

"Who?"

"Now's not the time for introductions, but this isn't really my gig. I might be in charge – or, I was until Jenny arrived – but it's… complicated. Here we are." Ashildr walked up to a wall panel that looked a bit bashed up and had a dozen warnings printed on it saying it was dangerously hot and for maintenance only.

"This goes to the heating pipes, we can't go in there, we'll boil alive," Jenny said.

"That's why it's a perfect place to set up shop," said Ashildr, hitting the large metal panel in a very choice place so that it fell right off the wall and clattered to the floor, "The last place that we can get slightly warm. Plus, originally, we were hiding; until we worked out everybody else here was dead and gone. Come on, you won't get burned, and tell tall and gangly he'll have to duck, and to fix the panel back to the wall to keep the heat in."

"I'm not gangly…" the Doctor muttered.

"You make yourself look more gangly when you walk with your back hunched," Jenny told him, sliding into the narrow gap between the large, metal heating pipes after Ashildr.

"I don't do that," he argued, having an awkward time trying to fit into the gap _and_ balance the panel back where it had been hanging. It took him a while, with Ashildr complaining that he hurry up.

"You do, it makes you look like an old man whose arms are too long for him," Jenny said.

"Too much stooping to fondle his wife," Ashildr joked, and in a second she was forced against the wall in the incredibly narrow passageway with the metal of Jenny's right braced rammed across her throat and a loaded plasma gun pointing at her abdomen.

"If you ever talk about her like that – or if you even mention her at all – I'll shoot you. I won't kill you, but I'll give you a nice gut-shot, the kind of thing that'll take out half of your intestines and mean you can't ever digest meat again, or something. Or maybe I'll vaporise your wrists so that you can't slug me again." She held Ashildr to the wall and glared at her in the darkness. Ashildr managed to turn enough to look at the Doctor.

"You let her behave like this?" she croaked.

"She's a force of nature. And I'd rather you didn't mention Clara, too."

"That's a direct order," Jenny said, letting Ashildr go. She finally found the strength not to make a stupid comment, and continued down the passage. Jenny gave the Doctor an apologetic look, but felt less sorry when she felt her eye twinge again. She could already feel it swelling up. Maybe finally she had managed to command respect from Ashildr. It didn't matter, because they were soon in whatever base the little squad had cobbled together.

It was a very small and very cramped room with two sleeping bags on the floor, both occupied, and two more people, both looking sullen and twisting the handles on two kinetic generators which had been hijacked and jury-rigged from some escape pods. They appeared to be the only heat source on the whole base. Ashildr only had to nod at the two using the heaters for them to stop what they were doing, salute meekly to Jenny while still sat on the floor, and then go to shake awake the other two members. It was two boys and two girls.

"The boys are Kraz and Jinkso, the girls are Ensa and Li," said Ashildr, "All specialists. Ensa's an expert in alien biology, Li is an engineer, Kraz is a pilot and navigator, and Jinkso's a combat heavy. I'm the leader and tactician," Ashildr introduced.

"Brilliant. Nice line-up. And you're all stranded here, I suppose?" Jenny asked.

"You're Major Young, aren't you?" Jinkso, one of the two who had been awake originally along with Ensa, asked her, "Wasn't this supposed to be your job?"

"I turned it down."

"And you're here anyway."

"I don't say no to people who need help. None of this 'Major Young', though, just… Jenny. I'm Jenny. And this is the Doctor." However impressed they has been with her was blown clean out of the water when her father was introduced. Admittedly she enjoyed this because it often got tiring having so many expectations riding on her. Now he could share some of the responsibility.

"And you've come to rescue us?"

"Yes, almost certainly," the Doctor smiled, "Doesn't strike me as particularly hard, if I'm honest, there's only five of you and I have quite a large spaceship. Forgive me for thinking this isn't just a simple SOS, though. I still want to know what happened to everybody else on here."

"They're dead," said Ensa, "There's a creature. I call it the All-Consumer."

"Sounds very Biblical," said Eleven.

"It's wiped out nearly a dozen settlements in the last six months," she said.

"And the Alliance have only just sent you to deal with it? The five of you?" Jenny asked incredulously.

"Not exactly," said Ashildr.

"It's more of a pet project," said Ensa, "Reports of whole settlements and colonies just up and vanishing – it was Kraz who first came across the reports. But the Texoid System is right on the edge of Alliance territory; this is their first base that's been hit."

"But why not send out a full fleet?" Jenny persisted.

"We're not even sanctioned to be here," Ashildr said, "The generals wouldn't listen to us when we suggested all these mass vanishings are connected. Plus, they don't care about anything that isn't in their jurisdiction. Like every other colony that's gone up til now."

"Lunis is spotty at the best of times," Li explained with a yawn, being woken from her nap and immediately thrown right back into active duty, "It's all solar powered but the star is small and the station was built too far away. It has losses of power and communication all the time."

"But _this_ time there were distress messages," added Ashildr, "Talking about a creature. Which the Alliance dismissed as a joke." Jenny sighed, saddened by the inaction and lack of care on behalf of the Alliance. She was beginning to remember why she hadn't had too many reservations about leaving it behind a century and a half ago.

"We came out unofficially to have a look," said Kraz, "And… now we're stuck."

"What happened to your ship?" the Doctor asked.

"Sabotaged," Li explained, "Pumped industrial glue into the fuel tanks so we can't fly away. There were some people here when we arrived, two days ago."

"I think it hypnotises people, somehow," Ensa said, "Hypnotises them to just walk right into its giant mouth or its lair. The people who sabotaged it seemed… off."

"They tried to kill us," said Jinkso bluntly, "So we killed them. And the their heads exploded."

"But _you're_ not hypnotised?" Jenny asked carefully.

"We weren't here when it arrived," said Ashildr, "Whatever it is, it's huge enough to block out the sun and stop Lunis from receiving any power at all. Life support is down, the artificial gravity is failing, the backups are almost completely drained – there's no oxygen supply. We're just lucky it's only us here and nobody else is breathing it, it's let us last long enough for you to show up. But you see now, you can't leave. This _thing_ is responsible for millions of deaths and it's just going to go deeper into Alliance territory until it's wiped out humanity, then onto the next species." Jenny was at a loss, so she turned to her father, who looked like he was thinking and wore a very serious expression.

"Well?" she said, "What do you think?"

"I think the Time Lords used to have old stories about creatures like this, ones that show up in the dead of night and take entire towns and cities and planets without any sign of destruction," he said.

"If there _is_ a 'creature' out there," Jenny said, "What does it look like?"

"We don't know," said Ensa, "It's outer space and there was no light, since the sun's blocked out."

"We could only see a shadow," added Krax, "A massive shadow, though."

"Hmm," mused the Doctor, "An invisible enemy. So big you can't even see it. I think we'd better switch ships, don't you?" He went to take something out of his pocket; a keyring.

"What's that?" asked Ashildr.

"Teleporter back the TARDIS," Jenny explained.

"I think we should go pick up your flying saucer and have a look around outside for ourselves, don't you?"


	137. The Beast with a Billion Backs

_The Beast with a Billion Backs_

 _Jenny_

"Would you really have shot her?" the Doctor asked, breaking the unusual silence in Jenny's spaceship. He had never been inside it before, and kept prowling around and examining things with his very acute eye for detail, very blatantly trying to judge Oswin's handiwork. She suspected he was trying to find the tiniest fault imaginable so that he could feel like he had one-upped her, when _he_ had never built a spaceship this ingenious from scratch. She was inputting some very specific space coordinates given to her by Kraz, the navigator, and debating telling Eleven to sit down or not. If he didn't sit down, he would fall over when they took off, and she thought that might be funny, but she couldn't tell if it was a little vindictive or not.

"Ashildr? Probably," Jenny confessed, "Not with that gun, though. With the revolver."

"Why switch guns? What's the point?"

"Plasma gun's too messy. The spray could vaporise her whole foot. But a _revolver_ at close range like that aimed at an ankle would slide straight through the joint, tear apart all the ligaments and shatter the bones in one very small area. I would do that without feeling bad at all. She _did_ stab and kill me. You know, I think _you're_ sort of lucky."

"Lucky in what way?" he asked, coming to hover behind her chair, watching her input numbers she was sure he hadn't been paying attention to earlier like he was waiting to correct her on something. He always liked _correcting_ her on things. She thought it must make him feel like he was teaching her something valuable, when really it was rarely anything but annoying.

"I'd love to regenerate because of radiation poisoning, or being heroic and absorbing the time vortex. It's less painful than getting impregnated by a facehugger and then torn to pieces, for one thing," she said bitterly. She still didn't like thinking about that particular regeneration. At least Clara had been there. Perhaps they hadn't talked to each other, or even paid much attention to one another at all, and maybe Jenny had been rather distracted by having acid burn through her eyes and hand, but… it was a small solace, retrospectively.

"Well maybe _I_ would quite like not to change my face every time. Already dreading the next one when I'm going to shrink nine inches and grow a pair of…" he stopped, and Jenny turned in her seat to raise her eyebrows at him. "A pair of… you know. Hands."

"Hands?"

"Small, womanly hands. What can you do with hands like that? I bet she can't even open jars."

"Jars. Okay." She didn't believe for one second that he had originally been planning to say 'a pair of hands', but in covering up his foul mistake, at least he had shown he knew what he had been about to say was wrong. In his present company, at least. It was a very weird position for Jenny to be in listening to her father scrutinise her mother's anatomy as though she were under a very jealous and chauvinistic microscope.

"My point was that the grass is always greener," he said, sitting down. She was slightly disappointed that she wasn't going to see him fall over, as she began to flick switches to start up the engines and the thrusters.

"What does that mean?"

"It's an idiom, you know." She looked at him blankly. She did not know. "The grass is always greener in someone else's pasture. You can always find reasons to think someone else's life is better than your own."

"I wouldn't say our lives are so different. We're very similar. Even dating the same woman." She said _that_ only as a sly, personal revenge for what he had said about her mother, though she was sure he didn't realise that was where it came from. He just cringed. "Brace for take-off."

" _Brace_? It the gravity not very good here? Is it a bumpy ride?"

"No, I was joking," said Jenny, "Very smooth. None of this thrashing about like on the TARDIS."

"Oi! That's your heritage. You might inherit her one day."

"And I'll be sure to repair the brakes when I do," she said.

He didn't even notice them take off, that was how smooth the ride was in her sleek flying saucer. Because of this he got quite the shock when there was a blue flash of light outside the windows and almost instantaneously they had warped – which on the outside produced a sound like a sonic boom when the ship materialised somewhere that wasn't a vacuum – to the sector of space they'd been advised to go to. Initially, they saw nothing except other distant stars, but visibility in space was always poor. Jenny squinted out of the large window to no avail, then sighed.

"Do you think maybe it's so huge it's completely blocking _everything_ out of the window? Maybe we're incredibly close to it."

"Then why can I see the edge of the galaxy over there?" Jenny pointed.

"Camouflage. Or it's invisible."

"if it was invisible it wouldn't block everything."

"No… that's a fair point…" Jenny shook her head at her father and found her phone in her pocket, then used an adapter cable she kept on the ship to plug the phone into the ship's mainframe, after which she opened the newly-installed app for Helix, courtesy of Adam and Oswin's joint intellectual escapades. It was much better than having to carry the large handset around.

"Helix, can you access the long-range scanners on this ship?"

" _Affirmative, Major_." She did not know who had programmed Helix to call her 'Major', but she was at this point beyond caring.

"Brilliant; would you kindly use them to scan all of Texoid System to find any giant lifeforms? Like, _huge_ ones, big enough to block out the sun. Probably still in the vicinity of the sun," Jenny requested, then added, "Please."

" _Please_?" the Doctor questioned.

"What? I didn't say please once and Nios told me off. And it can't hurt to be polite to Helix."

" _Scanning now, Major_."

"Thanks, Helix," she said. The Doctor continued to look at her funny. "Shut up. I'm just trying to be nice."

"Very nice to the AIs and yet you threatened to kneecap a woman not an hour ago."

"She stabbed me! I was just doing what Clara would do if she was there. Clara would definitely have hurt her way worse than I did for giving me a black eye, which is still very painful, by the way." It was going red, and was almost certainly going to blossom into a very sour bruise before the day was over.

"Clara wouldn't hurt a fly."

"Clara would and did hurt the very same fly before for twisting my thumb. It was like something out of a film, she wasn't even in the house and _I_ screamed and before I knew it she had Ashildr by the throat and picked her up off the ground, and she was like 'don't you dare touch Jenny.' Anyway, if Clara would never think about hurting anyone, why does _your_ Clara have a huge scar on her left arm from getting electrocuted by Esther?"

"Why did she twist your thumb? The broken one? That's a horrible thing to do."

"I think she thought it was funny."

" _I have detected an unknown lifeform, Major_ ," Helix said.

"What can you tell us about it?"

" _The creature is 2.1 kilometres in length and bears a biological resemblance to Earth invertebrates, possessing a bone exoskeleton I estimate to be ten times as hard as diamond covering every part of its body_."

"Is two-thousand metres big enough to block out the sun?" Jenny asked the Doctor.

"Well, the moon is three-and-a-half thousand metres in diameter and that blocks the Solar System's significantly closer and larger sun during an eclipse," he said.

" _It is currently positioned between a detected spacestation and the sun_ ," Helix said, " _It appears to be moving on a trajectory to take it deeper into this galaxy._ "

"It's leaving Lunis Terminal?"

" _Affirmative, Major._ "

"Give me some coordinates for where we'd be able to get a visual on it."

"Please, Helix," the Doctor added smugly. A few minutes went by until Helix read out a very long series of numbers, which Jenny quickly programmed into the guidance system to plot a short course, which headed more or less towards the sun but arced around quite unusually. She assumed this was to avoid the enormous creature that was allegedly hiding in plain sight, and so she took the helm and flew the ship herself while following the holographic map of Texoid System which was projected in front of the window.

They finally came to an angle which allowed a gigantic, hulking silhouette to loom out of the darkness of space, with Jenny almost falling off-course because she was busy staring at such an enormous mass out there in the vacuum where things shouldn't be able to live. What _was_ it? Eventually they surpassed it and could see Texoid the star itself, and the light from this illuminated at least one side of the monster. Not that seeing it helped much. It was still black and therefore tricky to make out properly, and the exoskeleton Helix had mentioned shone in the dark orange starlight. The Doctor stood up out of his seat and leant on the dashboard to look at it a bit closer.

"And we have to kill that, do we?" said Jenny, "That thing with an impenetrable exoskeleton?"

"…Helix, can you find any weaknesses or gaps in the armour at all?"

" _Affirmative, Cummy Bum_."

"…What?"

"Helix, don't call him that, he's the Doctor. Call him 'the Doctor.' I'm overriding Oswin's command, which I have the authority to do because this is my ship."

" _Affirmative, Major. Correcting statement: Affirmative, The Doctor_."

"…Good enough," Eleven mumbled, "What are the weaknesses?"

" _Scanners detect two distinct gaps in the armour; one at the mouth and one at the rectum_."

"…I shouldn't have asked that question," said the Doctor, going red.

"Uh-huh… Helix, can you scan the spacestation for human life signs?"

" _Five life signs detected, Major_."

"Do they have any kind of communication equipment you can patch me through to?"

" _Affirmative, they are all equipped with headsets. Would you like me to make the connection now?_ "

"Yes, please, fast as you can." There was a pause, and then Jenny heard a dial tone coming through her phone. It rang about three times before there was a click and Helix declared she was connected. She picked up her phone and said into it, "Come in, Commander Skallagrim. Skallagrim, do you read me?"

" _How did you connect to our headsets? This is supposed to be unhackable technology. Over_ ," said Ashildr.

"Oh. Helix made short work of it."

" _Who did?_ "

"Helix. An alien VI Oswin scavenged," Jenny explained, "We've got a visual on your creature. He's a big boy, that's for sure."

" _Is that what you used to say to Captain Jack?_ " Ashildr quipped.

"Helix, initiate a feedback loop on their end," she said, then heard a crackling noise and Ashildr groan.

" _Alright, I'm sorry. You don't have to be so touchy all the time._ "

"Yeah. Anyway. Your friend out here is twenty-one-hundred kilometres long and has an exoskeleton ten times as hard as diamond," Jenny said, "Which completely kills my plan of going and requesting the Alliance's help personally, since they'd listen to me _and_ the Doctor together. I don't think any amount of firepower is going to hurt that thing."

" _You're saying it's unkillable?_ "

"No. Dad found that it does have two weaknesses. Its mouth and its bum." Then she heard murmurs down the line questioning what she meant by 'dad', because it seemed like everybody was listening in their individual headsets now.

" _She means the Doctor_ ," Ashildr explained, " _The Doctor is her father._ "

"Look, forget about that," said Jenny, "It's got an exoskeleton, that means that its all squishy underneath that armour, and there's two openings to get through the armour. If we can't kill it from the outside, then…"

" _That's one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard. How are you going to get inside it_?"

"It must have a big mouth. Big enough for people to walk into it. And I've got a small ship."

"Honestly, I think it's the beginnings of a solid plan," the Doctor backed her up, "But how are you suggesting we kill it when we get in there?"

"Well… I haven't thought of that yet," said Jenny, "I was hoping somebody else might have a suggestion."

" _It must have a heart_ ," Ensa, their alien biology specialist, began to speak, " _Almost all living creatures have hearts. All you have to do is stop that_."

"So all we have to do is trick it into eating a million tons of bacon and the cholesterol intake might kill it for us," said the Doctor, "I think bacon overdose would be a good way to die, since we were discussing that."

" _I could build a bomb_ ," said Li, " _Out of the parts of our ship. We were trying to fix it, but – you will take us home after this, won't you?_ "

"Yes, of course we will," said the Doctor.

" _Then the faster-than-light drive could easily be wired to detonate_."

"Detonating a warp drive is very risky," the Doctor pointed out, "It could cause all sorts of issues, anything from creating a tear in the time vortex to making a black hole."

"I don't think we're going to find anything else big enough to kill that thing," Jenny said, "Oswin would never in a million years build another bomb that huge, which means our only alternative is either rigging that FTL drive or going to the 1950s and carrying out a heist on a nuclear missile silo to steal a warhead. We've got the FTL drive here already and it'll definitely kill it if we plant it in the right place." He looked like he was still thinking about arguing with her.

"If only we hadn't destroyed the Singularity you found. This is exactly the kind of situation it would be useful in."

"And the Singularity would obviously not pose any risk to the delicate fabric of space and time, even though it's a device whose primary aim is to manipulate the fabric of space and time."

"…Alright. It's your call. _Your_ responsibility."

"I'm fine with that, I wouldn't have suggested it if I wasn't."

" _Are you two done?_ " Ashildr asked.

"Yes. You build the bomb and we'll come and pick it up and chase that thing down."

" _Good plan, Major Young. I knew I was right to call you out here._ "

"Just remember that if anything happens to me, my girlfriend will literally hunt you down and tear you to pieces with her teeth. Is that clear, Ashildr?"

" _Yep_ ," she muttered grimly, " _Loud and clear…_ "


	138. In the Mouth of Madness

_In the Mouth of Madness_

 _Jenny_

"Do you remember this morning? When you said that you won't let me get killed, or injured, and that if anything happened to me you would answer to Clara and Martha?" Jenny could not get her father to meet her eyes as she talked, because _his_ eyes were trained on the gigantic silhouette of the beast they could see straight out of the large doors of Lunis Terminal's loading bay, where they were parked. Finally, he looked at her, worried but thinking.

"Do _you_ remember that this was your idea?" he pointed out.

"Then I suppose we're _both_ in trouble if something happens."

"So we'd better make sure that nothing does."

She nodded, "Yeah. Right. Good plan."

With their help, it hadn't taken long for Li to reformat the scavenged warp drive from their broken ship into an incendiary device. And then Jenny had kept her promise and evacuated them back to the Alliance HQ station in orbit around the Earth; all apart from Ashildr, who wanted to remain at Lunis to see the mission through. Jenny did find her presence at the other end of the comms a comfort, admittedly. She didn't much fancy being stuck inside of a giant alien monster with just her father for company, considering they didn't know how long they were going to be in there. It was a good thing her little spaceship had a fully-stocked kitchen.

" _Are you ready to go? The bomb is stable?_ " Ashildr asked through the hacked comms.

"Helix, is the bomb stable?" Jenny asked.

" _Negative, Major. The device is highly volatile and I advise against keeping it in the fridge_."

"…The bomb's fine," Jenny lied to Ashildr.

" _You know I can hear the robot when it talks_ ," she said.

"Sorry, I didn't catch that?" she continued to lie, "Just preparing for take-off. All systems go – the, uh, flux capacitor and the… hyper-drive, they're… superspeed enabled." She was flicking switches on the controls and pressing buttons that didn't do much.

" _Whatever. It's your life on the line, not mine. Your suicide mission_."

"It's not a – be quiet. We're leaving."

" _Have fun with the flux capacitor, Major_."

They shot out of the loading bay in the blink of an eye; Oswin's spaceship design far surpassed any technology Jenny had ever seen before in terms of speed and finesse. Inside the ship it was so pressurised there wasn't any pressing force at all, not like the kind she saw ancient astronauts endure in their space shuttles heading into orbit, vomiting into zero gravity with their heads buried against the seat covers. It wasn't even as physically strenuous as being a fighter pilot. More like being on a cruise, or idling along a country lane on a bicycle.

"Do we not have any drones we could send in to do this?"

" _Drones_?" Jenny asked him, "I don't think so. I don't think Oswin would sacrifice any of her creations to send them into some alien monster."

"The spaceship is one of her creations."

" _I_ am a fantastic pilot, okay? And I've been in much worse places than the inside of that thing," she nodded out of the window at the looming shadow. It was growing larger and larger and larger, and she was getting increasingly frightened. She preferred her other regenerations, the ones who didn't care about what happened to themselves because they didn't have a father who was present, and they also didn't have Clara. "Just calm down, alright?" she told him, though she did not feel calm herself at all. "Here, see," she picked a paper bag up from the floor at her feet and held it out to him, "Have a jelly baby." He stared at her.

"What did you say?"

"I said have a jelly baby. I got some from the sweet shop in Hollowmire this morning because there was still a bit of time after we had breakfast before Clara had to go to work," Jenny explained. "Why are you being weird about it?" He then laughed to himself and took the bag from her.

"No, it's nothing. Just that in my fourth incarnation – this was a very long time ago now – I used to always carry a bag of jelly babies around and offer them out. You're a real chip off the old block."

"Mm, it's almost like I haven't got a personality of my own sometimes. I'm just your naïve shadow."

"I didn't mean it like _that_ …" he mumbled, then he saw that she was smiling a little and realised she was only messing with him. It was too late to carry on talking though, because they were now closer to the beast than they had ever been before. It was a nasty-looking thing, but remained too huge to accurately come up with a description. Simply too enormous to fathom out there in space with such limited visibility.

"Helix, plot me a course to the mouth of this thing," Jenny said. She would like not to have to rely on Helix to tell her where to go and what to do, but the issue was that she herself didn't know which end of the thing was which, and there was the danger that even if she was looking right at one gaping hole she wouldn't be able to tell which orifice it actually was, specifically.

" _Affirmative, Major_." A course appeared as a hologram in front of the windows which indicated that the mouth was at the top of the creature relative to where they were.

"This looks like it's going to be bumpy…" she said, pulling back on the two joysticks so that they began to head upwards.

"It's like a roller coaster, isn't it? Going up and then down. It's exciting."

"You're like a child. Just hold on, it might be a bit jarring having to make a turn like that."

"Maybe you should turn on the autopilot."

" _Excuse me_? I'm the best pilot in probably this entire galaxy, okay?"

"Keep your eyes on the road, then," he said. She scowled and turned her head to look outside again. They were racing upwards along the edge of the glistening, rock-hard armour of the creature, close enough to see the blemishes and cracks from probably thousands of years of genocidal wear and tear.

" _How close are you?_ " Ashildr asked.

"Nearly about to nose dive inside its mouth."

" _Definitely the mouth, right? Because if you go in its arse, the sphincter will crush you_."

"Yeah. Thanks for that. The mouth."

" _Not to mention having to fight against waves of incoming alien faeces_."

"Preparing to dive. Initiating radio silence."

" _Understood, Commodore_ ," Ashildr grunted resentfully. For all her smart-mouthing she appeared to have enough respect for Jenny to not disobey direct orders. Or respect for military hierarchy.

It wasn't like a roller coaster. It wasn't like a roller coaster because they were in zero gravity, and if you were on a roller coaster in zero gravity you may not be on one at all. So to them, no matter which direction the ship turned, it would always feel like they were going smooth and straight with an image of outer space twisting and turning in front of them. That didn't make rising over the brim of an alien's head to get a look at its huge, gaping mouth any less scary. At least it didn't have any teeth, it was just a big circular abyss. Maybe that made it worse…

"Does this thing have headlights?" the Doctor asked Jenny. She reached over and pressed a button which made a long strip of very bright lights along the front of the ship come on, illuminating the soggy, dark interior of the creature's mouth as it approached. She would very much like to turn the lights off again after that, but she doubted that the alien would have interior light fixtures, and it certainly didn't have any degree of bioluminescence. They headed towards that black hole which just grew and grew until they were finally drawn inside it and were encompassed by this beast.

"Hey, dad?" she whispered. She didn't know why she felt like she had to whisper, the ship was soundproofed. But she did it anyway. "How is it breathing? Does it breathe?"

"A creature this size will have a vastly different respiratory system to anything you and I are used to," he explained, also speaking quietly. Jenny flicked another switch and all the interior lights went out, which stopped them from having to look at their own vivid reflections in the glass and gave them better visibility. It looked like all of the surrounding walls of this thing were made of tongue, and they rippled unusually. Maybe it was a way to force the food inside quicker. "Of course we, and everyone we know, breathe through our mouths. This creature will have ways to generate its own oxygen inside its lungs; lungs which won't be connected to oesophagus. No doubt its armour also helps keep these innards pressurised. Did I ever tell you about the time Amy and I were eaten alive by a star whale?"

"What's a star whale?"

"Fantastic creatures, really. Enormous, fly through space, pink, have tentacles and double the number of flippers. Feed on solar energy, incredibly intelligent. A large human colony hijacked one of them and used it to fly them along, like a turtle shell, and they tortured it to make it do this. It was appalling, really, you would have hated what they did to it. I know _I_ did. These majestic creatures completely maimed by the human race…" he sighed, then continued, "Not that I expect much better of humanity sometimes, they do have rather the problem knowing how to treat creatures equally intelligent or more intelligent than themselves. In fact, Peri and myself did once rescue one called Megaptera from a human ship hunting it."

"Who's Peri?"

"Just… an old friend. Hundreds of years ago now."

"Where does Amy come into things?"

"Well, the one they were torturing, to punish people they would feed them to it. Nasty business. But the worst part is that it came to help them on purpose, and they couldn't understand. Once they stopped torturing the poor thing it went much faster. But getting covered in alien whale goo-spit was not particularly pleasant. And it was Amelia's first trip, as well. These first trips often end up ridiculous, you know. I took Clara to an alien market and we had to defeat a god that was living inside a sun. Ridiculous. I can't possibly understand why that woman has married me considering everything she goes through when we're together." He was talking a lot, and she suspected it was to try and take his mind off their current mission. Jenny could hardly see anything.

"Helix, can you do an internal scan of the creature?" she asked. Helix could not do an internal scan before because the armour blocked out electronic signals. Which probably meant that their comm link to Ashildr was completely dead.

" _Affirmative, Major_."

"So why didn't the space whale eat you?"

"Just had a few words with it. He was a good laugh, in the end. More forgiving than I was. It's very rare that I get that angry about anything."

"Huh."

" _Scan complete, Major_."

"Okay, what's the best way to get into the bloodstream? I assume this thing has blood, right? And it does have a heart?"

" _The thinnest barrier between the digestive system and the bloodstream is in the capillaries of the intestinal villi. Plotting course now_."

"Thanks, Helix."

"You're letting Helix do a lot of the work, aren't you? _I_ could have told you we need to go through the intestines," said the Doctor.

"Better safe than sorry," said Jenny, "I don't want to make a mistake because I'm too proud to ask the VI for help. Besides, it's better than having Oswin plugged into the comms doing all this remotely. I can't put up with her _and_ Ashildr at the same time, they're just about as obnoxious as each other. No point taking unnecessary risks."

"Wow. You're really serious about making sure you're okay, aren't you?"

"Well… things were different, before. When I was just angry at you and I was fooling around with Jack… I mean, me and Jack, god – we're nearly the exact same person. It's a horrible match. I really stopped caring about what happened to me. I haven't cared much about what happened to me since… for about forty years. But things change. Now you care about me, you're trying, doing good. _I'm_ trying. And I've got Ravenwood. I hate that she worries about me and that I put her through that, after she's been through so much…"

"It's disgusting in here, isn't it?"

She diverted her attention back to their environment as they made their way at a very careful snail's pace through the mouth and into the oesophagus of this monster. It was a very long and slimy cavity made of shivering, pulsating flesh which shone moistly in the beams of the ship. It got worse, too, when she squinted and steered them even closer to the walls, because they looked like they were writhing around as if a nest of millions of thick worms was breeding in its throat.

"What _is_ all that?"

"Make sure we don't fly into it," the Doctor warned, "On Earth, gravity takes care of half the work of the digestive system, pulling everything downwards. But there's no gravity in space, so it must have adapted those feeler-things to help the food on its way. Probably passes everything along to get down into the stomach. You know, like crowd-surfing, but evil. This is actually fascinating, I've never seen a creature like this. Maybe we should try to catch it instead of blowing it up."

"So that it can hypnotise even more people into just walking into its mouth? It's dangerous. Don't get any thoughts about trying to rescue it."

"I wasn't…" he mumbled.

"Y'know, something like this once happened to Clara, when she was with Old Twelvey."

"Really?"

"Yeah, she told me about it. It was like, they got miniaturised, or something, and went inside of a Dalek."

"Why did they do that?"

"I can't remember… then I think he wanted to kill it and she wasn't too happy with him. I think she said she slapped him. He must be _really_ annoying, Adam Mitchell once punched him in the face. And I don't think Adam Mitchell has ever hit anyone else in his whole life. And I nearly shot him in the head."

"You should have shot him, he might have died and regenerated into someone more amiable."

"There's still hope. We all have to regenerate sooner or later. And hopefully neither of _us_ will regenerate today, because I can't think of anywhere worse for it to happen. Do you think we're close to the stomach yet? That's what's next, isn't it?"

"I think so, since there won't be any irritating vents separating the lungs from the digestive system. It should be relatively plain sailing. Anyway, if you did regenerate, at least your eye and your thumb would heal. Didn't Martha say the thumb would never heal properly?"

"Yeah, that's right," she said, still seeing not much of note inside the alien so far. "It really doesn't bother me. I like having scars like that. They remind me of how much I've lived. Instead of wrinkles, since I don't get those."

"I've never thought of it that way."

"What's that?" she pointed out of the window at something floating towards them. It looked like a big ball of liquid, but it was dark yellow in colour. "Is that saliva?"

"I don't think so. You'd better dodge it," he told her seriously, "It looks like stomach acid. No gravity, remember? It probably just floats around like that."

"Lucky for us that Oswin built shields into this thing," Jenny said, switching on the shields. A faint blue glow surrounded the ship and made everything they saw outside tinged slightly with the same colour. She still carefully steered them out of the way of the big globule. Slowly, as they proceeded, more chunks of the stuff began to appear around them, at which point the electromagnetic barrier became very useful.

But the Doctor was wrong, it wasn't stomach acid, not quite, because floating acid would most certainly not be a very effective trait to have evolved in a creature which lived in outer space. The story of the creature's stomach was much more horrid than that.


	139. My Heart Goes Boom Bang-a-Bang

_My Heart Goes Boom Bang-a-Bang_

 _Jenny_

It was a grotesque form of digestion, like the thing had a nest of acidic resin growing around the walls of its stomach cavity. Truthfully, Jenny wasn't sure if it actual was significantly more disgusting than her own way of digesting things, by dissolving them in acid and sucking out the nutrients, but she had never seen her insides close-up. It was wall-to-wall corpses down there, quite literally. Very dark yellow gunk coated the walls and inside it were bodies, thousands upon thousands of bodies. A lot of the most visible were human, but she saw some partially digested ones of species she didn't recognise with bits and pieces floating around in the zero gravity. The substance itself was akin to earwax, and was damp and sometimes large pieces of it broke away, enormous clumps of gunk with body parts sticking out of them. Jenny had a theory that the different yellow blobs of liquid they had been flying past were actually drops of blood, because they certainly weren't stomach acid.

"This is ghastly," she said.

"I think everybody's innards probably look ghastly, my dear," the Doctor told her. She was doing very little steering, and leant forwards to see better. They were going very slowly, nearly crawling, in order to be careful of what they flew into. Strictly speaking, there was no rush. It was best to be as cautious as possible. "Maybe we should film this. It's quite fascinating. And at least we aren't being directly attacked."

"Maybe," she said quietly. She thought she might prefer being directly attacked.

"Do you want these jelly babies back?"

"I've lost my appetite." Eleven wrapped the remaining jelly babies back up in the paper bag and put them on the floor again.

"Me too." She couldn't take her eyes off the sights outside. It was like when she remembered seeing her first burning, orange sunset in Louisiana after her entire life before that was spent underground an arctic wasteland. Only it wasn't beautiful, it was horrifying. All those dying people and there wasn't a single sound to be heard.

"It's so quiet," she said, then backtracked, "I mean, I – I know space is a vacuum, but… it just tricked all these people into walking to their deaths. None of them even screamed. None of them even had any last words, they didn't get to say goodbye. Some of them just vanished." The Doctor didn't say anything. Just watched her. She found her screwdriver and sonicked the comm hub her phone was connected to so as to amplify the signal significantly enough to reach outside of the creature. "Ashildr, do you read me?" There was a long pause until Jenny repeated herself, "Commander Skallagrim, come in."

" _You're a bit crackly_ ," the voice finally answered, " _But I read you. Is there a situation?_ "

"No. Everything's still going according to plan. I've got a direct order for you. I need you and your team to go around to every colony who was hit by this thing – Alliance or not – and find out everyone who's died and compile a list of the dead and make sure their families know what happened and that it's over. Is that clear?"

" _Yes, Major Young. I'll make sure it gets done_."

"Good. Thank you. Resuming radio silence. I don't want this thing to find out we're here, in case it has defence mechanisms."

" _Understood. Over and out_." The line died.

"That's good of you," said the Doctor.

"No it isn't. It's just… procedure. Nobody else would have the nerve to authorise it. Anyone else in the Alliance would cover it up. They wouldn't want to show outright how blind and unsympathetic they are to other species, even their own. If this was a military base, they'd have been out in force, but it's a science installation. They're just studying Texoid's anomalous solar flares to see if there's a way to convert them into a power source, and…" She was speaking very quickly, and she stopped and leant back in her chair.

"It's a good thing you're here to guide their hand where they fail," the Doctor told her, "You're better than I am to do it. I'd just get angry and leave. But _you_ like to change things, like to stay, and help." She smiled sadly.

"No, I'm not. The reason I left Earth in 1945 was because I was angry at humanity for the atrocities of the Second World War."

"Well, there were an awful lot of atrocities to be angry about," he said. "How are you, anyway?"

"At this exact moment?"

"No. Just generally."

"Oh. Why?"

"Am I not allowed to be concerned about my own daughter?"

"Why concerned?"

"You look sad sometimes. Like you're bearing the burden of the universe on your shoulders."

"You look like that, too."

"And that's what concerns me. I know from experience that it isn't fun to feel that much responsibility. A problem shared is a problem halved, you know," he advised her. She smiled a little.

"It's nothing. Just my face. How much do you think is left of this stomach? It's horrible."

"I don't know. Really, though, we should keep talking. Take our minds off the task at hand."

"If you like, but I'm not inclined to talk about myself at the moment," Jenny said. She thought he was angling after getting personal anecdotes out of her, but she wasn't in the mood to give any out.

"I think the Tenth Doctor might be jealous of me, you know." She actually laughed.

" _What_? Why would he be jealous of you?"

Eleven looked offended, "Why wouldn't he be!? It's my rakish charm and dashing good-looks."

"Oh, I'm sure it is."

"And because of you, certainly."

"Mmm."

"Because you like me and not him."

"And you keep rubbing it in his face – I've been trying to ignore it. It's a bit immature."

"I'm just proud that you're not ashamed to say I'm your father. Not anymore."

"I was never _ashamed_ … and I'm still going to go to his wedding. Even though we were supposed to have dinner, months ago, and he completely just blanked me and forgot about it. It's a lucky thing mum showed up when she did," Jenny sighed.

"Why's that?"

"Because I wouldn't have tried to make the effort with you if it wasn't for her telling me to."

"Yes. Well." He cleared his throat. "He's jealous of me for reasons other than that, though." Jenny didn't think she cared. "Jealous of my wife."

"I'm not sure that he is."

"Not of her as a person – but of the fact I've got one. And I'm doing all the same wedding stuff without any of the stress."

"You're not trying to get married in the space of two weeks. Are you?"

"Oh, no. Certainly not. Wouldn't want to take the attention away from Rose. She'll want all eyes on her, I'm sure. But he was being very weird, keeps asking me questions about my wedding ring," Eleven explained, "He asked me if it feels like a prison, having to wear it."

"What did you tell him?"

"I said if it feels like a prison he's almost certainly with the wrong woman. Though, I don't think that he _is_ with the wrong woman so I don't know what he's whinging about," Eleven said, complaining about his other self. Maybe he thought Jenny would be an ally in this unusual crusade against Ten, but she was quite indifferent to the whole matter, in truth.

"Uh-oh. Look," Jenny diverted his attention to their exterior again, "This entire alien is just one gaping hole after another."

"I expect most organisms are if you're small enough." There was another ginormous abyss staring them right in the fact, with big chunks of waxy viscera drifting deeper into it, just like they were.

"Helix, is this the way we have to go?" Jenny asked in a whisper. It was like being on a submarine trying to remain undetected. It was a bit like that, really.

" _Affirmative, Major. Be aware, scanners are detecting larger and more compacted lumps of organic debris within the intestinal passage_ ," Helix said, " _I am predicting some difficulties with navigation_."

"Brilliant…" Jenny mumbled. As they approached the cavity grew more illuminated by the lights around the ship.

"This ship must look very unusual from the outside when it's lit up like this. Did she made it look like a flying saucer for a joke?"

"Maybe. But it's state of the art, and has excellent manoeuvrability. Though, it _does_ look weird. I had a date, actually, two nights ago, and we took it out to Nevada and flew around a bit across Extraterrestrial Highway and Area 51. Until the air force started trying to shoot us down, but they're way too slow. It was actually really funny, and then I got hungry so we parked it with the cloaking on outside of this diner with all these 'aliens welcome' signs and pictures of little green men and _everyone_ in there was talking about it. It was great, we pretended we were backpackers. And the woman who owned the place – oh my _god_ , she made the best fried egg sandwiches I've ever tasted, I swear, it was like being in love with two people at once having that sandwich _and_ my girlfriend." Jenny realised she was just as bad as he was, rambling about nothing in particular just to take her mind of their glum and grotesque surroundings.

The waxy substance was, as they entered the small intestine, beginning to look a lot more like waste. But it still had a long journey ahead of it yet until it reached the other end, an end Jenny hoped they wouldn't have to see. The Doctor was being quiet. Helix had been right about navigation being difficult; the monster had been gorging itself so much on entire populations of planetoids and bases that it was in danger of getting all clogged up down there. And them along with it.

"Sorry, I shouldn't have talked about her," Jenny said.

"You can talk about her all you like," he assured her. "I think your relationship makes sense, in a way. Besides, it's good. I know she won't break your hearts, or mistreat you. Only the best for my generated anomaly. But you'd better take me to this diner and show me these egg sandwiches. As a way for me to apologise for my past incarnation standing you up." She smiled and stopped the ship in the alien's guts.

"Do you mean that?"

"Which bit?"

"About Clara."

"Certainly. I'm over it now. Besides, she does have thousands of duplicates. If I get angry at you I should realistically be just as angry at Adam Mitchell. Why have we stopped moving?"

"I'm going to get out," she said.

"You're _what_!? No! I forbid it."

"Since when has forbidding me from doing anything ever worked?"

"Well, it… this is different! Your safety is at risk – why would you want to go out there? Don't stand up!" She ignored him and switched the spacesuit's helmet on.

"I've got to clear us a path," she said, "And one of us was going to have to go out eventually to cut a hole in the wall to get into the bloodstream."

" _We are not yet deep enough into the intestinal tract to break through easily_ ," Helix interjected.

"It'll be fine, I've just got to amplify the power on this thing," she took her plasma gun out of its holster and also the revolver, only the revolver she left behind on her chair; gunpowder wouldn't ignite in a vacuum. When it came to the plasma gun she also took out her screwdriver and amplified the power on it until it was vastly overcharged. "I won't be a minute, I just have to get something…"

"Where are you going?" he called after her. She didn't answer and headed into one of the ship's empty rooms. There were a handful of those because she hadn't quite worked out what she was going to put in them yet, but one had a sparse collection of weaponry. Weaponry which included a heat cutlass taken from the wreckage of the _Comet_ in the Fowl Pocket weeks earlier. This she also sonicked to overcharge.

"Plasma blaster, heat cutlass – I'm all set for a bit of impromptu micro-surgery," she declared when she returned, showing him the sword.

"Maybe I should go out there. You can fly the ship."

"Flying the ship is easy, but navigating in zero gravity in a vacuum isn't. Only one of us is a professional acrobat."

"Yes, it's me, so I think-"

"Dad, I'm going outside," she said firmly, "The ship's got a magno-tether and it's exactly like doing a spacewalk. You'll be able to see me through the window the entire time."

"I just don't want to see you get digested." She sighed, then walked back over and stunned him to silence by hugging him tightly for a few moments, standing on her tiptoes. She let go, aware that time was off the essence. And because she didn't want to get digested, either.

"I'll be fine. I've got you looking out for me. And Helix, so… make sure you listen to Helix," Jenny said, still remembering that the Doctor's presence had never really stopped her from dying or receiving nasty injuries before. Her thumb still ached.

But really, she wasn't too worried about going outside of the ship. She was still wearing a very high-tech spacesuit, after all. So Jenny opened the floor hatch to descend into the intestines of this monster, the forcefield keeping the ship pressurised and its atmosphere intact within. She dropped down and began to float immediately, losing her bearings. It took her a moment to switch the suit into zero gravity mode, which switched on a system of what Oswin nicknamed 'joint jets.' They were tiny nozzles on the base of the boots and the back of her elbows which worked more or less like a series of air hoses and enabled one to fly in 0G.

"Are the suit comms working?" she asked.

" _Yes. Are you still alive?_ "

"No, I just died, right there," she said, "I'm a ghost." She pulled herself up over the rim of the spaceship until she was floating in front of the window, "Boo! Turn the lights back on so I can see inside." He took a moment, but then the interior lights switched on.

" _What's it like out there?_ " he asked.

"It's gross," she answered, "I'm glad I can't smell anything." She looked around until she spotted the giant blob of almost-poo which was blocking their path, then turned on her sword. It began to glow vivid orange.

" _You're going to bring the smell back in here_."

"Probably. You're helping me clean it because you made me come here, alright?"

" _Mmm… fine…_ " he agreed begrudgingly as Jenny floated towards the blob with her sword. The sword sliced through the substance like it was butter, and released all kinds of things she didn't want to see. Mainly parts of organs she vaguely recognised and even a human eyeball still clinging onto its optic nerve. Again, she was _so_ glad she couldn't smell anything. " _What's cutting it up going to do_?"

"I'm going to cut it into small pieces and then shoot it and disintegrate it. Like cheese fondue."

" _I don't think it's anything like cheese fondue_."

"It's the same basic principal."

" _Should I be worried about the things you're teaching Nios how to cook?_ "

"I'm going to teach her to flambé coq au vin this week," she talked as she sliced the lump into smaller lumps, the jets helping her to move around a great deal.

" _Oh, excellent, I'll be sure to keep some fire extinguishers handy_." Jenny laughed.

"I will have you know I'm a professional chef. I've been cooking my whole life, ever since I was abandoned at birth. I used to make these meat stews when I lived in Arooh, have them brewing for _weeks_ because I made all my money hunting game on the surface. Which was _not_ a lot of money," she said, "And it was cold."

" _Did you like it there?_ "

"Not really."

" _What's your favourite place you've lived?_ "

"That's a big question," she said, turning off the sword and taking out the gun. She let herself float until she was right in front of the ship and then aimed and shot at the head-sized lumps of semi-digested matter until they vaporised in front of her. "Has that cleared the way enough?"

" _For now_ ," said the Doctor, " _Better come back inside_."

"No, I'll just… sit on the ship. I'll let you know if I fall off."

" _Let the records show that I think that's a terrible idea. But fine, only the best for you_." She did sit on the front of the ship, and she hoped she wasn't obstructing his view too much. Though, it wasn't like she wouldn't tell him if he was about to crash into a massive chunk of slime. He started the ship moving again at a crawl, and it wasn't much more strenuous than cruising in a convertible. In fact, it was a lot less strenuous.

"What were you asking me? My favourite place I've lived?"

" _Oh, yes_."

"I don't know. I kind of liked Berlin, though sometimes it could be a bit secret police-y. Or maybe just regular police-y. Since we were breaking the law by smuggling. But I had a girlfriend in Berlin too, so that made it better."

" _You left her behind?_ "

"Astrid? Oh, no, she dumped me."

" _SHE dumped YOU?_ "

"She got pregnant and didn't want to raise a baby in Berlin in the 1960s, so she went out to… I don't know where, actually, but she went somewhere safer with her little brother."

" _…_ _Hold on… how did she get pregnant if she was going out with you?_ "

"Contraception was quite hard to come by sometimes," Jenny explained, "And it wasn't always reliable."

" _But… what am I not understanding? She cheated on you?_ "

"She… may have been a prostitute."

" _She 'MAY' have been_!?"

"She was definitely, one-hundred percent, a prostitute, for as long as I knew her. Anyway, I did like being a sous chef in Italy as well, that was fun. A lot less life-or-death. Living in the circus was okay too, everyone liked me."

" _Right_."

"But I like when Clara lets me stay with her. Even though we're not… _living together_ , not yet, it's still relaxing."

" _Excuse me? What do you mean not 'yet'?_ "

" _Blockage detected ahead, Major_ ," Helix said.

"Yeah, I can see it. Take us a bit closer," Jenny told her father, still sitting on the front of her ship. Lucky it was so small on the outside. "Doesn't look as bad as the last one. Stop now." The ship halted underneath her, and she kicked off the helm like she was swimming, getting her cutlass out again as she approached another big lump of dark gunk.

" _What were you saying about not living together 'yet', Jenny?_ "

"Don't get me wrong, we haven't got any plans or anything," she sliced all the way through the middle of the gunk, this time revealing an entire missing head of an alien species she didn't recognise with half a dozen dead, bloated eyes. "But, um… one day, you know? It's not like I'm thinking of moving out of the TARDIS, I don't want to do that anytime soon."

" _You don't want to live on the TARDIS forever?_ "

"Well, no. Not really. You move around too quickly, I like to stay for a while. And I like Clara. She told me when I got back from Rospaonus that she wants to marry me one day, actually."

" _What? You're engaged to her now?_ "

"No, but some people like to talk about these things beforehand, they don't all just get drunk and do things spontaneously," Jenny explained, "We're not engaged and we're not moving in together – and I haven't told anybody else this, by the way. Not even Oswin or Nios. I'm only telling you, because… it would be nice if you were happy for me, I guess." She reached a particularly tricky to cut part of the mass and had to try and awkwardly cut around it, finding out when she broke the stuff apart that it she had been trying to melt through what looked like some very advanced armour. While this one piece survived her sword, the rest of it clearly _hadn't_ survived the digestion process of this monster.

" _I am happy for you! I hope you_ do _get married – although… would one of you have to wear a suit?_ "

"I'm sure we'll both be wearing dresses. _I'd_ want to wear a dress, and it's pretty rare to see Clara in anything that _isn't_ a dress."

" _Who would walk down the aisle?_ "

"I don't know – I told you, we're not engaged."

" _But mutually agreeing to get married one day is the same thing_."

"Until I have a ring on my finger, I'm a free agent. Well, not _free_ , but you know what I mean," she said, kicking the big armour piece away from her because she wasn't going to be able to damage it with her gun.

" _It would be nice if you let me give you away, that's all_ ," he said.

"Oh," Jenny was stunned, "Well, that's… I'll be sure to mention it… if we ever _do_ get engaged, you know. One day. Years from now." He didn't say anything more as she aimed her gun and shot the cubes to dust again, and she wondered if the alien they were within could feel all this. Probably not. They hadn't damaged the creature itself yet. Maybe it just had indigestion, which would not surprise her given all the stuff it was trying to eat. Like impenetrable suits of space armour. "Has that cleared the way enough?"

" _Affirmative, Major_ ," said Helix. Jenny drifted back over to the ship again right as Eleven started it moving. " _In approximately fifteen metres the villi density will be thin enough to be cut through to enter the cardiovascular system._ "

"You know, Oswin's done a really good job on these spacesuits," Jenny said, "This thing is completely state of the art."

" _I don't know if you've heard, but she's actually very clever. She doesn't often mention it, so I can see how you might be in the dark_ ," the Doctor said.

"I had no idea," said Jenny, "Go a bit faster, I can't wait to come back inside." He sped up, and only needed to for the smallest amount of time because they surpassed the short fifteen-metre distance so quickly. "Helix, which side am I cutting through? My left or my right?"

" _The ground below you will offer the best link to an artery, Major_."

"Copy that. Below me."

" _Be careful of the blood, Jenny, if we're severing an artery it's all going to start leaking out_ ," the Doctor warned as she dove and wielded her space sword.

"Just get the door open ready for me to come back in, this won't take long."

And it didn't take long, because the alien tissue was even easier to cut through than the sticky digestive substances, and she managed to find a rare sliver of intestine not quite coated in the dense stuff. She slashed a large wound in the guts of the creature right-to-left, like a sickening smile, scraping out a crevice big enough for the ship to slide through. In the end it wasn't just a slit she created, but she had to extract an oval-shaped piece of tissue which began to let in quite a lot of blood once she kicked the slab of skin-stuff away deeper into its bowels. She used the jets to navigate easily back to the base of the ship, which wasn't really the base but sort of the side because she had become disorientated with the lack of gravity, and the Doctor helped to pull her up.

"Go fly, what are you doing?"

"I care more about making sure that you're alright," he answered her.

"I'll shut the door, you fly the ship," she ordered him, and he actually listened, leaving her to seal the door underneath. She didn't bother taking off her helmet because she didn't want to know how bad she smelt. It was a miracle she wasn't that dirty. The same couldn't be said for the ship, because the ship was in the process of diving down into the hole she had carved, and accordingly became drenched in incredibly dark alien blood.

Instantly, they were swept away by the current, and maybe they had a thousand kilometres to travel but they were travelling that distance very quickly, and even quicker once Jenny started the engines after stealing the controls back from her father, whom she told to go and get the bomb out of the fridge to arm it. Once they got close enough to the pulmonary valve, they were just going to drop the thing out of the ship, detonate it remotely and warp away. Or perhaps they should warp away first. They hadn't quite thought that part through, nor did she have the time now, while she desperately tried to stop them from ripping through the walls of the blood vessel with their sheer momentum.

The Doctor busy with the bomb, Jenny hastened to get Ashildr back on the comms.

"Ashildr, do you read?" she asked after sonicking with one hand, which was very ill-advised behaviour. Distracted driving took lives.

" _Loud and clear_ ," Ashildr answered, " _Been on stand-by this whole time_."

"Great, we've just cut our way into an artery, going to be warping in, uh… some point in the next five minutes. I'll keep the line active. Dad's just getting the bomb out of the fridge."

" _Are you sure you should let him do that?_ "

"Yeah, he'll be-" she heard a bang behind her. "What was that!?"

"Sorry! I dropped it!"

"You dropped it!?"

" _I'll be sure to inform both the Claras after the two of you blow yourselves up_ ," said Ashildr, " _I think it's very sweet how you're getting along, though. Even if he isn't as hot as your mother._ " Jenny made a mental note to break a bone of Ashildr's the next time she saw her, but right then she was too preoccupied to do any berating. Jenny heard a beep.

"Oops," said the Doctor.

" _OOPS_!? What's 'oops'!? What did you do?"

"You've got thirty seconds."

"I've got _what_?"

"Twenty-seven seconds! Fly faster!"

"We're totally gonna die! Why did you drop it!"

"Just _go_!" he shouted, and she put the ship as fast as she could get it while still being able to maintain the tight control she needed to stop them from crashing. She heard him dragging it along the floor behind her, then opening the floor hatch, but she couldn't leave. "Nineteen seconds!"

"We're not there yet!"

"We need time to warp away as well!"

" _I know what I'm doing!_ "

Helix spoke: " _Major, this would be an adequate position to-_ " she didn't listen to the rest of the sentence, and instead chose to scream at her father to shove the bomb as she wheeled the ship around and set them off going the opposite direction. He pushed the bomb through the floor hatch, but Jenny was suddenly wrestling between an overpowered ship and the opposing blood flow now heading straight towards them. Beneath, the bomb got sucked with ten seconds left down towards the pulmonary valve, but they were not yet going fast enough to warp. The Doctor was closing the hatch.

"Jenny, why are we still here?"

"Just give me a minute."

"You've got about five seconds!"

" _I reckon you'd better get out of there_ ," Ashildr said.

"I'M WORKING ON IT."

With two seconds to spare they warped. The blue flash slid across the exterior of the spaceship and Lunis Terminal came into view in front of Jenny, through the blood smears covering the window. Almost instantly the view of Lunis was eclipsed by a vivid explosion and Jenny turned the ship to see it better. The jury-rigged FTL drive at certainly done its job at destroying the creature, and then some, because as she watched she saw the silhouette begin to shrink and the light to unusually distort.

"Whoops," said the Doctor.

"First 'oops' now 'whoops' – what is it this time?"

"I think that explosion might have made a black hole."

" _It's what_!?" Ashildr shouted over the comms.

"I did say this might happen," said the Doctor.

"Well how do we stop _that_?"

"Shh, just watch," he said, and watch they did, as the creature eventually got sucked within itself and into nothingness. The distortion, which looked like a pinprick in the middle of time and space, bent back into shape like stretched elastic and left the star Texoid visible and able to power Lunis Terminal once more.

" _So… danger averted_ …" Ashildr began, " _What time can I expect my evac off this wasteoid?_ "


	140. Another Girl Another Planet XXII

**AN: In honour of bisexual visibility day last Saturday here are some visible bisexuals.**

 _Another Girl Another Planet XXII_

 _Jenny_

She didn't _think_ that she smelled of the rancid guts of a space monster, but after floating around inside that thing's belly she had rigorously showered twice just to feel clean again. She was sure that if she _did_ smell, Clara would have no qualms about letting her know, but she would rather avoid that potential embarrassment. Her spaceship being in quite a disgusting state she had left it behind in favour of commandeering the TARDIS to bring her to Hollowmire, and had landed in the village before sending it away again so that the walk would give her time to think of what to say to Clara. Not that she had much time, because Clara didn't live too far on Hollowmire's outskirts, and the newly-repaired Porsche complete with salvaged spark plug made short work of the journey. So, as she pulled up outside the lonely cottage on the hill, she was still at a loss for what to say.

She got out of the car and took the keys with her, along with a small bouquet of roses she had picked from the TARDIS garden. Another present because she felt guilty about the thing with her eye and nearly dying during the day. She walked up to the front door, knocked, then stopped to listen, trying to keep her coat wrapped around her because it was chilly. She heard Clara approach from the other side.

"You know you can just come in, right?" she called through the door, the sound emanating through the letterbox. "The door's unlocked." Clara went to open it but Jenny grabbed the handle and held it tight.

"Don't open the door," she said.

"What? Why? What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Jenny said quickly, "I just have to tell you something. Before you see. Uh." She hadn't rehearsed this enough. "I kind of… got a black eye."

"You _what_?" Clara was stronger than her and forced the door handle, making Jenny relinquish it, only having time to hide the flowers and the keys behind her back before Clara came out to scrutinise her. Clara who was all dressed up for this 'surprise' and looked so stunning Jenny hardly noticed her worried expression as she took Jenny's face to scrutinise the bruise. "Did you get in a fight?"

"No! I got jumped."

" _Jumped_? _You_ got jumped?" Clara asked incredulously, "By who?"

Jenny deliberated for a while and finally answered, "By Ashildr," when Clara looked at her imploringly.

"Ashildr? Where is she? Is she here? Let me talk to her."

"She's not here. You're not talking to her. You'll just… I don't know, break her nose, or something."

"So what if I _did_ break her nose? This is a really nasty bruise. What were you doing with Ashildr today?" Clara let go of her face.

"She sent a message asking for my help through the Doctor's psychic paper, so we went – both of us – to see what was going on and it was this abandoned spacestation and she jumped out from behind a corner when I wasn't paying attention and punched me in the face. She thought it was funny." Jenny explained as quickly as she could.

"Your help with what? She just wanted to hit you?"

"There was this giant alien monster flying around eating entire colonies of people. It was over two kilometres long and we built a bomb, flew inside it, and blew its heart up. It was disgusting. I didn't even want to go but my dad guilt-tripped me. He said that if anything happened to me then he'd answer to you. And Martha. Go and break _his_ nose if you want," Jenny said, then added, "But don't actually break his nose… have I ruined everything? I'm so tired of this!"

"Of what?"

"Of every time I come here just being me explaining how I've been injured that day."

"This is only the second time," Clara said, "And it's not as bad as your thumb, and it's Ashildr's fault. The next time I see her I'll give her a piece of my mind, mark my words…" Jenny didn't believe her. "Look, it doesn't change anything. We're still going to have a nice night. Come inside, warm up a bit." Clara turned to walk into the house.

"No, wait a second," Jenny stepped inside. She stopped and glanced back.

"Hmm?"

"I haven't had a chance to say hello to you properly."

Clara smiled and made the short return journey to the doorway, leaning in to kiss Jenny without a moment's hesitation. And really, Jenny thought that was the best thing to happen to her all day, and as she kissed Clara back she produced her bunch of roses from behind her back, which Clara saw as soon as she broke away.

"Oh, wow! _Roses_? How did you know I like roses?" Clara asked her, in awe of them.

"I don't, I just… wanted to make a gesture. To sort of say sorry for getting into trouble again. They're nothing fancy, just from the TARDIS," she said, letting Clara have the flowers.

"My mum used to grow roses," she said, "The smell reminds me of her. She grew white ones though, not red."

"I thought for a long time about the colour," Jenny explained, "Because I thought red was sort of cliché, you know? But it means love and passion and stuff, so… the white one means purity and innocence. I didn't think it suited you. But now I know, next time I'll get some white ones. I'm sure the Doctor won't miss any. I've got something else, though." She held up the car keys.

"Are they…? Is…? You were _serious_ about fixing the car?"

"Cars aren't very hard to fix," she said, "Take a look, it's in the drive, I drove it up here." Clara took the keys and nearly knocked Jenny over in her rush to get outside to see the car.

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed, Jenny following her out, "You-! How are you even _real_ , Jenny? How is it possible for you to exist?" She was staring at the vintage Porsche.

"Honestly, it's not that big of a deal, the bullets didn't do much damage and I only had to replace the windows with some that are tinted like your glasses are to stop the daylight. And I changed the tyres for brand-new white-wall ones and had to make a new spark plug."

"You _made_ a new spark plug?"

"Yeah. I've got a degree in mechanical engineering, you know," Jenny reminded her, "This is literally the equivalent of you, I don't know… writing an essay about a poem. But look, I did make this as well." She took the keys back from Clara and showed her the keyring, which was two shiny, tiny metal love-hearts soldered together.

"This is terrible! You're so romantic! You're making me look bad! No matter how hard I try I can never match you."

"Don't say that! It was just spare bits of metal I didn't want to waste. I really haven't done anything spectacular."

"Everything you do is spectacular, including being modest."

"It's just a stolen car. Forget about that; I'm _dying_ to know what this surprise you've had planned is! Come on," Jenny nudged her playfully with her elbow.

"I was-"

"Oh, wait! Sorry! One more thing; I forgot," Jenny went to open the boot of the car and pulled out a wine bottle full of dark red liquid, "The Fifty-First Century's finest refreshment for you, my darling. Courtesy of my ex-husband." She held out the bottle to Clara, who came and took it.

"This is Jack's blood?"

"Yep. He came and dropped off a few bottles."

"Wow, finally I can drink the blood of someone who isn't me," Clara smiled, "Tell him thanks, when you see him."

"I keep interrupting. Surprise. _Tell me_. I'm desperate."

"I just thought we could have a picnic. It's not very impressive, really."

"A picnic?" Jenny laughed, "That's brilliant, I've never been taken on a picnic by a girl before. Definitely not such a pretty one. That's _uber_ romantic." She was beaming. Clara studied her, then sighed.

"You mean that?"

"Why would I lie?"

"To make me feel better."

"Don't say that! I think it's great, really, and I'm ravenous – where's the food? You haven't been cooking, have you?"

"No, I bought everything. Obviously. Except the biscuits, one of the Followers of Oc'thubha came to the shop and gave me a tin full of biscuits. Said it was a pity I live so far out of the village and they can't give me biscuits more often," Clara said, "They're so thoughtful. You know, for a cult. You don't meet many cults who are so neighbourly. Right then, _you_ , you're carrying everything. And leave that bottle of blood in the car, I've already got my flask all warmed up." Jenny did as she was asked, making sure the car was locked when she was done.

"Why am I carrying everything?" she asked, but got no answer. She turned and found Clara to be gone. Back inside presumably; the front door was still open. "Clara?" she called. A few seconds of nothing, then Clara returned carrying a picnic basket Jenny had never seen before. "Did you buy the basket specially, as well?"

"That's a funny story," Clara began, holding the basket out to Jenny, who took it off her hands. It was heavy, sure, but nowhere near too heavy for her. _Or_ for Clara. "And you're carrying everything because you're shown me up with your lavish gifts. You're vile, really. It's like you don't think of my feelings at all."

"I stole that car from the mafia because I'm a criminal," Jenny reminded her yet again, "Really, I'm not nearly so great as you think. You know I'm a murdering pirate, too, and a thief. Huge thief."

"And somehow, I don't care," Clara said, locking the front door of the house.

"Can we not drive to find a good spot?" Jenny asked.

"I've got a spot picked out already. Come on, we're going this way. It's cold out, good thing you're wearing that scarf."

"I always wear your scarf," Jenny said, beginning to walk. The scarf was very warm and soft and was her second-favourite thing in the world, after the girl who had knitted it for her. "Listen, I love this, I really do, but isn't it a bit odd to have a picnic in the middle of the night?"

"It's just cold. It's a clear night and there's no light pollution around Hollowmire," Clara said, "And you know something? I've never properly been stargazing before. And I've especially never been stargazing with the woman I love."

"You're making the woman you love carry an awful lot of food."

" _I'm_ the one who paid for it," Clara said, "And you're always boasting about how strong you are. Do you not like being out at night?"

"I'm sort of used to it. Since I only sleep once a week. But, uh, you're starting to like being nocturnal?"

"I don't know. I used to be a morning person, and now… but it's alright really.I've got you; you make it all a lot easier," Clara smiled, walking at Jenny's side. Jenny got the niggling feeling Clara would like to hold hands, but couldn't because Jenny's hands were full carrying their picnic hamper. When she smiled Jenny saw her fangs, almost glowing pearly white in the moonlight. She was ethereal to look at beneath the night sky, imprinted against the shadows like she had been borne from them originally. In a way, she had.

"Make what a lot easier?"

"Y'know," Clara said, then lowered her voice and smirked, "Being a vampire. I'm lucky you barely sleep and you can be awake with me at weird times like this."

"Yeah…" Jenny just agreed. Clara frowned.

"Are you okay? You seem quiet."

"I didn't know I was usually loud."

"You're not, but… you talk a lot to _me_. Maybe not to others."

"Do you think I'm quiet?" Jenny asked genuinely. It was something she had been wondering.

"Erm… that's a hard question, actually… I think it's hard to judge, like, because I'm your girlfriend so you talk to me all the time," Clara said, glancing at her every few moments while they walked, though she was keeping her eyes quite closely on their mysterious route. "I think _I_ talk quite a lot though, and quite fast, so maybe I don't notice as much."

"Yeah," she said, then nothing for a while, thinking. Clara took it upon herself to control the conversation, which was usually they way things went and they were the way Jenny liked them.

"Do you recognise where we are yet?"

"No. Should I?"

"We are en route to literally the most important place in the world," Clara said, "To us."

"Right, um – Clara?"

"Mmm?" Clara stopped when Jenny stopped, and Jenny looked at her very apologetically.

"My thumb's not doing well today," she admitted. It wasn't. Probably because she had been hitting Ashildr and cutting up alien excretions with a sword. Strenuous activities were bad for the tendons.

"God, I'm sorry," Clara trumped her in terms of being apologetic, because she was suddenly mortified that she had bade Jenny carry their basket in spite of her current impairment. "I'll hold it, don't worry," Clara came to relieve her.

"Honestly, I think you're stronger than I am," said Jenny, passing the basket over, letting her fingers brush Clara's when she did.

"Do you really?"

"For definite," Jenny answered, flexing her right hand. Her thumb was aching quite badly; she was going to have to avoid using it for a while. "Ugh, I don't think my hand is ever going to heal."

"It's only been a few weeks barely, and it was such a bad injury," Clara said, "I wouldn't worry about it. Just try to think back and work out where we are, we're nearly there." Jenny took in their surroundings and wracked her brain, but it was just the damp hills and grass of the moors as they got further away from Hollowmire.

"The village looks spooky from up here," she said, "Especially with that viaduct – is it broken?"

"Yeah, the Fallon Viaduct, half of it's collapsed. Sally and Esther have this _great_ story about the viaduct, Sally tells it really well. Ask her about it when you next see her," Clara said. Jenny made a mental note to do so, because Sally was often quite good at telling stories. She certainly had some interesting ones.

"Oh my god!" Jenny exclaimed, stopping in her tracks, "I'm an idiot." Clara laughed.

"It took you so long I'm not inclined to disagree. And I think this is as good a place as any," she said, also stopping and setting the basket down on the ground. Jenny was trying and failing to hold back her grin and keep collected; Clara was thoroughly proud of herself.

" _Clara_ ," she said, "Come here." Jenny went and hugged her, and she laughed, and once Jenny let go she kissed her warmly and kept one arm around the back of Clara's neck. She didn't think Clara had expected that kind of exuberant reaction, but it was exactly what she was going to get.

"Save some for later, woman," Clara stopped them kissing, though she very plainly didn't want to. Jenny was surprised that she managed it, and kept her intoxicating proximity while they talked.

"Clara Ravenwood," she began, "Have you brought us back to the spot where we confessed our feelings for each other and became officially an item?"

"I have indeed," Clara said. Jenny sighed and with her broken hand she brushed some of Clara's hair out of her eyes.

"I love you."

"I don't love you. I'm breaking up with you, actually, that's why we're back here. Start and end in the same place, right?"

"You once told me that when you get nervous you make bad jokes," Jenny said, "Like that one. Which I forgive you for because I really like that the only reason you said it is because _I'm_ making you nervous."

"You're amazing, so shut up," said Clara, letting Jenny kiss her again, but not for long, "Seriously though, I'm hungry. I think you're extra touchy today – what's gotten into you? We only saw each other this morning." Jenny relinquished Clara so that she could get the picnic blanket out from the top of the basket, laying it down neatly on the grass.

"It's been a long day."

"Are we out of sync?"

"No."

"So you really _are_ just clingy?"

"I'm not clingy…" she mumbled, sitting down at Clara's side on the grass.

"I think you're super clingy."

"Wait… do you actually?"

"Yeah – do you want some sausage rolls? It's mostly sausage rolls," Clara said, holding out a packet to her, but Jenny pushed it away. "What?"

" _Super clingy_?"

"Okay, yes, but I like it. I'm sorry, that's bad." Jenny was staring at her.

"Why am I clingy!?"

"…I don't mean that, I'm just… I'm not really used to being with someone who loves me as much as you do. You're very intense."

"I am?"

"You showed up here today with a car and a bouquet of roses, that would be too much for a lot of people," Clara said, "I didn't mean to upset you, Jen. Are you _sure_ you're okay? You seem way off since this morning." And now Jenny had to bite the bullet and confess her sins.

"I've got to tell you something."

"What…?" Clara asked seriously and slowly, putting down her packet of sausage rolls.

"I nearly died today," Jenny said, not looking at her, "We were two seconds away from getting killed by a bomb that made a black hole. Literally. Two seconds." Clara said nothing. Jenny didn't know if she was angry or not. "Don't… shout at me. I'm upset enough with myself, I don't want… but I can understand you being angry. I said to him this morning that I didn't want to go because it would be dangerous and I'm trying hard to be safe…"

"Him who?"

"My father."

"Right. Your father." Jenny did not look at Clara. "I'm going to talk to him."

"You're _what_?"

"Not talk to him like I'm going to talk to Ashildr. But the next time I see him… putting you in harm's way…"

"He just wanted to help people. We saved a lot of lives."

"Well… I'm selfish."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean I don't care about the lives you saved as much as I just care about you and I want you to be alright-"

"I know, I know, Clara," Jenny took her hands, "I'm so sorry. I just keep thinking about, like, what if I hadn't made it out? I would have lost you. I would have lost my dad. And I worry about you, about if you'd be okay without me, because I don't think you would be…"

"I definitely wouldn't be okay if the love of my life ended up getting killed," Clara said firmly, "For like, the second time. After Danny." Clara bringing up Danny cut Jenny deeply.

"You've managed with that alright, though, haven't you?"

"Only because of you. For two months afterwards I couldn't do anything except get drunk and have stupid, anonymous sex, and then _you_ came into my life and it was like the skies had cleared and the sun was shining again. And you're the sun. Not to sound too clingy." Jenny made a loud sound of frustration.

"Ugh! That's it! That's _it_." Jenny let go of Clara's hands.

"What?"

"How serious are you about our relationship?" Jenny asked her.

"Jenny, I told you I want to marry you last week. After only a few months I'd say that's pretty bloody serious."

"Yeah, because, I am, and… hmm… can I stay with you?"

"…For how long?"

"Until my stupid hand and my stupid eye and my stupid hero complex are…" she sighed. "I mean… I'm not suggesting we move in together. Really. Unless you want-"

"Um, no."

"Well then I'm not. But… maybe it's not good for me being on the TARDIS."

"What are you saying? You're going to leave the TARDIS?"

"Maybe. Definitely for a while, if you'll let me stay with you. I can always get the ship and live in the garden."

"You don't have to live in the garden, Jen," Clara shook her head and nearly smiled. Jenny picked up a box of sausage rolls and shuffled closer to Clara so she was right by her side and they were touching. Contemplating her choices, she ate one of the mini sausage rolls. "Did you eat that in one bite?"

"Hmm?" Jenny asked with her mouth full. Clara raised her eyebrows. "Am hungee," she mumbled through chewed up pastry.

"When are you _not_ hungry?" Jenny pouted and didn't respond to that, just ate another mini sausage roll, self-consciously consuming it in two bites this time instead of just cramming it in all at once. Even though she was ravenous. Clara didn't say anything while Jenny mulled over her prospects.

"Do you think five months is a long time?" she inquired. Clara opened her mouth to respond, but Jenny cut her off, "Actually it's longer than that because I ditch and spend extra time with you all the time. And me and Jack used to go off together sometimes for ages without anybody else. So… gosh. Could've been a year. Do you think a year is a long time?"

"Uh…"

"Moving here would be easy, don't you think?"

"You're saying a lot of things but you're not explaining what you mean," said Clara.

"I know you think I'm just like my dad – and so does everybody else – but I'm not. I don't like this jumping around, I like to stay for a while. I've lived in some pretty boring places before, and I did have the patience to spend years at an alien university getting my degrees. What I _mean_ is I know Hollowmire is small but I don't think it's going to bore me to death, or anything," Jenny said, "As villages go, a lot of weird stuff does seem to happen. Not to mention the ancient extradimensional god living in the mines."

"Yeah, Oc'thubha is quite cool. Sally took me to meet him the last time we went to The Mermaid. He really likes roller disco and he says 'dude' all the time," Clara said, taking one of the sausage rolls, conscious that Jenny was working her way through them dangerously quickly and soon enough there may not be any left.

"He likes baking. Everyone likes baking here." Clara nodded. "And _I_ like baking."

"Oh my god, you should totally go and live in Sally and Esther's spare room."

"Do they have a spare room?"

"It's full of junk."

"I'd rather live in my spaceship. I like the ship, I'd like if it was more… homely. Right?"

"Jenny, I think that you should do whatever will make you happy. And keep you safe."

"Well… it's not like I'm choosing between the Doctor or you. I can still see him all the time, and jump back to the TARDIS, and it would be nice to have a more normal relationship. And a job, to occupy me, since you keep telling me I need a hobby," Jenny said. "I could work in a bakery. Do you think?"

"I think anyone would be crazy not to hire you to do something that involves cooking, and I think that it would entail _me_ getting even more free cupcakes from you than I already get," said Clara.

"You don't think I'm being crazy?"

"Not really. It's a big change, but I don't think it's _crazy_. Just something to think about. Maybe don't do it on a whim, yeah?"

"Okay. Then I'll stay with you until my hand is alright and my black eye goes away, and if anyone shows up trying to make me go rescue people somewhere, I'll talk to you about it first. Then after that I'll decided if I'm going to come here and live in my spaceship and work in a bakery. I just don't think it should be a bad thing if I want to make different choices based on what I think is best for _us_."

"And _do_ you think this will be better for us?" Clara asked.

"Well… what do you think? It's fifty-fifty, right? You and me?"

"I just like you to look after yourself. But at the same time I, perhaps somewhat selfishly, would adore if you lived close by," said Clara, "I'm honestly happy with whatever you decide, but it's _your_ decision, not mine. As long as I still have you I'm not bothered." Jenny smiled at her.

"Thanks, Clara. I forget how good you are to talk to," Jenny kissed her cheek.

"I try my hardest."

"It's a bit chilly out here."

"Yeah. I like looking at the stars, though."

"Have you got any tea?"

"Of course." Clara picked out a metallic flask and poured some hot tea into the lid, handing it to Jenny when she was done, "All for you." Jenny sipped it and thought it was the best tea she had ever tasted in her life.

"This is perfect, honestly. You said you want to stargaze? I'll show you something, lie down," Jenny requested, lying down herself on the blanket and setting the flask next to her. Clara did, and Jenny moved so that they were on a bit of an angle so their heads would touch. Easier to point our stars that way. "Okay, do you see up there? All the way to the left? That small star in between those big ones?"

"I think so," Clara said. Jenny pointed it out for her with her hand. "Oh, right. I see it."

"That's a star called Mirs," said Jenny, "That's the star system where Messaline is. In four-thousand years from now, I'm going to be born right where that tiny blip is."

"Wow… that's cool."

"Tungtrun is there too; same system."

"I'd rather go to Tungtrun than Messaline."

Jenny laughed, "Why? Messaline is a paradise world now, and one of its moons is where Nios has set up her new colony. It's called Synthoid Prime, I heard."

"Huh. Nice. But because you said most of Tungtrun is cold and underground. I think I'd do quite well somewhere cold and underground."

"Maybe I'll take you there someday. But it's not that great, it's a big smugglers port where I lived in Arooh."

"Is there no end to your life of crime?"

"Maybe there will be now I've met a nice girl."

"Ha, that's sweet. Speaking of me meeting nice girls, my dad thinks we're engaged."

"Why?"

"I told him you said you want to marry me someday, and he thinks that's the same thing," said Jenny, " _But_ – and here's why I mentioned it, because I promised him I'd talk to you – he said he'd like to give me away. After he asked me if I'd wear a suit."

" _Would_ you wear a suit?"

"No, I'll wear a dress, definitely."

"Good. You'll look way hotter."

 **AN: You guys are gonna hate me for this, but I'm going on break. Well, only sort of. Basically, my next storyline is a Closwin storyline and you know I always do one 10,000 word chapter for those, or 2 10,000 word chapters for that** ** _Spook Watch_** **crossover. But this is the LAST Closwin storyline EVER in this fic so I'm gonna try and make it very long and very good so expect something in the realm of 20,000-30,000 words in just one chapter. So I'm basically writing a novella, and I haven't started. Plus, I'm going back to uni now, and I have 2 writing jobs, so I really can't keep up with uni and work AND fic regular updates, so I'll be off main fic until mid-December I reckon. BUT I'm going to try my best to finally finish this** ** _Spook Watch_** **storyline I've been writing since last Halloween (it's seriously taken me this long) and get another** ** _Jenny Who?_** **chapter out, so I'm not going cold turkey from fic or anything, I'm just focusing on much longer chapters in the background of everything else I have to do.**


	141. The Case of the Split Brain

**AN: I'm BACK only a week after I said I would be initially - pretty successful considering I moved literally a week ago today. I will be doing my best to get back to regular updates now this gigantic chapter is completed, which is the longest Closwin storyline to-date (excluding the _Clone Killer_ one which was more to do with the Spooks than the Twins), hence why it took so long to write it. Should be good banter though!**

 **DAY 155**

 _The Case of the Split Brain_

 _Clara & Oswin_

There was a stench in the air, like seawater and battery acid, which was so pungent it forced its way into every molecule on the desolate planetoid. It was a grey lump floating through space on the edge of the Goldilocks Zone, _right_ on the edge of the Goldilocks Zone, toeing the line between being habitable and completely inhospitable very delicately. It had a thin atmosphere and toxic water, and yet this big rock was called home by more than a few societal outsiders. It was almost always dark and there were frequent, deadly storms which kicked up a dangerous fog from the dust settling across the rocks, eroded by solar winds not kept out by the wafer-thin ozone layer. Most of the atmosphere was maintained by rusty and faltering generators strategically placed around the only settlement, and there was one, large and glowing the same shade of blue as a gas lamp, situated right outside a window rippled with condensation from the rime of the toxic waters.

"In a way, I do like it here," said Clara Oswald, sitting at a small and crooked wooden table, leaning on it with her elbows and looking out of the window at the atmospheric condenser. It was one of those places on the fringe of any large enough galactic empire, and attracted all kinds of species all running their own errands and liable to shoot anybody who asked them what they were up to. The only conversations were murmured ones between people already acquainted. Oswin sat with her fake leg stretched out underneath the table, Sprite on her shoulder, her cane leaning carefully against the side of her chair. Weird as they both were, nobody looked twice at them.

" _Why_ do you like it here?" Oswin asked her. She did not like it. A place like that was the opposite of the stable, artificial atmospheres she was used to. It was half-artificial and she didn't think much of these condensers, already working out a way to do the same thing much more efficiently, and wondering if anybody there would appreciate some detailed schematics if she found a big enough piece of paper to draw them on. Clara shrugged and then picked up what she was eating and took a bite out of it, which was when Oswin saw something slide out of the bottom of the food and dangle there in the air. " _What_ are you eating?"

"It's like calamari, but in a sandwich. You know, squid." Oswin cringed when she heard the word 'squid.' She hated squid. Ever since the incident with Squidzilla. And now Clara was _eating_ it, and there was a _fried tentacle_ hanging out of the bottom of an unusually-coloured bread roll; the bread was slightly grey and it made Oswin worried on Clara's behalf. Along with that, this meal of her sister's was absolutely drenched in pale mayonnaise, from the sachets she carried everywhere with her. Just in case of a mayonnaise-related emergency, which Clara managed to find spookily often.

"But it's not squid," said Oswin, "You're just eating the tentacles of some random probably-mutant alien creature."

"Honestly, I don't care. It doesn't taste half-bad. Just salty and a bit stringy." Oswin felt sick hearing that. _Salty and a bit stringy_.

"Almost sounds like you're describing semen…" she grumbled. Clara didn't comment on that. As disgusting as it was, she was clearly enjoying what she was feasting upon. She had something in a carved, stone stein as well, some drink which was not water because the water on what was colloquially called 'the Island' was poisonous. It was some form of alcohol, very watered down but the only available drink which was sterile. While thinking further on her plans for new-and-improved atmospheric generators, she also wondered if anyone would appreciate some easy-to-build water purification rig. Water purifiers were no challenge at all to build. Along with that was an ashtray with a fresh Marlboro stub of Clara's in it, smouldering away and stinking.

The only other thing on the table with them was the Echoculum Oswin had built Clara for her birthday, sitting there and glowing pink. Pink, according to Oswin, meant that somewhere an Echo was in trouble, but not immediate danger. It had begun going haywire earlier that morning, waking Clara up because of her connection to it, and they had come out to try and get to the bottom of what was the matter with whichever Echo it was picking up on. But there had been more than a few teething problems, ones which unnerved Oswin because it hadn't had any issues like this before, and the only thing they had been able to determine was the date of the turmoil and that it was coming from somewhere on the Island. They didn't know anything about the Echo or a more precise location, so they had come to the only settlement – a tiny and rickety, wooden village which smelled even worse than the rest of the planet because it was home to a lot of organic waste they were unable to properly dispose of – with the hope of investigating further. Then Clara had decided she was hungry.

Oswin kept picking up the Echoculum and examining it, but it only unfurled itself for Clara. It used her blood to work, and Clara's blood was very unique, thanks mostly to the corrupted strain of the Manifest virus running through her and the side-effects of being on the TARDIS for so long. Even Ravenwood wouldn't be able to activate it, nor any other Clechoes. Oswin nudged it with her thumb and watched it wobble on its spherical base. Still pink. Sprite crawled across onto her other shoulder, unnerved by the Echoculum. Under the table, Clara kicked Oswin's fake leg.

"Don't do that," Oswin said.

"Just wanted your attention."

"You've got it, you don't have to kick my leg, it's a sensitive piece of technology," she said.

"Why are you so down in the dumps?" Clara asked.

"I'm not."

"You are – you haven't complained half as much as you normally do about having to leave your boyfriend on his own," said Clara. Oswin sighed.

"He's busy today," she said, "Ellie got in trouble at school again, he had to go deal with it." Now she let her own eyes trail to the window and at the glowing condenser outside. It was like staying in a bedroom with a neon sign right outside.

"Come on, Os," Clara entreated, "We haven't spent any time together for _ages_. Not since all that stuff with Liam Kent, and that was hardly a good day. I've missed you, you're my favourite daughter. And my best friend."

"It's nothing, honestly," she said. Clara said nothing, just raised her eyebrows at Oswin, waiting expectantly for her to cave and explain her feelings. But Oswin wasn't going to cave. She wasn't going to give Clara the satisfaction of getting inside her head just by emphasising how much she valued her. She wasn't going to tell Clara a damned thing about what she was thinking, out of pure stubbornness. The pause between them continued. "Alright, fine," Oswin gave up, "It's just… _you know_ … I miss Nios and Jenny."

"Miss them? Where have they gone?"

"Into the arms of beautiful women," Oswin sighed wistfully. "Well, Nios has. I don't know about Jenny - I think this new girlfriend of hers might be a bit vain." Clara glared at her, then took another bite out of her grim sandwich which Oswin thought was a crime against nature, "It's just that thing where your friends get into relationships and you don't see them anymore."

"Since when did Nios like girls?"

"Well she asked one on a date a few days ago. And then went on the date." Clara's jaw dropped, which was a horrible sight because her mouth was still full of partially chewed tentacles. She paused for a while to finish eating and swallow.

"She _what_!?" Clara exclaimed eventually when she had emptied her mouth, "She-!? Why didn't you-!? Oh my god! I didn't know she was gay, I thought you were just making it up."

"I _was_ making it up, until I saw how she reacted around this doctor we met. Anyway, what do you care? Would you have tried to shag her if you knew?"

" _No_ ," said Clara, then paused and rethought, "I mean – sure, if I was single. But I'm not single. So, no. I just like to know."

"She has major vibes. Your gaydar needs retuning."

"Well – tell me about the doctor."

"The Doctor? He's your husband. I'm surprised you don't know that." Clara kicked her again. "I told you to stop doing that!"

"Be serious."

"I'm always serious."

"Seriously annoying."

"I know you are, but what am I?" Oswin replied smarmily. Clara didn't dignify that with a response, and waited for Oswin to get back to the matter at hand, having yet another bite of her sandwich. She was about halfway through it now, but it was quite large. They were still managing to talk quietly enough that they didn't catch the attention of any of the other residents in this bizarre café-cum-restaurant-cum-bar. It was the only social space in the entire, bleak settlement. "You've never been to Undercoll, have you?" Clara shook her head. The only member of Undercoll Clara had ever met was James Elliott, and probably only with an underlying note of jealousy as she wondered what it was James Elliott had that she didn't when it came to attracting the attention of one Sally Sparrow. Answer: a penis. And a less-obnoxious attitude, in general. But these were truths Clara didn't want to accept. "Nios fancies their pathologist, Dr Cohen."

" _Dr_ Cohen – sexy already."

"You don't know the half of it, Clary – she's also Scottish."

" _Really_?"

"And she's like, a medical genius. Plus, she hates me," Oswin beamed when she said that, "Like, really, doesn't like me, isn't impressed by me at all. It's very refreshing – I think people should tell me to shut up more often."

"People tell you to shut up all the time; _I've_ already told you to shut up about a dozen times today."

"Yeah, but someone I respect."

"Oh, thanks."

"Someone who says it with conviction."

"Uh-huh."

"And in a Scottish accent."

"There it is."

"It's _delicious_."

"I'm not saying I'd disagree if I heard it," Clara said, "Anything else you know about her?"

"She's autistic and everyone calls her 'Dr Death' and they went on a date to a medical museum," Oswin said, "I think she sounds like a wet dream. These medical professionals, honestly – it's the thing which always made Flek so alluring. And you can't say that the fact she's a doctor isn't the hottest thing about Martha Jones – and _she's_ a girl who can set things on fire with her mind. Anyway, I like Cohen, and more than that I like that she seems to be making Nios quite happy so far. Happier than I've ever seen her, at any rate. And while it may sadden me that my own brilliant charms never made Nios smile so much-"

"You haven't got any charms."

"Shut up, Clara. Like I was saying. While it may sadden me, I'm still glad that Nios has found love. Even if it is a very weird kind of love with a girl who keeps dead organic specimens in jars of formaldehyde in her flat, or so I hear."

"Huh. Cute. But – Jenny's always on the TARDIS. You miss her too?" Clara asked, watching Oswin carefully. Oswin deliberated for some time, long enough that Clara decided to say something else. "I see her all the time when she comes looking for her father."

"She… told me something she made me promise not to tell you…" Oswin began, feeling guilty already. Clara took a sip from whatever was in her stein, which made her flinch. Then she took another sip. Oswin hoped it wasn't _too_ strong, but Clara actually had a relatively high tolerance for alcohol. And she only got nastily drunk when she had tequila. Luckily, there was no tequila in sight. "I'll tell you if you promise not to say anything to the Doctor. And I mean that, Clara. If you don't promise you don't get to know."

"I promise," said Clara. Oswin didn't know if she trusted her. Clara might just tell the Doctor without even realising it was supposed to be a secret – god knew that Oswin would do the same thing where Adam Mitchell was concerned. She told him everything and she didn't think twice. She often did the same with Clara. "What's going on?"

"Well – you know – sometimes she texts me when Ravenwood is asleep at odd hours of the morning," said Oswin, "And she was telling me she… she's thinking about maybe leaving the TARDIS to go live in the village. To be closer to Other You. But you can't tell the Doctor – she'll tell him when she decides and in her own way, alright? She'd kill me if he found out about this from anyone but her."

"…I sort of wish you hadn't told me now. I don't like keeping things from him."

"You're perfectly capable of keeping things from him – just look at how much time you spent drooling over Thirteen," Oswin pointed out. Clara didn't like people bringing up Thirteen though, even Oswin. She didn't even like thinking about Thirteen herself. "And you're not keeping things, really. She'll tell him when she's ready. Don't let him hear it second-hand."

"That's why you're in a mood, then? Because Jenny might be going? It _is_ quite upsetting; I love staring at Jenny. I'd hate if I couldn't stare at her anymore."

"You can't just stare at women."

"She reminds me of her mother."

"Eurgh, don't be creepy," Oswin shook her head, "How much of that appalling sandwich have you got left, then? We _are_ supposed to be doing something. It's one of _your_ useless Echoes who's gotten themselves into trouble. _I'm_ not the one who made a million time-clones of myself."

"There aren't a million of them – and be nicer, won't you? You don't have to get so jealous."

"I do not get jealous," Oswin scoffed unconvincingly.

"You're totally jealous. You want my attention all to yourself."

"If I wanted your undivided attention that badly I need only go talk to myself in a mirror."

"You never know, you might like this one," Clara said.

"I don't like any of them…" Oswin muttered, shifting her weight in her chair. Sprite jumped down from her shoulder onto the table, freaking Clara out, but he was only going to examine the Echoculum further. Oswin watched him carefully.

"I thought you liked Cara?"

" _Cara_? I never even knew her when she was alive, I've only seen her corpse," said Oswin, "You're getting them mixed up now. Next thing you'll be getting me and the Vict-whore-ian confused, or worse, me and Eyeball. I _hate_ her."

"Why? What did she ever do to you?"

"It's what she did to Flek," Oswin said quietly.

"Flek? What – you mean marrying her?" And Oswin realised that she had not had the opportunity to update Clara on the finer points of Eyeball's love-life. She had been too busy pre-emptively getting sad about Jenny leaving, or trying to cheer Flek up about everything that had happened. And actually, she had spent quite a lot of the previous day doing nothing in particular with Adam Mitchell, but he had taken up a lot of her focus.

"No, I mean dumping her," said Oswin.

"Wait, _what_?"

"Eyeball left. She broke Flek's engagement ring, stole a Remnant shuttle, and ran away from Eslilia," Oswin said "I found out the day before last. Flek's really-"

"Say," their conversation was completely interrupted by a burly lizard-looking guy with very dark green scales and four arms, wearing what looked like a fabric captain's hat only with some strange symbols on it neither of them recognised. Sprite scuttled back up Oswin's arm to hide behind her shoulder, while she herself took hold of her cane to make sure it didn't fall into the wrong hands. Clara, however, wasn't in the remotest sense perturbed. She instead smiled politely. "Do I know you from somewhere?" He looked between both of them with six beady, red eyes.

"I don't know, do you?" Clara asked, "If you've seen us around, we'll be very interested to hear about it." He crossed his arms, all four of them, casting a huge shadow over the Twins and their table, like he was waiting for an explanation. Clara took it upon herself to give him one. "We're part of a series of clones," she lied, "We don't know how many of us there are, or who we're clones of, but we heard that there might be one of us on this rock somewhere."

"Why would someone manufacturing clones let any of them get away?" he questioned.

"We're botched," said Clara, then she rolled up her sleeve and revealed the patches of scar tissue and old blisters packed together and ruining the skin on her left arm, making it unusually patterned and shiny. Oswin easily continued the lie, by rapping the bottom of her cane on her leg.

"And I've got a prosthetic here," she said, "One fake leg, one mangled leg. We're faulty. No-one wants faulty clones. You wouldn't happen to know where we might find our dear sister, would you, by any chance?"

"I haven't seen anyone with a face like yours around these parts. What gives you the impression there's someone on the Island?" Now other people were beginning to take notice of this colourful exchange. Oswin couldn't tell if they were welcome or not. Mostly everybody there was a drifter as well, very few people actually stayed on the Island for long. Clara nodded at the Echoculum to indicate it.

"Rudimentary DNA tracker," she said, "Very basic." ' _I'm offended_ ,' Oswin thought to her, which took Clara gloriously by surprise. They so rarely used the mind-patch to communicate anymore, instead opting for the more conventional forms of communication like texts, or even talking face to face like cavemen. "Can't pinpoint anything. Any help you can give us would be much appreciated."

"I might know something," he said, scrutinising them both. "If you do something for me in return." ' _He's totally gonna ask for sexual favours_.' Clara kicked Oswin again, and went on smiling at the sailor-lizard.

"What can we do you for?" she said.

"I heard what you were speaking of," he said, "Matters of the heart." Then he rested his gigantic hands, just two of them, on the table and leant down to speak in a low voice, his reptilian face grizzled and covered in scars with a very potent smell coming from his breath. "What do you get a woman?"

"…Excuse me?" Clara asked.

"To let her know your true feelings."

"Finger her," said Oswin immediately.

"You shut up!" Clara ordered her.

"That's what _I_ do," then she held up her right hand, holding her ring finger down with her thumb while the other three fingers stood tall, and said knowingly, "You want two in the pink and one in the stink," she winked at the reptile.

"I said shut up. No one wants to hear anything you have to say."

"Girls do. When I finger them."

"You haven't touched a girl for years."

"Erm, excuse you! I've touched myself _plenty_ ," Oswin declared, like this were something to brag about. Clara shook her head as her sister sat there smugly.

"Maybe, um… get her some flowers?" Clara said, "Or just tell her."

"Tell her?" the lizard was perplexed.

"Just tell her you like her."

"I need a gift," he said. He was very firm that he needed a gift to woo this mystery woman, and Clara was going to do her best to think of what this gift could be. She was a romantic at heart, and couldn't resist helping people find love.

"Not flowers?"

"There are no flowers on the island."

"You could… make some? If you make some out of, like, paper or something, they won't die, they'll be around forever," she said.

"Or you could get her a rock, there's plenty of rocks around here," Oswin piped up again. Clara scowled at her. "What? I wouldn't say no to a really cool rock, personally. Or something cute. My boyfriend loves cute things, like animals. I hate them myself."

"What use is a boyfriend?"

"He's got a point, Os," said Clara.

"Oi!" Oswin protested, " _You've_ got a husband."

"But I've slept with _tons_ of women. You've slept with, like, _two_. You could get her a drink?" Clara suggested to the lizard, "A nice bottle of wine always goes down well. Or cocktails. What kind of things does she like?"

"Murder," said the lizard. Clara was startled.

"Right then. Well. Maybe… I don't want to suggest that you should murder someone for her-" He hit one of his hands on the table triumphantly and then grinned very broadly, revealing at least three rows of razor-sharp, shark-like, pink-stained teeth. Clara really hoped he hadn't just decided to murder _them_. He wouldn't get very far. She'd already defeated one giant humanoid lizard, she was sure she could manage another one.

"I will get her something cute," he said, "A trophy. I will bring her the bleeding head of an Ungler."

"Fantastic," Clara smiled very uneasily, "So glad we could help." She did not ask about the sentience of an 'Ungler', if it was simple wildlife or another advanced species this sailor had a problem with. She didn't want to know.

"What can you tell us about the clone?" Oswin implored.

"A ship crashed a ways to the west in recent days," he explained, "Looked to be in bad shape. There's been talk of people going to salvage, those kind wouldn't spare a creature the likes of you on their hunt. If I were you, I'd make haste. Many thanks for your advice; if you ever need help, you've a friend on this Island now." He nodded at them and then lumbered away with heavy footsteps. He reminded Oswin of Killer Croc.

"Actually," Clara called after him, and he turned slowly to look at them again, "You don't have a lamp we could borrow?"

And just like that, they were dispatched into the bleak landscape of the Island, after their friendly pirate-sounding lizard man had given them an old and rusty electric crank lantern. It was very dark outside and hard to see, stuck in a permanent night cycle because the Island didn't have a normal rotation pattern. Along with that, gaseous deposits and geysers littering the surface meant it was covered in bad-smelling and icy cold mist, which was already playing havoc with Clara's hair and she was wishing she hadn't tried to do anything to it that morning. She had wasted an entire ten minutes straightening it – and for what? Nothing. At least she had brought a coat.

"Maybe we should go back and abandon the Clecho," Oswin said, "It's nasty out here." It was, the entire 'Island' was covered in piteous liquid deposits which resembled lakes but were full of dark-coloured and dirty chemicals being ejected from whatever lay beneath the rocky surface. "This terrain is very hard to walk on."

"Shouldn't have blown yourself up then, should you?"

"No. The next time I try to kill myself I'll be sure to do it properly," said Oswin dryly.

"Sweetheart, that's not funny."

" _You_ brought it up," Oswin pointed out. And Clara had brought it up. She sighed and let go of the lantern she had been carrying, leaving it to float in the air beside them. Sprite watched this with amazement, and Clara quirked an eyebrow at the little mechanical centipede as she searched her coat pockets for a cigarette, her third one of the day.

"I'm running low…" she grumbled.

"Perfect opportunity to quit," said Oswin. Then with a wave of her arm – which was purely for show – she brought up her vivid green holographic displays, showing Clara a myriad of complex graphs she hadn't a cat in hell's chance of understanding, "I'd advise against you smoking here. The air content is already so appalling and there's quite a dangerous amount of solar radiation." Clara looked Oswin dead in the eyes, and then lit her cigarette anyway. "I don't know why you have to be like this…"

"I could literally say the same thing to you. Anyway. I'll heal."

"Don't get cocky with the healing, cutie," Oswin said, dismissing the graphs and adjusting her grip on her cane while Sprite still clung to her shoulder, "You get too reliant on it and you'll get very reckless and start running into danger."

"As opposed to limping into danger? Like you?" Clara retorted, blowing a stream of smoke at Oswin. Oswin stuck her tongue out. "Mature." Then Oswin reached over and flicked Clara's ear. "Ow! What was that for!?"

"You're being annoying. You're literally the most annoying person, like ever." Clara rubbed her ear and glared.

"You're being naughty today."

"Don't you like me when I'm naughty?" Oswin said sultrily, giving Clara a very exaggerated and deliberate wink. Clara set off walking again, but made sure to elbow Oswin sharply in her stomach when she walked past. "Nice. And _I'm_ the immature one."

"You never finished telling me about Eyeball and Flek, anyway."

"No, I got distracted by Lizard Daddy back there. Do you think he can shoot blood out of his eyes? I hear some lizards do that. It would _really_ turn me on."

"You are disgusting."

"And I'm all yours. Isn't that precious?" It was Oswin's cane, which had a built-in compass along with a few dozen other gadgets she had yet to reveal, which was keeping them heading west. They were going west and trying to use the Echoculum as a kind of radar, but it wasn't working too well. The next course of action would be to try and pick up any distress beacons, and failing that maybe a metal detector would be the best course of action. If it was a crashed spaceship they were looking for.

"What happened, though?" Clara asked seriously.

"Oh. It was sort of my fault."

"Your fault? What did you do…?"

"Uh, existed. More or less. Look, it turns out that Flek was only going out with Eyeball because she reminded her of me. And that's not my self-esteem talking-"

"Your vanity."

" _Your_ hypocrisy," Oswin snapped, getting her to be quiet. "Anyway, I never liked Eyeball. Or _Ressy_. And now what? She's broken Flek's heart? Nobody should get away with that."

"I feel like you did a very similar thing, did you not?"

"Hey, there were very valid reasons why I broke up with Flek, but… look, Flek needs to find a new girlfriend who agrees with all of her ideological principles. Fundamentally, she's a good person. _Too_ good. Like Mitchell. And she's living on Eslilia with a whole group of people who believe in her and look up to her and respect her – but she's drawn to these ones who are bad for her. Me included. Not that I'm a bad girlfriend. Or maybe I am – but I try my best. Even if Adam is… you know."

"I don't know," Clara said, "What is he?"

"Lacking in confidence. Not very self-assured. He doesn't even like me seeing him naked – which is cute, but it does worry me. I don't like the idea of him beating himself up so much about something as arbitrary as body image – but we were talking about Flek," Oswin said, getting side-tracked when Adam Mitchell was brought up, though she had brought him up herself. "I love Flek, I care about her a lot, and I want her to be happy. Not that I'm _in love_ with her, I'm not anymore. But you can't just flick a switch and make all of your feelings for somebody evaporate, and being stuck in an imaginary spaceship on your own for a year isn't the best environment to try and get over a serious relationship."

"You clearly have managed to get over it, since you've moved on now and you have Adam," Clara said.

"Yeah, but Flek's on a staggered timeline to me, she's over a decade older now when we used to be almost the same age. Even Fyn is older than me – do you know how weird that is? Your baby brother suddenly being in his thirties when you're permanently frozen at twenty-six?"

"As weird as your stepdaughter falling in love with a version of you from a different universe?" Clara suggested. Oswin laughed.

"So you _do_ find it weird."

"Well – no – not exactly – it just seems odd."

"Are 'odd' and 'weird' not synonyms?"

"Not in this context," said Clara, watching the ground beneath them carefully as she walked. She was keeping a very watchful gaze on Oswin and this rocky, uneven terrain; Oswin had a hard enough time walking on the flat corridors of the TARDIS, let alone on some desolate and foggy asteroid covered in lakes made of acid. "It's just that – it was always _you_ she was infatuated with."

"Who?" Oswin asked. She, too, had been watching her steps carefully, and during the pause had lost track of the conversation. Clara was still smoking, but regretting it.

"Jenny. For a bit, she was kind of obsessed with you," said Clara.

"No, no. It wasn't like that. It's… complicated."

"Excuse me? Do you have something going on with her?" Clara inquired wryly.

"No!" Oswin protested, "Nothing."

"Because there's a rumour going round that Nios caught you making out in your lab."

"There's _what_? Who told you that?"

"Martha."

" _Martha_? How did _she_ hear about it? This is ridiculous, it's not even true. She was soldering circuitry for Sprite and I was leaning over her because I didn't want her and her gammy thumb to mess it up," Oswin said.

"Well, I didn't believe it," said Clara, "If I believed it I would have come to talk to you about it."

"Look, the thing with Jenny is just… you know. There's a mutual… attraction. What do you want me to say? The girl is dreamy."

"Oh, that I can't deny, she's out of this world. Literally."

"Why did you bring this up, again?"

"Because she always had a thing for you, and then suddenly she fell in love with _me_. I find it odd because actual _Me_ -me barely spoke to her," Clara said, "And then she's off doing all these romantic things. Where did it spring from?"

"Sex, I assume," said Oswin, "I totally have a theory it's just because you look like me, though."

" _I'm_ the original here."

"Yeah, yeah. Other You is the next best thing to yours truly. We're physically identical, except she has two legs and those sexy fangs. Just as morbid and traumatised – has a whole slew of weird, repressed memories, too. I think it's our collective wit and charm Jenny fell for. _And_ ," Oswin said, then she paused and pointed at her own face, "Dimples." They were stopped now, out in the middle of nowhere, with the dark sky above and only the bleak light of the lamp Clara was still floating along with them. Clara was looking at her. "Do you want something?"

"I've missed you."

"How romantic – I'm swooning. Is this the part where you get down on one knee and ask me to marry you? I'd do it myself, but I've only got the one knee to start with, and as much as I love going down on girls my leg doesn't really bend in the right way anymore," Oswin said. Clara shook her head.

"Do you have to ruin _everything_?"

"Yes. You just said you've missed me, do you take it back?"

"I wish I took it back," Clara muttered, beginning to walk again, "How far away do you think this crash site is? It's so hard to see anything out here. Maybe we should have got the TARDIS to scan."

"It's a very small asteroid," said Oswin, "And we won't get lost, we've got a compass, and I'm tracking our movements with the Sphere. We could scour and map the whole Island if it came down to it." Oswin might complain immensely about having to do anything to aid the Echoes, but she was still doing everything she could, which made Clara happy.

"Alright, good. I'm worried."

"Don't be; the Echoculum is still pink," Oswin said, "So, like I said, there's no immediate danger. And it's a small rock."

"Tell me something – do you ever miss the Dream?"

"That joint acid trip of ours? Do I miss it? Which bits of it might I miss? The part where I broke my ankle and literally still had to limp around on it for the rest of the day? Which – I might add – was actually more painful than the pain I was in after I woke up from the bomb detonation that took my leg off to begin with." Oswin did have a bad habit of rambling, Clara noted. She wondered if she shared it; she had never noticed. "Do _you_ miss it?" Clara shrugged. "I think you need to revaluate things, to be quite honest. Have you forgotten how traumatic the stuff in that asylum was?" she became unusually sombre and serious, "How you have a new nightmare now?"

"That nightmare comes from the Frir," said Clara, referring to the bad taste that was her dream where she found Oswin dead in the electroshock therapy chair of Happy Views Hospital, with Clara's name scratched into her forearm to indicate that Oswin's murder had all been her fault. "And some of it was alright."

"I thought the whole thing was awful."

"But good came from it."

"Like what?"

"Like us, getting close to each other."

" _Close to each other_? Do you hear yourself sometimes? And you wonder why people think we're having an illicit love affair. 'Close to each other' – unbelievable," Oswin shook her head.

"But, really, I love you-"

"Ew, gross, you're making it worse."

"Not in a creepy way, shut up. You know that I care about you more than anybody else, the Doctor included, and I just think that if it wasn't for the Dream that wouldn't have happened. And I wouldn't care about my Echoes, just like Ravenwood doesn't care about hers. And that's why I maybe think the Dream was a good thing. I got my sister out of it." Oswin didn't say anything, she was looking down at the ground. "Oswin?" Clara asked, "I'm really not trying to sound incest-y about-"

"Stop going on about incest, will you? Shh," Oswin ordered her, then Clara realised she had not been looking at the ground, she had been looking at her cane, a light on top of which had begun to blink green at rather long intervals. When Clara focused, she could her it bleeping as well.

"What's that?"

"It's picking up a distress signal," Oswin said, "Likely from a downed spaceship. Within a hundred-metre radius."

"Are you lying?"

"I – what? Of course I'm not lying! _Why_ on Titan would I lie!?"

"I don't know – because you think it's funny?"

"It isn't funny, though."

"How am I supposed to know what you think is funny?"

"Because we're the same person."

"But you're deranged."

"People are right with what they say about us."

"About the incest?"

"Not about the bloody incest! Stop mentioning incest! Eurgh! About how they struggle to believe that we can actually get anything done when we're together."

"Oh. Done about what?"

" _About the distress signal_. Pay attention, woman. I'm not scanning the area for the good of my health, you know. It's this way. Keep your eye out for a big spaceship, would you?" Oswin ordered her, limping away again. Sprite crawled down the side of her body and onto the ground, scurrying a few feet in front of them. Clara assumed he was following the signal as well. Her cigarette was burned down about halfway and it was icy cold out there; she hoped it was warmer on the spaceship. The only source of warmth was the lantern in her hand, but it wasn't enough to keep her fingers from freezing.

"So, you hate those kittens, then?" Clara asked, watching Sprite.

"That's a random question."

"Is it _all_ animals?"

"Animals spread pathogens and disease and are unhygienic. They're unintelligent and you have to clean up after them. Where's the appeal?"

"Funny."

"What?"

"You like babies," Clara said, "I remember you talking about your nephew, and how you raised some of your brothers. They're unintelligent and you have to clean up after them."

"They're little people!" Oswin protested, "They're all tiny and you get to watch them grow. Like flowers. But I don't like flowers. I like babies because they don't know I'm clever."

"Why do you care if people know you're clever? You boast about it constantly," Clara said.

"Babies just want, you know, affection or milk or to go to sleep or something. They don't expect you to be astounding all the time or to do all these things. And they take up _loads_ of your attention," Oswin said. Clara had never seen this side of her sister before, but quite liked listening to her talk as they followed Sprite along.

"Os," she began, "When you were still alive – did you want kids?"

"I never had time to think about having kids," Oswin said, "Had my brothers, then the war, it was all sort of going on at once. I never spoke to Flek about it, just like I never spoke to Flek about marrying her. Things are different when there's a war on, you know."

"No war on now," said Clara, studying her cigarette to try and work out exactly how much she had left of it. Hopefully it would last until they reached this spaceship. Oswin smiled.

"So what? I'm a hologram and my boyfriend can't get it up because he's frozen."

"You could still get married. How long have you been together now?"

"One-hundred-and-five days," Oswin said, "Three-and-a-half months. Nowhere _near_ long enough to think about getting married." Clara nudged her in the shoulder with her elbow. "What?"

" _Do_ you think about getting married?"

"To Mitchell?" Oswin questioned.

"Obviously to him. Or – if you were still alive, might you want kids?"

" _Marriage_? And _children_? With-?" and then she laughed very uneasily in a way Clara was very familiar with. It was the way Clara laughed when somebody asked her an awkward question she didn't know how to answer. Or when Sally Sparrow talked to her, in which case she also didn't know how to answer because she often forgot how to do everything around Sally Sparrow. Sprite came to Oswin's rescue by beeping and indicating by pointing with his entire body the way a gundog might.

The Twins looked in the direction Sprite pointed and saw something dark looming out of the Island's dense and salty fog. It really did remind Clara of rime from the sea, and was queerly familiar to her and her seaside origins. It was a crashed spaceship alright, Clara had seen enough of them to know for sure.

"This is totally like _Alien_ ," said Oswin.

"You'd better hope it's nothing like _Alien_. I remember the last time anything remotely to do with _Alien_ happened."

"You weren't even there."

"I can visualise Jenny getting ripped open and having her eyes gouged out without having to see it, thank you very much," Clara said, beginning to approach the big ship, which didn't have very many defining features. She didn't recognise where it was from, but she hadn't expected to. She didn't even know what year it was, after all.

"You visualise Jenny a lot, then?"

"Who _doesn't_?" she said, "Now then, my sweet-"

"Ew." They were stood at the very edge of the wreckage, and Clara flicked her cigarette butt down into the gorge around it, the crater it had created when it crashed. The air still smelt of fuel and fire. It must have crashed relatively recently; the last few days.

"-Do you need any help to get down there?"

"Help how?" she asked, "Are you going to carry me over the threshold? Darling, people will surely talk." Clara hit her arm. "…Yes, help would be nice, actually…" Clara held out her arm for Oswin to take and she did, and they began a very careful and precarious descent towards the hulking mass of the downed ship.

"What kind of ship is it, anyway?" Clara asked, watching their feet. Sprite still walked just in front of them, guiding them down the easiest path he could find. He really was quite useful; he was growing on Clara.

"It's a short-range shuttle," Oswin said, "For quickly getting to planet surface's, can't manage for long in outer space on their own. Probably why it crashed."

"So why would someone be flying it out here? You said this system is more or less desolate."

"It is, there aren't any planets in the Goldilocks Zone here at all, just the Island and that's barely habitable." Oswin wobbled and nearly tripped, Clara having to steady her. Stopping Oswin from falling over was probably the only useful thing she ever did with her telekinesis; which was quite ridiculous considering it was so powerful. Well, that and making their lantern float alongside them because she wanted both hands free to help her inept sister. "It could have been commandeered and used as a makeshift escape vessel, but it could also have been taken out by some idiot kids for a joy-ride and now they're paid the-" she stumbled again and swore when she was forced to briefly put weight on her crippled leg, before Clara held her up again. "Look at us, we're useless."

"We're doing fine, I'll keep you safe. Promise."

"A very easy promise to keep being as I'm already dead."

"Doesn't eliminate any of the sincerity, sweetheart." They didn't talk much more as they traversed the sheer slope made of jutting rock and melted shards of metal from the wreckage. It took an entire five minutes to walk a comparably small distance and reach the edge of this ship, but as it was Clara didn't think she could see any doors. Oswin tapped her in the shin with her cane. "What?"

"Hole over there," Oswin nodded, and Sprite went on a head to plot another awkward course until they reached a gaping hole in the side of the ship which was so dark Clara hadn't spotted it on her own. "That's weird," Oswin said when they were close to it.

"Big hole in a crashed spaceship?"

"Look at the edges," she said, "The metal is curving outwards."

"So?"

"So it was broken from the inside, and it doesn't look like there are any fuel tanks here that could have exploded," Oswin said, "I wonder what got out."

"Hmm… well, whatever it is, _we're_ going _in_ ," said Clara, and then she lifted Oswin up to half-carry her into the person-sized hole, despite her protests. Inside, everything was dark and wonky, the ship crashed on an angle. It looked to her like they were walking along the walls. Oswin struggled to push Clara's hands away as Sprite crawled up onto her arm again. Clara raised her lamp to get a look around, and Oswin activated the light on her Sphere, but there was little of note. "Have you really never thought about you and Adam getting married?" Oswin didn't know what to say. She didn't want to lie to Clara, but she didn't want to talk about her relationship, either.

"Isn't this something I should really talk to him about?" she said.

"I'm _interested_ , I like knowing what's going on with you. And I like Adam."

"Maybe _you_ should marry him, then," Oswin muttered as they began to creep through the corridors. "I have thought about kids. About how… if we were normal, you know, I think we'd be good parents. Or he would be, I don't know about me… but honestly, this is personal. And we've never talked about it. I love you, but if this is something I'm going to talk about I should really be talking to Mitchell first. Besides, I've got my computers. And I still feel like I'm babysitting Nios sometimes. And you, when you get lonely and force us to spend time together."

"I like spending time with you."

"Because you're a narcissist, we know. Anyway, I think we should be going-" there was a buzzing sound and then a click which Clara recognised as a tannoy system being tapped into and activated. At first glance it didn't look like the ship had much power at all, but maybe it was just struggling by on backups.

" _You have to go left_ ," said a voice. Not just any voice, _Clara's_ voice (and Oswin's). " _I'm desperate to see with my own two eyes that you two are what you look and sound like_."

"You can see us?" Clara called into thin air, unable to see any cameras or speakers. But given the shadows and the gloom, that didn't surprise her.

" _Of course I can see you, the ship still has enough power to emit a distress beacon. I'm a genius – do you really think I wouldn't know how to access the cameras? I'm holed up in the cockpit with the auxiliary generators maintaining a lockdown, in case of attack_ ," the voice of the Clecho told them. Clara turned to look at Oswin with a smirk.

"What?" asked Oswin, but Oswin knew what. Clara said nothing. "Shut up." Clara laughed at her.

"Is this the Dalek Asylum or what?"

"You weren't even there!" she protested.

"My husband tells me things! And so do you. I know what happened. _This_ is what happened."

"Probably not, there's probably not going to be any weird twist like they're actually a Dalek. Or maybe this one will be a Cyberman, who knows?" Oswin said coldly.

"And here you thought you were unique."

"I _am_ unique!"

"You're getting jealous already, I can feel it. Upset that your style is being cramped."

"Okay, I am the smartest girl in the universe, Clara. My style cannot be cramped. It's uncrampable. I'm so hard to cramp that I'm practically menopausal."

"Left, she said?" Clara asked, knowing full-well that left was what she had said. Oswin scowled and limped behind her with Sprite lurking on her shoulder. At least Sprite would never replace her with some other isolated genius girl stuck on a random planetoid. She could rely on him. He wasn't two-faced, like Clara. "Does the Echoculum go green for jealousy?"

"The Echoculum doesn't detect jealousy," Oswin muttered. "Anyway, maybe I'll start quizzing you on _your_ relationship."

"Which aspect of my relationship?"

"I don't know. How big is his dick?"

"I wish you would stop asking me that – I'm not going to tell you. It's an invasion of his privacy."

"I'll tell you what's an invasion – he's seen me naked," said Oswin, "He's slept with me, like, a thousand times. He has _licked_ -"

"Shut up! No he hasn't. And by that logic, _I_ should have a right to know all the most intimate details about what _your_ boyfriend has in his pants."

"You'd love to know."

"But I know better than to ask. Now behave yourself, I'm trying to come up with the best way to make this Echo my new best friend – I'm getting a bit tired of the one I have at the moment." Before Oswin could think of something incredibly smart, witty, and hilarious to say in response to that jibe, Clara stumbled right across the door for the cockpit. She knocked on this door. "Could you let us in?"

" _Of course I could_ ," said the disembodied Clecho voice, " _I'm a genius_." Oswin was beginning to feel quite stung. What if this girl was exactly like her, but an undamaged her who had both her legs? Wasn't mentally problematic? And then – god forbid – what if she met Adam Mitchell? Oswin was suddenly overcome with a fear that some doppelganger was going to swoop in and steal her boyfriend from underneath her. Ravenwood had already done it once by wrapping Jenny around her finger.

But Oswin's fears that they might stumble across some wholesome and perfect version of herself turned out to be completely unrealised. The doors opened automatically after the lockdown was lifted, and they tiptoed carefully into the room. It was messy, very messy, significantly messier than how Oswin had kept her daydream-cockpit on the _SS Alaska_. There was no hammock, either, and no mountain of ceramic dishes overflowing with burned soufflés. And, as far as she could tell, there was no Echo.

"Uh… did you say you were in here?" Clara called.

"I'm over here," said the voice, "On the floor, behind… something."

"Something?" Oswin asked.

"I don't know what it is."

"Can't you move it?"

"Not really," she said, and they followed the sound until they saw what looked like a medical gurney, big and silver with leather straps on it. It unnerved Oswin to note that these leather straps looked as though they had been ripped apart. Straps torn, the hull of the ship punched through – what were they dealing with? Clara went over to the gurney and tried to pick it up after placing her lamp on the ground, but when her eyes strayed to whatever was behind it she gasped and dropped the thing.

"What is it?" Oswin asked, limping closer. But admittedly it was even trickier for her to get around because there was so much junk strewn about the place. Plus, it was incredibly dark, with only rock and dirt visible through the front windows. Clara looked at Oswin wordlessly, then back at whatever she had found. She leant down again and this time reached to pick up something else, something which looked quite heavy. Then she held it aloft in the light of the Sphere and Oswin was just as shocked as she had been.

"It's our head in a jar," said Clara. And it was. A head in a jar.

"Hello to you, too," said the head in the jar, the head of the Clecho no less. Clara gawked at it like it was the weirdest thing she had ever seen. Maybe it _was_ the weirdest thing she had ever seen – Oswin thought it might be the weirdest thing _she_ had ever seen, after all. It was a very large jar full of faintly blue liquid, with wires connecting to the nerves and veins in the severed neck, keeping it alive. This was a jar specifically designed for keeping decapitated heads conscious and living, a very advanced medical device generally used for transplants.

"Wow," said Clara, "I had no idea _Futurama_ was so accurate to life. What was that you were saying about there being no twist?"

"I'm just surprised you have an Echo with fewer limbs than me," she commented, no longer feeling quite so insignificant. Clara carried the Head over to the pilot's chair and then set it down, which annoyed Oswin because there was only the one chair empty of crap and _she_ had rather been angling to sit in it. Her leg was aching.

"An Echo? What's this 'Echo' thing mean?"

"I thought you were a genius?" Oswin quipped, "Can't be that clever if you got your head cut off. Where's the rest of you?"

"It's a long story," the Head said.

"What's your name?" Clara asked.

"I'm Professor Ouro- I mean, I'm, err, Princess Claranna."

"You're who?" Oswin questioned.

"Princess Claranna."

"Sounded like you said 'Professor' for a moment."

"No, I'm just… well-read," said the Head.

"What are you a princess of?" Clara asked, then she said to her sister as a side-note, "Do you know Esther told me she dug up that I have an Echo who's a Pharaoh?"

"If you try to tell me that you think we're related to Cleopatra I'm going to kick you in the face."

"Hey!"

"Although, given Cleopatra's famous sexual promiscuity, I wouldn't be surprised."

"…And she was famous for being beautiful."

"Did you not hear the bit where I said I'd kick you in the face?"

"And _how_ would you kick me in the face, my dear?" Clara challenged her. After Oswin could not think of a way to kick Clara in the face, she instead hit her very hard in the ankle with her stick. "Oi!"

"Excuse me?" the Head interrupted them, "Do you mind telling me who you are and why you look exactly like Princess Claranna?" A pause. "By which I mean me, obviously. I often talk about myself in the third person, to… keep things interesting."

"Right…" said Oswin unsurely.

"It's complicated," said Clara.

"Nothing is too complicated for my extraordinary genius."

"How were you operating the comms when you're just a head in a jar?"

"Someone left them on and the microphone fell on the floor," she explained, "I can just about see the security feeds from down here." Not as clever as she seemed then, thought Oswin smugly. 'I heard that,' Clara interjected. ' _You stay out of my head, woman_.' 'Sorry, you just think so loudly when you're being conceited.' Oswin glared at her. "Who are you?"

"I'm Clara, this is Oswin. I… made you."

"Made me?"

"I went through this sort of… rift, in time, only not a rift, a bit different – but I had to go through it to save somebody's life, and in doing so I created these… splinters, of myself. Echoes. Oswin's one of them, so are you," she said, "I appreciate that this is probably a shock, knowing that you exist because of somebody else's-"

"It doesn't really bother me," said the Head.

"It… doesn't? It usually bothers people."

"Pfft, maybe I'm just better than the rest of them. I'm not interested in any of that, it just sounds confusing. I've got bigger problems, in case you haven't noticed."

"Problems like what?" Clara persisted.

"Like the fact I haven't got a body?" the Head said sarcastically.

"Oh. So that's, like, a new thing?"

"Excuse me, are you actually a princess?" Oswin interjected.

"No, not technically, just some snooty little rich girl. An heiress to a large fortune. _Very_ large. Over a quadrillion credits in inheritance has just descended to me because my grandfather died incredibly recently."

"You don't sound particularly cut up about it," Oswin commented.

"Oswin! She's probably in shock. _I'd_ be in shock if somebody cut my head off."

"Yes, shock, exactly," said the Head. Something felt funny about this head business, though. And not just because Oswin was jealous – because she definitely wasn't remotely jealous. At all. Even with her very limited mobility she was still doing miles better than the Head of Princess Claranna. "The thing is, somebody stole my body. Or rather, my body stole itself."

"That's quite the identity crisis you've got going on," Oswin said, "How did that happen?"

"I lost my head a few years ago in a freak accident – entire body lost. It was when I came into the money that I decided to hire somebody to… help me. Only, it's just not a very accepted area of science, so I had to… outsource."

"Uh-huh."

"Long story short, the scientist I paid is dead in the corner over there," the Head said, trying to indicate with her eyes what she was seeing. Clara and Oswin both looked over and saw a pair of legs sticking out from underneath more piles of junk. "Something went wrong when he tried to wake the body and it attacked him and knocked me to the floor before running off. Now it's out there somewhere, lost and confused, and I'm in here and there's nobody to fly the ship away."

"I don't mean to disappoint you, but I don't think you have much chance of flying this ship anywhere," Oswin said, "It's a wreck."

"Shows what you know. It would be very easy to fix, if I had a body."

"So… you want us to go and find it?" Clara said.

"Yes, please."

"And then what? Perform major transplant surgery on something so strong it punched a hole in a solid metal spaceship hull?" Oswin questioned her. Clara was at a loss for what to say.

"There was some mix up with the calculations."

"Clearly." Oswin was suspicious, and nudged Sprite, who crawled away across the floor towards the deceased scientist in the corner. Oswin watched him carefully out of the corner of her eye, while Clara's attention was focused on the Head.

"We'll go find it for you," said Clara, "It's the least we can do. I know I'd want someone to help me if I was… you know."

"A head in a jar?" the Head questioned.

"…Yeah. We'll help, won't we, Os?" Clara implored her. Oswin didn't know why Clara asked her since they both knew Clara was going to insist on helping the Head anyway, but she was saved from having answer by Sprite making some beeping sounds and coming scuttling back to Oswin's side.

"What's that _thing_!?" the Head exclaimed.

"A micro-AI I built," Oswin said offhandedly, "Sprite says that the scientist over there isn't dead."

"Is he not?"

"He's comatose."

"Forgive me for not checking for a pulse. It would be a bit hard, since I'm a decapitated head."

"Is there anything we can do?" Clara asked Oswin. Oswin was about to speak, but was cut off.

"Just leave it, he can't help anyway. This is his mess," said the Head, "He was a rubbish scientist. This is what I get for not asking for references! It'll be a wonderful anecdote one day. Are you going to leave to go find my body now? I'm sure you don't need a description. I'd draw you a picture, but-"

"You're a head in a jar?" Oswin suggested while Clara went to retrieve the borrowed lamp from where she had left it next to the gurney. The Head fake-gasped.

"How did you know!?" Oswin glared at it.

"Come on, Os," Clara touched her arm to indicate they were leaving.

"Do you ever stop going on about being a head in a jar?" Oswin asked.

"Leaving, sweetheart," Clara said, holding the lantern, "You can quiz her later."

"But-"

"This way." And Oswin resigned herself to Clara's guidance, following her out just as Sprite crawled up onto her back again. The cockpit doors slid closed behind them, but Oswin didn't say a word, knowing that the active comms meant the Head was going to hear anything they said. Clara didn't say anything either, and Oswin was suddenly dying to know what she was thinking. Did she trust the Head? Oswin wanted to crawl into Clara's mind and dig up whatever she could, not knowing if Clara would ever share her truthful opinions of her Echoes with her. She may maintain the sentiment that Oswin was her favourite, but also looked at all of them like they were made of gold and they could do no wrong. Clara even got along with Eyeball – and Eyeball was a criminal in Oswin's mind.

"Is Flek okay?" Clara interrupted.

"…Not really," Oswin said, "I'm going to find her a girlfriend."

"Just look in a mirror."

"Ha, ha. I'm serious, it's my new project. That and… helping the Spore Remnants."

"You're what? Going to help them?" Clara asked, putting an arm around Oswin once they were out of the ship again so that she could help her up the rocky crater. "Help them do what, sweetheart?" That was her worried tone of voice. _Concerned_. Oswin recognised it well.

"I don't know – survive on a very hostile planet? I… Adam's going to help," she said, "He'll… if they try to get me to… you know, he'll keep me in line. In check. Safe."

"Speaking of hostile planets, any idea how we're going to find a super-strong headless body?" Clara asked her.

"Keep an eye out?" Oswin suggested, "It can't have got too far. It hasn't got a head."

"How is it even alive without a head?"

"God knows, but it's alive enough to rip open a wall. There's this phenomenon, happens to people who get lost in deserts, right? Useless people who don't know how to read stars and don't have compasses. The thing is, human beings automatically curve around when they walk. You blindfold a man and put him in a big enough field and tell him to walk straight, he'll eventually wander right back to where he started," Oswin explained. Clara finally let her go; they had reached the top of the crater.

"So, what? The body is still on the ship?"

"No, but I doubt it's strayed as far as it wanted to," she said, "Give me your husband's screwdriver."

"What makes you think I have it?" Clara asked. Oswin gave her a look. "…Fine." She reached into her pocket, the same one she kept her cigarettes in, and handed the sonic to Oswin. At the same time she also drew out her fags and lighter and lit another one up, her third of the morning.

"You're smoking more than usual," Oswin said, "Can you hold my cane?"

"Are you going to be alright to stand up?"

"I've got excellent balance in my artificial leg," said Oswin. Clara took the cane once she had put her lighter away, and Oswin knew she was also holding her up telekinetically. Sprite crawled down to the end of her arm, too big to fit into her palm, and Oswin held out the sonic to him.

"What are you doing?"

"Giving him a boost. Sprite scans the terrain automatically, I'm just increasing his range temporarily. See if there are any caves, I think a cave is our best bet. But the smoking?"

"You keep track of my smoking?"

"I worry about you," said Oswin, "When you smoke more, it means you're preoccupied."

"I'm not preoccupied by anything specific," Clara said.

"You're not thinking about your wife again, are you?"

"Well I am _now_ … but no, I wasn't thinking about her. I'm just worried about the Doctor, if Jenny _does_ move out. He's just got her back, you should hear the way he talks about her – like nothing else matters," said Clara, "It's sweet. Almost like he had something… missing."

"He did have something missing, his daughter he left for dead and never looked for."

"He's trying to make up for it now, Os," Clara told her sternly, "He's sincere. If that's good enough for Jenny then it should be good enough for you – it's not like you're her girlfriend. Except in your dreams."

"And what exciting dreams they are, some of my favourites," said Oswin, then she took her cane back and let Sprite drop to the ground, "He'll show us the way to any suitable caves he's found. Try not to get _too_ out of breath. Don't cough up any lungs." They began to walk, Clara now in a bit of a mood because Oswin had criticised her for smoking. Oswin kept her eye on Sprite. "…Hey. Do you like your Echoes?"

"I like you," said Clara, "Despite, you know, your personality."

"Why do you care so much?"

"I don't know. I'm sure Sigmund Freud would love to work that out, too. Is it just guilt? Is it genuine responsibility for my creations? Is it a sort of surrogacy for the fact I can't have children in my current relationship? A way for me to emulate my deceased mother? All of the above? I think about it a lot. The Doctor asks about it. He asks me about you when he wants advice with Jenny, isn't that bizarre?"

"It is. You must be the weirdest parent in the universe."

"I don't think I'm a parent. I'm just looking out for them."

"You say you're not a parent but you still call me your daughter."

"Ah, but you're special. You're the smartest girl in the universe. Plus, it's mainly out of pity because so much bad stuff has happened to you," Clara joked.

"Thanks," Oswin nudged her playfully with her elbow, "I love being a sympathy shag. What do you think about that Head, then?"

"Princess Claranna?"

"A stupid name."

"I don't know," Clara shrugged, "Didn't seem particularly out of the ordinary by our standards."

"A severed head in a jar asking us to find its lost body didn't seem out of the ordinary?" Oswin questioned.

"As opposed to the manic-depressive Dalek living in a wonderland full of soufflés?" Clara challenged, "It's fine, Os. We'll get the body no problem. If I can fight off Rose Tyler with my telekinesis I'm sure I can fight off this thing, I doubt it's anywhere near as strong."

"I just think there's something fishy going on."

"You always think there's something fishy going on, that's nothing new," Clara sighed.

"Excuse me for being cautious – you don't think it was odd that there was a comatose bloke on the floor and she thought he was dead?"

"She had a point about not being able to check for a pulse, Os. Were you expecting…" Clara stopped talking.

"What?" Oswin asked. Clara was digging around in her pocket again after leaving the lamp floating in mid-air, and she drew out the Echoculum, which appeared to have unfurled itself in her pocket and was glowing a slightly darker shade of pink than it had been all morning. "That's odd."

"Why?"

"It means the Echo is getting more panicked."

"We should go back to the ship," Clara said.

"No, it's a proximity thing too. We couldn't use it to trace because it reacts so close to the Echoes it's practically redundant – it's a feature I couldn't get rid of, something to do with the blood," Oswin said, looking at the device as Clara held it up to her.

"So, let's go."

"No," said Oswin firmly, grabbing her elbow when she turned around, "It didn't do the proximity thing when we were close to the Head."

"So?"

"And I don't remember that Head being particularly panic-stricken. I don't think the Echoculum is detecting the Head of Princess Claranna, I think it's connected to the rogue body. Let's keep following Sprite," Oswin said, continuing to walk. But Clara didn't follow. "Clara?" She was thinking.

"…Okay, I'll trust you," she said, "But if anything happens to this Echo then I'm blaming you."

"When am I ever wrong?" said Oswin. Clara sighed and joined her again, flicking away her cigarette and plucking the lantern back out of the air, keeping the Echoculum out. Conversation dwindled again because Clara became preoccupied worrying about her Echo. Oswin was growing even more concerned now – there was definitely something afoot. She just couldn't work out what. But then she got a text, and pulled out her phone to read a message from Nios: _How do you ask a girl to let you see her flat without sounding sleazy?_ "Hey, honey?"

"Mmhmm?"

"How do you ask a girl to let you see her flat without sounding sleazy?"

"Uh… if you ask to see something _in_ her flat and sound really excited about it," Clara said, "Why?"

"Nios is asking me for advice," Oswin explained, writing down what Clara had said relatively awkwardly with her one hand, "I hope it goes well for her with this girl. Even if I'll get lonely."

"You've always got me."

"Together forever – the thought fills me with dread," she put her phone away, and when she looked up again she saw that they were on a downwards path through the icy gloom of the Island towards a dark opening, still being led by Sprite. Oswin clicked her fingers and Sprite returned to her side in a flash, scuttling onto her shoulder again. She didn't want this 'body' to decide to grab and mangle him. "Almost as much dread as going into this creepy cave."

"I'll hold your hand if you like."

"Don't you dare."

" _What_? I can't just hold your hand and have it be in a normal, non-incest-y way?"

"No, you can't. Stay over there."

"We've slept in the same bed before but god forbid I touch you."

" _That_ ," Oswin rounded on her, "Was because you had one of your nightmares and were very upset about it. There was nothing untoward and I don't appreciate this turn of-"

"Shit, Os," Clara grabbed her shoulders to force her to turn around and look into the mouth of the cave. It wasn't as deep as it had initially appeared, and something within was moving, it caught the light of Clara's lamp. Clara raised the lamp high above their heads and Oswin stayed very close as they edged into the gloom. "Hello?" Clara called out to it.

"Headless bodies don't have ears, you know," said Oswin, "Or mouths, or eyes, or noses – or any way to understand or communicate with the world around them."

"Well, Helen Keller was deaf and blind and she still learnt how to write," said Clara.

"Helen Keller still had a brain," said Oswin, "This thing is…" The 'thing' itself came shuffling towards them now, with the lantern illuminating it. It looked just like them, this body, only a little bit battered and it was wearing nothing save for a grimy surgical gown like it had escaped from an ICU. How did it know where they were? How could it sense the light? How was it even _alive_? She actually wished she had Flek there to try and shed some light on this medical mystery, as the dumb thing staggered towards them. Clara left the lantern suspended in thin air again and approached the thing with hardly a notion of caution. "Wait, honey, maybe you should be careful…" But Clara walked right up and took the thing by its shoulders as though she was going to look into its face. Of course, it didn't have a face to look at.

"This is the Echo," Clara said, "There's a connection. Do you feel it?"

"They're not my Echoes. I only have the bond with you, not the others. That's how it works. But I think the Echoculum would agree with you."

"How does that work, though?" said Clara, "If this body was grown, in a lab, by a scientist, in the last few days-"

"Who ever said that your time-splinters have to be born and raised in a conventional way?" Oswin said, "As far as I can see, there aren't a lot of rules for this kind of thing. Seems like you're the only one stupid enough to jump into the Doctor's time stream. All so that you could get your leg over. Was it worth it?"

"Shag of a lifetime on a daily basis – of course it was worth it."

"I'm glad to see you have your priorities in order, Clary."

"She clearly recognises us," Clara said, "Or me, at least. As a friend. Probably the bond, right?"

"Probably," said Oswin. She was keeping her distance, leaning both hands on her cane in front of her, Sprite perched timidly on the back of her shoulder. She was thinking. "It must have a consciousness, somewhere."

"Is that possible?"

"Are you forgetting that Donna and Amy don't even have their brains in their heads anymore? They were removed by quack robot doctors form another universe pretending to be Martians?"

"…Yes, actually, I did forget that."

"So, yes, it's possible to be connected to your brain but not have your brain in your body. _I'm_ just a digital consciousness in a floating box, after all, and Helix doesn't have what you'd call a 'brain,' he lives inside a server cloud… I've got an idea, can you help me sit down?"

"Sure, of course," Clara said, letting go of the Echo's body, which made the Echo wave its arms like it was looking for her to cling to, but Oswin needed assistance now. Clara helped her sit down on the floor and she tried not to think about how dirty it was all the while, then the Sphere appeared out of thin-air and fell, where Oswin caught it easily. It made Clara jump. Oswin was still in possession of the sonic, and Sprite crawled onto the top of her head to get a look at what she was doing. "What are you trying to do?"

"Exploit this connection it has with its brain," Oswin said, "I have a theory that there's more technology at play here than meets the eye. In case you're forgetting, I'm talking to you right now without a head. Or any other body part, really. Except the fake leg."

"But you've only got one Sphere."

"Well, you know what they say, honey. A problem shared is a problem halved." Oswin sonicked the Sphere at that moment, after fidgeting with her settings and scanning and typing some code very quickly on her hologramatic keyboard. It was not a pleasant experience, having to free up some of the processing space in her Sphere she kept for her _own_ cognitive functions. And having an IQ of three-hundred-and-fifty, Oswin Oswald had an abundance of cognitive functions. It was painful, to put it lightly, and the Body convulsed while Oswin's image flickered, and Clara didn't know which of them to fawn over. The Body collapsed and Clara only just managed to cushion its fall with telekinesis, also feeling the pain through both of her Echoes present. It reminded her of when Eleven had 'installed' the mind-patch connecting she and Oswin. God, that was a long time ago now…

" _What happened? Where am I? Who are you? I don't know where I am_ ," said the voice of the Echo, sounding mechanical as it drifted out of Oswin's Sphere.

"Oh, what a nostalgia-fest _this_ is turning out to be," Clara muttered, remembering the time when the Great Intelligence had sucked her into its Cloud. It was probably a very similar thing. She had a headache now, and rubbed the side of her skull, but it didn't alleviate anything. She sank to the ground too, and all three of them were then sitting there on the dirty floor of an alien cave, trying to get to the bottom of a mystery.

" _I can see! But I haven't got a head – but how am I talking – how am I doing anything – oh my stars, I can see myself! Is that me? I haven't got a head!_ "

"Yes, you haven't got a head, well done, top marks for observation," Oswin grumbled. She was not enjoying sharing her Sphere, not at all. The sooner this was over with, the better.

"It's complicated," said Clara to the Echo, unsure if she should direct her gaze at the Body or at the Sphere, "We found your head, we spoke to it."

" _That's not me_ ," said the Echo, " _I mean, it's – it's my head, but it's not me in there_."

"Then who is it?" Clara persisted.

" _Professor Ouroboros_."

"Now it makes sense why the Head nearly told us that was its name," Oswin pointed out.

"Right, but, how is some professor inside your head?"

"Shit!" Oswin exclaimed, "The body on the floor! The comatose body! _That_ must be this 'professor' bloke."

" _He's trying to steal my identity_ ," said the Echo, " _My name is Claranna Oswinius, my grandfather passed away just recently and left me the heir of the entire Oswinius Transport Company, the biggest interstellar commercial transport company in this quarter of the universe_." So she was a railway baron – or at least, the granddaughter of a railway baron. That explained why she was so rich, Clara thought. " _That phoney professor is after my fortune by trying to pretend to be me!_ "

"So, how did you lose your head?" Clara asked.

" _There was a woman, called the Doctor, and a freak accident. She was doing something, I don't remember, but I do know I saw a girl who looked just like me by her side. She warned me to get out of the way, but I was so intrigued… I'm not sure what happened. It was one of my own shuttles, I think, crashed into me. My head was the only part of me they could save, thanks to this Doctor. But I never saw her again_ ," Claranna explained. Clara felt a pang of guilt. Whatever the accident was that was going to remove Claranna's head, Clara was going to bear witness to it in the next few decades at some point. At least she knew in advance that things were going to be alright – that was, if they could fix whatever had happened to the Body and the Head.

"Nice to see wifey is still getting into trouble," Oswin quipped.

"Oswin, shush," Clara ordered her.

" _I don't understand why you look like me_."

"Yeah… the thing is, I sort of… made you. The girl who looked like you stood next to this Doctor, that was probably me. Or, it will be me, in my future," Clara said, "We're time travellers. I'm married to the Doctor."

" _Made me?_ "

"By jumping into the Doctor's time stream. I made copies of myself designed to save the Doctor's life across history. We call them Echoes. This is Oswin, she's an Echo as well," Clara said. The Body stayed still and the voice stayed silent. "I know this is a lot to take in, like I'm trying to tell you you're not who you think you are – but whatever identity you've made for yourself, that's you, and whoever raised you, they're your parents. And I'm here now to look after you when it matters, and try and fix the mess this Professor Ouroboros made."

"… _Do you know what's happened to me?_ "

"My best guess is the wires have been crossed," said Oswin, though she was still struggling to think, "It's my brain-space you're sharing right now, by the way, and my Sphere you're using to talk to us. I think your consciousness and the consciousness of this Ouroboros are competing for control of that head. Whatever he was trying to do didn't work very well."

"We'll help you, I promise," said Clara, "I'm sorry about everything that's happened to you, about your head being cut off because of the Doctor. But it doesn't make you invalid as a person or individual, and I'm not trying to say that it does, I just… there are things that have to happen in order for the universe to function. And you getting decapitated was one of them."

"Let her process it on her own," Oswin said, "You don't have to keep apologising. Right now, the head thing is the priority."

"Do you know how to connect the head with the body?" Clara asked her.

"Well, I… it's just anatomy, how complicated can it be?"

"A head transplant? How complicated can a head transplant be?"

"I'm a fast learner. And look, the hard parts have already been done, those being keeping the organs alive separately. The rest of it is just like… Lego. You know, just wedge it back together."

" _Well don't I feel safe in your hands_."

"I'm actually a genius," said Oswin.

" _That's what Ouroboros said_."

"Well I'm a real genius, I just don't specialise in biology. This Sphere you're using to talk, I built it."

" _And the creepy robot_?"

"Yes, I built him, too, he's an AI," she said, "I'm very good with AIs. If worse comes to worst we can suck out your consciousness and whack it in a sexy robot. Or a sexy hologram – I'm a sexy hologram myself. I actually died saving Clara's Doctor. So have some of the others."

" _Are you taking this seriously?_ "

"Oswin never takes anything seriously."

"Au contraire, mon chéri, I take everything seriously," Oswin said, "I just operate on a higher plane of consciousness to the rest of you. I'm abstract, and intellectual."

"You talk almost non-stop about wanking."

"Abstract wanking, honey. _Serious_ wanking."

"I'm honestly so sorry about her," Clara returned to talking to the Echo.

"Do you do anything except apologise?"

"I'm British, it's our thing."

"I'm the one who's going to put Humpty Dumpty here back together again, so sorry if I sound a bit rude while I'm literally over here being amazing. Sacrificing my processing speeds just so dear Miss Oswinius here can tell us about how rich she is."

"You were quite rich when you were still alive, sweetheart."

" _Why do you call each other by pet names?_ " the Echo asked, " _You two are weird. You flirt with each other_."

"We do not!" Clara scoffed.

"We should get back," said Oswin, "It's not like that Head can do anything to stop us. I'm going to need to disconnect the Sphere, is-"

" _No! You can't do that! Do you know what it's like not to be able to feel anything? Or see? Or hear? Barely able to think?_ "

"Look, I need access to every ounce of brainpower I've got to reconnect your useless body parts. Admittedly, it is a little bit more complicated than Lego. Like flat-pack furniture without any instructions. And exploiting your connection to your brain with the Sphere is probably weakening it."

" _Don't disconnect it! This body is super-strong, I swear I'll_ -"

"You won't do anything to her," said Clara, "I won't let you. But if Oswin says you need to be disconnected, then I'm sorry."

" _No! Don't you-_ " and that was where Oswin switched off the connection, and the Body turned very blindly violent until Clara restrained it with telekinesis. It even bashed one of its fists into the solid rock wall and broke off a handful of pebbles. Clara came to help Oswin back to her feet.

"I think she's the one I hate the least so far, to be honest," Oswin said.

"I still don't know why you hate them – competing for my attention. It's juvenile," she said, going to take the Echo's arm.

"Nice that you've found at least one clone of yourself who'll let you touch her up," Oswin quipped as they left the bleak cave.

"I'm helping her! Don't be awful," Clara told her off, "Just point me to where the spaceship is." The surface was even worse now; Oswin suspected there was a storm brewing. They had better hurry up getting back to the ship, she didn't know what toxic chemicals might be dredged up by the weather turning. "Tell me more about Eslilia."

"It's this jungle planet. You've been."

"Ha, ha – I mean what Flek's roped you into."

"She didn't rope me into anything, I offered. It's just general stuff – infrastructure and water purification. Adam wants to help, you know he likes that environment crap. Anyway, I thought I'd get Flek's help with something, too."

"Something like how?"

"Like – we've got Martha and Rory for medical staff, and they're great, Martha's a brilliant doctor. But I'm always having to call Flek up as well."

"I'm not sure you _have_ to call Flek up…"

"I thought she might help me learn some stuff about medicine. I really don't know a thing, it puts me to shame."

"But if you did that, you wouldn't have an excuse to get Flek onto the TARDIS. Or this new playmate of Nios."

"Dr Cohen isn't that kind of doctor, I told you, she's a pathologist," said Oswin, "She only deals with the dead. I just think that if I'm going to live forever I might as well learn things. Look at Jenny – she's got three degrees. I haven't got any, I've never even been to school."

"You're our AI expert," Clara said, "You probably know more about AIs than anyone else. Where's this coming from? Are you finally becoming humble?"

"I'm a lot more humble than people realise."

"You can't boast about how humble you are, that's the opposite of being humble."

"I should just take advantage of it. Of being… me. Being so clever. I never feel like I'm doing enough. I need more hobbies, education is a hobby," she said.

"You do whatever will make you happy, sweetheart," Clara was walking at Oswin's normal walking pace now, having to hold up the Echo, which had stopped trying to fight. It must trust them more than it had been letting on.

"That's rubbish advice."

"Has Adam still been trying to get fit?" Clara changed the subject when she remembered something Oswin had told her quite a while ago now.

"He _has_ , actually," Oswin said, "And while it _obviously_ makes no difference to me-"

"Obviously."

"It _is_ kind of hot," she said, unable to stop herself from smiling.

"You're so pathetic, Oswin. And you won't even admit that you want to marry him."

"Why are you so obsessed with it?"

"I think it would be sweet! Cute, even."

"Your timing is completely wrong. There are too many weddings at the moment. I'm all wedding'd out, and I'm sure this Ten and Rose thing is going to be a fiasco."

"What? You think they'll break up?"

"No, I mean the actual wedding. It's a disaster waiting to happen. _The Doctor's wedding_ , for god's sake. It's an invitation for somebody to come and try to fuck it up, if you'll pardon my French. Like shining the bat signal over the hotel."

"You're just jealous because you still think Ten used to fancy you."

"He did fancy me!"

"You think _everyone_ fancies you."

"Everyone _does_ fancy me!" Oswin protested, "Especially you, you fancy me more than anyone."

"I'm just using you for sex."

"Well, I'm pregnant, so we're going to have to get married and settle down."

"What a disaster – which one of us would do the cooking?"

"Wait a minute," Oswin stopped dead.

"What?"

"We _do_ flirt with each other. Eurgh." Clara just laughed.

"I'm married, darling. Don't get too excited." Oswin scowled.

"I'm going to cover myself in bleach when we get back to the TARDIS. And then seduce my boyfriend."

"Good luck with that. I hear he can't get it up."

"Very funny. Now look, I can see the ship; we'd better get there before this storm gets any worse. I want to leave. Because of the bleach thing."

"I'd hate to keep you away from your bleach."

"And the boyfriend thing."

"I'd hate to keep you away from your boyfriend."

"You forgot your lantern in the cave, by the way."

"I did? Bollocks… do you think the lizard-bloke will be angry?"

"Were you planning on seeing him again?"

"Hey – I'm not the one who called him 'daddy' earlier."

"He's _such_ a daddy."

"You are a nightmare. Now come on. Let's go talk to the mad professor."

It was still chaos in the cockpit-cum-laboratory when they finally returned after their trek halfway across the Island and back, both Twins relieved to be out of the turning weather. Everything had a more sinister feel to it now though, now that they realised they had been lied to, and Oswin was still rather upset with herself that she hadn't been able to figure it out. This 'professor' had almost used their own name when they introduced themselves, after all. But it didn't matter; they were going to fix things now.

"Oh, excellent, you found my body!" the Head in the jar exclaimed, still perched at a slight angle in the pilot's chair at the front of the room.

"Actually, I think that's your body over there, isn't it?" Oswin pointed at the comatose male form lying behind some rubbish, "Professor Ouroboros!" The Head gasped very theatrically.

"Who's that?" it asked.

"You?"

"No, no, no. You're mistaken. I'm Princess Claranna. Claranna Oswoona."

"Oswinius," corrected Clara.

"That's what I said," said the Head, "I'll just have my body back now?"

"That's not really going to jibe well with us," said Clara, "Because we talked to Claranna – who isn't even a princess, she's just some industrialist, Ayn-Rand-wet-dream – and she says that you're trying to steal her identity to get her fortune."

"Well, that's… just a lie, really. How can you talk to somebody who hasn't got a head?"

"But you just said that you're her head," Oswin pointed out, "So, you're an idiot." Oswin was searching around the room for medical equipment. "Clara, help me pick this stuff up." Clara left the Body, which again did not want to lose her support, to come and help turn the gurney they had found the Head behind initially the right way up again. Finally, Oswin spied an advanced computer with some devices resembling electrodes, only more complicated, dangling off it. Clara helped her with all this while Sprite crawled around to drag the plugs back into the walls and reconnect them to the wall.

"What are you doing? Don't touch those – that's my personal cables," argued the head, "You can't – they're – that professor's, I don't really know what any of them do, best to leave them alone."

"No dice," said Oswin, "This is everything you need to transplant a human head onto a fresh, new body. Including this." She held up a metal ring.

"What is it? A halo?" Clara asked.

"No, it's a neck brace. Or more like a choker. Keeps the head and the body fused until the 'healing process' is complete," she said, "See, it _is_ just like Lego. I was right the first time. Still not sure how you planned on getting your head onto this body to begin with."

"I'm not this 'professor' you keep mentioning," said the Head, "But if I was – it would just be a minor oversight."

"Removing your entire body is an oversight?" Oswin questioned. "Clara, can you go bring that thing over here? And then we have to strap the Echo onto the gurney, which I doubt she'll be too happy about." Clara did as Oswin asked.

"What are you going to do?"

"Raise them up into the ceiling during a lightning storm? Make them drink from the Holy Grail? Take your pick."

"But, really."

"But _really_ it's not particularly complicated."

"Separating two brains fighting over the same head isn't complicated?"

"No, I mean… it's a bit like getting rid of a computer virus," Oswin shrugged, "Very simple, just put these on this tank here…" Clara managed to calm the Echo enough – and exercise enough telekinesis – to get it restrained on the gurney, but it was quite the challenge. "You need to keep her still so I can attach these devices."

"That seems cruel."

"Crueller than letting her die because she can't eat?" Oswin challenged, "Cruel to be kind, honey. Trust me." Clara sighed, but again followed Oswin's instructions, holding out her hands and exercising enough invisible force that the Echo became stuck in place, only able to move her fingers. "Does it hurt you to do that? I remember when it took all the effort in the world for you to just make sugar cubes levitate," Oswin asked while she untangled wires, ignoring the fervent protests of the Head of Ouroboros next to her. It was quite annoying. "In fact, I remember when you had to raise a spaceship out of a bog and got that brain aneurysm."

"It's just a muscle," said Clara, "Needs to be stretched. You do remember I held off Rose before? Doesn't get much more powerful than that. Just hurry up, I don't like doing it. It can't be nice, what she's going through."

"So you can hold her down and do other things?"

"Things like what?"

"I need that head," said Oswin, "I need the head out of the jar."

"Oswin – it'll die."

"Yes, it'll die, I'll die, we'll all probably die," the Ouroboros interjected.

"No, no, no," said Oswin, "The human brain can survive unscathed for six minutes without oxygen. After six minutes, the damage starts. But we've always got your trusty nanogenes, haven't we? I need to connect the head to the neck-ring-thingy."

"How does that even work?"

"You just plug it in, it's easy – look, on three, pull the head out of the jar. Phase it, or whatever."

"Sweetheart, are you sure?"

" _Yes_ , I'm sure. Now come on – one, two, three!" Clara grabbed the Head, despite its protests, and phased it so that it came out of its cell, soaked and instantly losing consciousness. That was when she began to panic.

"Shit – now what!?"

"Put it down!"

"Where!?"

"On the table! Above the neck! It'll die, hurry up!"

"You said it would be fine!"

"Yeah, well, I'm… trying to sound optimistic."

"Are you not optimistic!?"

"I'll let you know in approximately… five and a half minutes," Oswin said, flashing Clara a smile, but Clara was not amused. "Come on, Sprite, get these cables." Sprite crawled up onto the table to use his little pincers to plug wires into the neck-brace, wires which had the electrodes on the other end of them. He did half of them and Oswin did the other half, and then she ordered Clara to keep the Echo as still as possible while she slid the head down into position. "She really needs to wash her hair."

"Focus!"

"I am focused! Can't a girl make a joke?"

"No! Not right now!"

"Sheesh, when did _you_ get so nervous all the time…" but Clara was very much not amused. Not at all. Oswin shook her head slightly. Couldn't she just look on the bright side? Just because it was a touch-and-go, life-or-death situation they were right in the middle of… When the wires were all hooked up, Oswin turned her attention to the computer.

"Don't you need to wire up the mad scientist's body?" Clara asked.

"No, it wasn't wired up to begin with. Things like this just have a way of resolving themselves, you need more faith."

"Excuse me for not suspending my disbelief in light of this preposterous situation we're in."

"The preposterous situations are always the ones where you _should_ suspend your disbelief, Clary. Now just, uh… ah…"

"What? What was that? Is there a problem?"

"Yeah, no, it's fine, it's just… do you happen to have any defibrillators?"

"Oswin!"

"No, right, obviously, uh… ah-ha!" she remembered the myriad of special features she kept in her cane. Including a way to weaponise it, in the form of delivering non-lethal electric shocks, the same kind of shocks emitted by the stun guns she had built which nobody ever even used (did anyone on the TARDIS appreciate all the work she did?) She picked up her cane and tried to alter the settings, but they were losing time, and there wasn't a promising amount of brain activity registering on any of the monitors she had plugged in. "We should've brought Esther with us – Adam _does_ pay her to watch out for your Echoes."

"Esther's not here."

"I know that, just..." Oswin said nothing else, finally managing to switch her cane onto the correct setting, and then jamming it into the Echo's side and pressing a button which ejected a decent shock into the body. It convulsed and Clara jumped, but nothing else happened. "Shit."

"It didn't work!"

"I can see that! Let me try again." And she did try again, but there was no response.

"Are you sure you're doing this right?"

" _Yes!_ " Oswin protested, trying for a third time. Three shocks and still nothing, nothing! They were running out of time. There were seconds left before the brain was going to start dying, and who knew how long the Body could survive without its Head at _all_? Was there even any point trying to keep it alive? That was the moment that Oswin noticed there was a tiny little button with a light next to it on the edge of the neck-brace, and that the light wasn't turned on. She pressed it and it lit up red, and then she emitted a fourth and final shock and the light turned green and the entire body flinched. The eyes opened, it gasped, and sat up with a jerk, taking deep breaths and coughing, the monitors exploding with information.

At the same time, a similar reaction happened within the unconscious body of Ouroboros somewhere behind them. Oswin laughed.

"I can't believe that worked!" she exclaimed, grinning. Then she caught Clara's very disapproving eye and her smile vanished, "I mean, I always knew it would work. Obviously. I'm a genius."

"Are you alright? Are you Claranna?" Clara turned to ask the Echo. But the now-connected head-and-body was staring at its own hands and arms.

"I can move," she said, "Arms, and legs, and everything else, I've got it all…"

"Well, you're doing better than I am," Oswin remarked.

"And _you_ …" the Echo turned her cold eyes on the staggering scientist in the corner, who was very old and had a long beard and it rather unnerved Clara to think of him trying to living inside her. "You exploited me, you tried to steal _everything_ from me…" She pushed herself down from the gurney and wobbled, Clara spotting her like she was going to collapse at any moment. Oswin wouldn't be surprised if she did.

"No, no, I just…" Ouroboros had no defence for himself, "April Fool's?" he suggested meekly. And Claranna marched right over and slugged him, slugged him with her abnormally strong body. Took him down with just the one punch and left him sprawled on the floor with a very obviously broken jaw, a trickle of blood coming from his lip.

"Thank god somebody finally shut him up," said Oswin, "He was doing my head in." Clara and Claranna both looked at her. "What? Too soon?"


	142. Date Night XVII - Nerd Flirts XI

_Date Night XVII / Nerd Flirts XI_

 _Clara_

The Doctor was asleep. It was nearly half past ten in the morning, and he was still in bed. He'd had a late night, Clara didn't actually remember him coming back to their room, but he had been there when the Echoculum had woken her up at five in the morning. She entered quietly and didn't turn the lights on, throwing her empty Marlboro pack in the wastepaper bin and going to dig out her e-cigarette, because she had officially run out of regular ones. It was on the coffee table buried among all the books they took out to read and then forgot about. She fumbled about switching the liquid cartridge for a while, struggling in the dark, still hearing Eleven snore behind her as she kicked off her shoes into the corner. She switched on the device and took a deep, refreshing breath of vapour.

She went to eye one of the stacks of books but didn't recognise them or some of the words on the covers. The Doctor must have been in the library again until late. Her eyes wandered back to him, fast asleep in bed. He had surely had enough sleep by now, though. And if not, he could easily catch up later. It was this Clara had in mind when she jumped onto the bed next to him, her empty side on the right, with as much force as she could muster. This wasn't a particularly great amount of force, but it was enough to jolt Eleven and make him think there was something going on. He woke with a start, frantic, panicking, and was just faced with Clara laughing at him.

"What's going on?" he asked her urgently.

"Nothing," she said, fumbling with her pillows to prop them up behind her. She hadn't made the bed that morning when she had left, just left it messy. "I'm angling for company."

"Did you jump on the bed?" he questioned, "It's bad for the springs. That's what you always tell me when I want to jump on the bed."

"You're heavier than I am," she said, "You'd do irreparable damage to the springs, but the springs won't even notice me. I'm petite." He made an incoherent, grumbling noise and buried his face in his pillow. Clara reached over to mess up his hair - which was already quite dreadful - and he rather pathetically tried to swat her hand away. This made her laugh. "What time did you come to bed last night?"

"Two in the morning. I went to the Savoy, I've been having an affair. Marilyn Monroe just won't stop ringing," he mumbled.

"I suppose I can't be angry. I'd do the same thing If Marilyn Monroe kept ringing me. You know what? You _should_ call her," Clara said, "Wasn't she married to Arthur Miller? Let's double date. I'd love to meet Arthur Miller." The Doctor forced himself to sit up next to her, leaning on the headboard with one of his pillows underneath him and the other one tossed onto the floor.

"I don't know if that's a good idea."

"Why not? You won't let me meet _anyone_ famous."

"What about The Beatles?"

"I don't care about The Beatles," she pouted.

"You sound like a spoilt child," he told her, and she knew he was right. But she still wanted to have dinner with Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller - they could even go to the Savoy, what with them being banned from the Ritz Carlton. "What are you chewing? Is that a pen?"

" _No_ , it's a cigarette, you know that," she said, and then proceeded to say quite patronisingly, "They make electronic ones now." He reached up his hand as if to take it, and she let him have it to examine, even though he _had_ certainly seen it before. "If you break it I'll start smoking real ones indoors again."

"It looks like my screwdriver."

"A little bit," she admitted, "I could get a sonic one. Sonic cigarette."

"Then you'd have _two_ sonics since you still haven't returned mine," he said, handing her back the device. She took another drag on it and then blew the vapour into his face, which alarmed him. "Why does it smell so funny?"

"It's marshmallow flavour," she said. "You can get tons of weird flavours."

"Like what?"

Clara paused and thought for a while, "Milk."

" _Milk?_ "

"Yeah."

"Surely it's easier to just drink some milk."

"Well, milk normally doesn't have any nicotine in it," she explained, still patronising him. He didn't say anything for a few moments, merely watched her. She was about to break from holding his gaze and ask him what he wanted, when he leant in and kissed her. So _that_ was what he wanted, she thought to herself.

"Are you wearing clothes?" he asked a moment later.

"I actually do own clothes, it might surprise you to hear," she told him.

"Are we going out? Did I forget?" he asked, stroking her cheek.

"No, I've been out already today, I just got back. Didn't I wake you up leaving?"

"Apparently not." He moved his hands away from her. "Where did you go?"

"Echo crisis," she explained, "Just me and Oswin. Found something out about our future - one day, we're going to see one of my Echoes get decapitated in front of us, and you're going to save her and make sure she survives as a floating head in a jar."

"Sounds like a lot of work, and not a particularly nice life - I wouldn't like to be a just a head," he said.

"She hired a mad scientist to clone her a new body, except it turns out she's rich and he wanted to steal her identity and her money. So we were talking to this head - _my_ head - and it wasn't me at all, it was a nutty professor. Professor Ouroboros." Eleven laughed here. "What?"

"Funny name. In regards to you."

"How's that?"

"Well, it's an Ancient Egyptian symbol, a serpent eating its own tail. Represents creation and order in chaos and whatnot," he said.

"Ah, so you think about me eating myself? That's what you're getting at?"

" _No_ , but a head chasing its own body? It's interesting. Did that take you all morning?"

"More or less. And now I'm all free for the rest of the day. What about you? Any plans?" Clara queried. She hoped he didn't bring up Jenny, now that Clara knew of Jenny's low-key plans to leave. But Oswin was right; if Clara could keep the secrets of her 'affair' with Thirteen under wraps, then she could keep Jenny's private business she wasn't even supposed to know about to herself as well.

"No, I don't think so. I was going to sleep."

"Why were you _really_ out so late?"

"I was in the library."

"You spend a lot of time in the library - is it your shed?" she questioned wryly, but he just frowned.

"What do you mean?"

"It's a thing men have, sometimes a literal shed but sometimes… an office, or a basement. Where they go to escape from their wives and families," she explained to him.

"Why would I want to escape from my wife? Honestly, I think your species have quite unusual views on marriage. These men - I see them all the time - they're so excited to propose and get married, but after that they stop caring. I've even heard Craig complain about Sophie sometimes and the way she insists on drying all the washing up before she puts it away. And before, that would have been white noise, I wouldn't have registered it, but _now?_ I told him we have a dishwasher."

"Do Craig and Sophie not have a dishwasher?"

"No. Something to do with her not wanting them to get lazy. Personally, I admire the sentiment, but I told them that having the dishwasher means more time for… other things," he said awkwardly. Then he picked up a mug from the bedside table and took a sip of it, before coughing and spitting what was in it back out. "What _is_ that?"

"Cold coffee from two nights ago. Shall I go and put the mug in the dishwasher?" she quipped. He didn't say anything and put the mug back down, still making a face. "When did you have this conversation?"

"The last time we had dinner. You didn't come, you remember? Because you think Sophie doesn't like you?"

"She doesn't like me."

"She does, Coo, she thinks _you_ don't like _her_."

"That's crazy, she's cute," said Clara, "Shall I invite her to girl's night?"

"Since when did you have girl's night?"

"Me and Rose getting drunk."

"Don't invite her to that," he sighed, "She wouldn't be able to handle it. All the teleporting and causing a public disturbance – and the theft."

"Then… let's not have dinner. Let's do something else with them."

" _Ah_ ," he said knowingly, and then tapped the side of his nose, "You mean like lunch?"

"No," she laughed, taking his hand, "I mean something fun. We're fun people, aren't we? Just because we're married doesn't mean we can't be fun. We went and saw _Rent_."

"I don't think we should take Craig and Sophie to see _Rent_ , not with you crying."

"Take them to see The Beatles."

"Are you serious? Not about The Beatles, about wanting to do something with them."

"If you do something for me," she said sultrily, moving her e-cigarette and leaning close to him.

"Like what?" he asked quietly. She kissed him for a brief moment.

" _Like_ convince Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller to do a double date." He groaned and leant away from her, and she sat back down in her own space. He studied her carefully, from afar, and she merely waited for his answer.

"I'll think about it. But she might hate me. And she might hate you, for marrying me, since she wanted to do that herself. Although she _was_ very drunk," he said, "She might not even answer the phone."

"We could go paint-balling."

"I'm not sure Marilyn would want to go paint-balling."

"Craig and Sophie."

" _I_ don't want to go paint-balling. Sophie likes art - we'll go to an art gallery, or a museum. In the future. One you haven't been to, either. How does that sound?"

"Sounds great. We could even get lunch."

"Speaking of _lunch_ …" he began leaning towards her again, "What time is it?"

"Nearly eleven."

"So there's still an hour until noon."

"I already ate."

"Oh _really_ … about what we were saying, about you wearing clothes…"

"Do you want me to put my coat back on?"

"What? No! I was just thinking, because _you_ don't have any plans, and _I_ don't have any plans…"

"Like what? Cleaning up in here?"

"…Maybe later, Coo." He looked at her imploringly. Eventually, she smiled.

"Just give me five more minutes of vaping, okay? And I need the toilet. Then I'm all yours, for the rest of the day and the rest of forever."

* * *

 _Oswin_

Somebody grabbed her waist from behind and she freaked. She freaked and nearly fell off the plastic stool she had been sitting on in her laboratory, sketching schematics. She had been listening to an opera from her own century in the background while she worked, and had subsequently not heard anybody come into the room. When she twisted around in her chair she was faced with Adam Mitchell laughing smugly, clearly proud that he had finally got the drop on her, instead of the other way around. Not that she ever _intended_ to frighten him, it was always accidental.

"Mitchell!" she objected, hitting his arm pathetically, "What did you do that for!?"

"I don't know," he admitted, "I just saw you there, all quiet. I couldn't resist." She glared at him. Then he smiled, "Let me make it up to you."

" _How_ are you going to do that?" she challenged him. And that was when he kissed her. She got the feeling that he had wanted to interrupt her with this marvellous action, but remembered that she didn't like being interrupted like that. No matter how cute he was. But now he had waited until she had finished speaking, so him actually having some courage for once came as a very delicious surprise. She kissed him back and pressed her hands onto the tabletop behind her, but her hand was on one of her schematics and the paper ended up slipping and she nearly fell off her stool. She would have done, if Adam didn't catch her. She clung to his arm and stared at the fallen sheet of paper.

"Was that something important? I'm sorry," his bumbling self returned and he removed his own hands from where they had been on her waist. A disappointing turn of events for something which had briefly been so exquisite.

"No, not really. Just some stuff I was drawing up." It was for Flek, but she didn't want to mention Flek because it would end up killing the mood stone dead, and she didn't want that. She was still rather angling to try and seduce him at the next decent opportunity, after all.

"What kind of stuff?" he queried, leaning down to pick up the drawings.

"Water purification devices, mainly," she said.

"For Flek?" he asked. She sighed. Now he had ruined it for himself.

"Uh-huh." He looked at her for a few moments, and then at his feet.

"Sorry. For knocking it on the floor."

"Don't be sorry, it was… you know, nice. Swept me off my singular, three-toed foot," she confessed, her cheeks going pink. She cleared her throat. "I thought you were out with Ellie today?"

"I was, it didn't take long," he said, pulling out the stool next to her and sitting down on it. Oswin just wanted him to kiss her again, but doubted that he would. It was all very unfortunate. "Do you think she's okay?"

"I haven't seen her for ages. But she does have a very disrupted home life," Oswin pointed out, "All I can suggest is to give her more stability than you being an absentee guardian, but…"

"But?" he prompted.

"You'd have to leave the ship, and I don't want you to leave the ship," she admitted, "I don't know if we would work long-distance. But I wouldn't want to live in your century, no offence. It's a bit… stone age."

"Yeah," he sighed. She knew he didn't want to leave the TARDIS, either. Ever since he'd been kicked off the first time, his dream had been to one day return and become a genuine companion.

"She might be okay. She's not the only kid going to boarding school, after all. I don't mind staying on Earth with you during holidays, you know," she said, "I just couldn't make any permanent change. But I like your house. I could bring Fyn, I keep meaning to show him Earth. He might get along with your sister, and it'll prepare him for when his kid becomes a teenager."

"What, really? You'd stay on Earth during holidays? For my sakes?"

"And Ellie's. You're forgetting, I have five siblings. Six if you include Clara. And, you know… maybe our families should…"

"What?"

"Meet?" she suggested.

"Is this about my parents?" he asked seriously.

"No, it's not about your parents." That was half a lie.

"Because they're not very good people, and they wouldn't say anything nice about you – I wouldn't want them to upset you," he said.

"It's not about that," she said, "Though, _my_ dad still does want to meet _you_. And you're not getting out of it by playing this eye-for-an-eye card. I want you to meet him because he'd love you. It's just… I've been out with Clara today, and she was asking me all these questions." She wasn't looking at him as she talked, because this was a very difficult conversation to have. "She was just asking me if I… if _we_ … ever talked about getting married." She had never seen Adam Mitchell so flummoxed as he was at that moment, so wholly incapable of thinking of something to say.

"What? Are you… you're saying… you'd want to?"

"I'm gonna tell you something I've never told you before," she began, "It was a few weeks ago, when we got the letter from Thirteen giving us clues and instructions about the future, and I was re-dressing your weird barnacle lesion you have and I had to run a biopsy*."

"Yes?"

"And you were worrying about it being unattractive to girls, and I said it's not unattractive to _me_ so why should other girls matter? And you started saying you were worried I was going to dump you, and it was when I was telling you how wonderful you are that I remember thinking that I was going to marry you one day. And I nearly said it, and you asked me, and I lied and said something about dressing the welt. And you know, it's got to be a genuine sentiment because it just came out of nowhere." He stared at her.

"I thought you were against marriage?"

"I've just never really thought about it in regards to myself. But I thought I should tell you, because Clara was badgering me and I thought… it should be something you and I talk about first, if we're going to talk about it at all."

"Well, this is…" he didn't know what to say. She knew that he would fall over himself for an opportunity to marry her, though, one day. "It's only been a few months."

"I'm not proposing, babe. I'm just letting you know that… well, that I think we have a future together, a proper one, that we can evolve. Not _yet_ , but you know what they say about honesty."

"Wow."

"What?"

"You haven't made one filthy joke this whole time."

"I'm being sincere," she said, "I can't be funny _all_ the time, even I'd get tired of that."

"I wouldn't want to get married at all for a few years," he said somewhat guiltily.

"That's fine," she laughed, "Like I said, I'm not proposing. That's your job."

"But you're from the liberated future – don't women propose?"

"I don't want to emasculate you. You can do it. You'd think of something better than I would, I'm not very romantic," she told him. "I'm only telling you all this because… well, you should know, I suppose."

"All anyone ever seems to talk about these days is weddings," he sighed. Sprite had been curled up on the desk next to Oswin, but now unfurled his legs. "Was he asleep?"

"Mmm, he does that," said Oswin, "I'm a very good programmer." Adam Mitchell smiled and Sprite went to shower him with affection, which just involved crawling over him.

"He reminds me of a cat," said Adam, who was getting used to Sprite, though he was still very guarded.

"If you want to go play with a cat there are six of them in the next room you're supposed to be getting rid of. What's the news with that, by the way?"

"I don't know, I've been kind of snowed under recently… Ravenwood wants the nasty one, so that's good," he said, "The rest are fine. I thought we might keep the one with the tentacles on the TARDIS. What with it having tentacles. Do any of your brothers want a kitten?"

"I doubt it, Fynny hates animals. I'll ask, though. Maybe Reker will want one. I've been meaning to speak to him again, anyway," Oswin said, "Ask after my nephew and nieces."

"I've been trying to get Esther to take one of them, but she keeps complaining about accidentally electrocuting it, or it getting cat hairs everywhere," he said, "They're not even old enough to give away yet."

"Sooner the better," said Oswin.

"Well. I'll keep my ear to the ground," he said. She didn't know if he was being truthful; she had a sneaking suspicion that he might pretend to look for homes for the cats and then try and swing it so that they could keep the whole litter – minus the savage one that kept trying to kill Jack and Jenny. "Hey," he took her hand just as she was about to pick her pencil back up, "I'm glad you told me this stuff. That you felt you could. I know you hate talking about your feelings."

"I don't _hate_ it, I just prefer not to think about it," she said, "But I'll bear it, for you. Anyway, that's all I want to say on the matter. I've had a long morning, I can't think of anything better to do with the rest of my day than spend it with you _not_ talking about our relationship."

"What do you want to do?"

"…Watch films?" she suggested, "I don't care. I want to stay in and I want it to just be us. I'll even play one of your ancient video games." He then smiled very broadly, as though he were trying to stop himself from expressing joy but he wasn't very good at it.

"Alright. Whatever you want."

"We can go in the simulation, then I can eat popcorn and walk," she said.

"Sounds like a dream."

* _chapter 965_


	143. Mr Sandman

**DAY** **156**

 _Mr. Sandman_

 _Eleven_

"I'd like to buy this; how much is it?"

"Excuse me?"

"This, right here, this thing. What can I give you for it? I could give you, uh… knowledge? How about that? Lovely bit of knowledge to keep you going? …No?"

"Gold."

"Gold? Well, I'll see what I have…" He rifled through his pockets: sonic screwdriver, psychic paper, half-empty pack of Marlboro Lights he kept meaning to get rid of, Clara's polaroid camera she had given to him to hang onto, a few stray Jelly Babies courtesy of his daughter – and then, "Ah-ha! I've struck gold. Get it? Here you are." From his pocket he produced a toffee penny from a box of Quality Streets, having absolutely no idea when he had acquired it or how old it was. "How about this?"

" _This_? For my camel?" the street vendor took the toffee penny.

"Yes! It's gold, isn't it? Or, if you like," he again pilfered his jacket, this time finding a partially-wrapped segment of Dairy Milk Caramel. "This is caramel. And caramel sounds like camel, so I rather think-" Somebody cleared their throat very angrily behind him, and he turned to see a tall and furious silhouette bearing down on him beneath the Egyptian sun.

"Are you trying to buy this man's camel using a very old sweet?"

"Don't be ridiculous, Amelia. I would never – well don't eat it!" he rounded on the street vendor again. The toffee penny had gone a bit melty in the desert heat. "If you eat it you can't sell it on! It could be worth ten times' as much in a few hundred years, keep it as a… urgh." The merchant had finished the toffee penny, and now grinned very widely at the Doctor.

"For more of these, I give you my camel," he said. The Doctor beamed, but Amy stole the words from his mouth.

"Last one, sorry," she grabbed his elbow, "You ate it. All gone."

"I'm trying to haggle over here," the Doctor argued with her.

"Oh my god," she stopped and then pressed her fingers to her temples, looking like she was in incredible pain all of a sudden. The Doctor was alarmed.

"What? What is it? Are you okay?"

"I just saw into the future," she put a hand on his shoulders, "And I saw that if you buy that camel, your wife is going to murder you."

"She would love it!"

"No she wouldn't. No one would. It's a stupid idea. You're an idiot and I'm very impressed she hasn't divorced you yet. Now _come_ _on_ ," she slapped his arm, "I want to see the Sphinx before its nose falls off."

"Its nose didn't fall off, actually, it got vandalised. By Romans, probably. They went around bashing the noses off all the statues of Pharaohs and the like," the Doctor explained, following Amy.

"Has the Sphinx been built yet?"

"This is the First Century, AD, it's been built for two-and-a-half-thousand years," Eleven informed her. "The Pharaohs are going to fall within the next few decades."

"All because Cleopatra couldn't keep it in her pants," Amy sighed.

"If you want to be brash about it." Amy guided him back to where River Song was also haggling with Rory at her side, only she was doing a much better job of it than Eleven had been. She was trying to purchase some sort of trinket from a stall run by a surprisingly young child, but the little boy was driving a hard bargain.

"I've found him. He was _this_ _close_ to pawning his wedding ring to buy a camel," she said, holding up her fingers with a minute gap between them. It was roasting hot out there in the Egyptian marketplace, right in the heart of a tiny village built in and around some ruined pillars, at the shaded base of one of the Great Pyramids. When he looked up, he could see the largest one swimming in the heat. Typically, he was not dressed for the weather, with his tweed jacket and bowtie.

"No I wasn't. I couldn't. He wanted gold and my ring is made of silver," he said, looking at it on his hand. It was warm from the sunlight. He rarely noticed it now, but there was a time when it caught his eye and seemed very marvellous every time it threw off the light. Made him feel like a magpie, but a very lucky magpie who was married to Clara Oswald. "You know, I keep getting quizzes about this from the Tenth Doctor," he addressed mainly the Ponds, and mainly Rory at that, with River still trying to win her trinket and Amy going to see what the fuss was all about.

"Quizzes how?" Rory asked.

"Something along the lines of, does a wedding ring feel like the bars of a prison?"

"Probably shouldn't get married if you view it as being in a prison," said Rory, rubbing patches of sweat from his forehead with the back of his equally sweaty hand. "How are you not drenched? Aren't you boiling?" Rory was only in a t-shirt and shorts, and Amy was wearing next-to-nothing as always and kept getting stared at.

"I'm fine. But you just reminded me," and then he did a spin for dramatic effect while pulling from his pocket quite possibly his most prized possession. "Ta-da!"

"Oh, god…"

"It's my fez," he declared, "Back again."

"I don't even think fezzes are Egyptian," Rory said.

"They're not, they came from the Ottoman Empire," River interrupted, casting a glare at the little boy manning the stall. She had not been able to get whatever she was after. "On the subject, marriage always makes me think of prison."

"Only because you were in prison for most of ours," Eleven pointed out. She shrugged.

"It's not a prison. You can walk out at any time," Amy said indifferently.

"Well. That makes me feel confident," Rory muttered. Amy smiled at him. "When are they getting married?"

"In a week," said Amy.

"A _week_!?" Eleven exclaimed, "As in-? Next week?"

"We're going to see the Sphinx next week at the rate this is going," Amy complained.

"Yes, fine, we can go see the Sphinx. Would have been a lot quicker if you let me buy that camel."

"Why do you even _want_ a camel? They just spit at you," said Rory.

"It's more to do with the idea. I'm an ideas man. Anyway, come on, the Sphinx is this way," he said, beginning to walk, "Even though going towards the Sphinx means leaving the shade of this excellent pyramid." They really were right at the base of it, sheltered from the scorching noon sun. At least for once they had got where they were planning to go – he remembered the time Amy had begged to go to Rio and they had ended up in a cold patch of Welsh countryside where people were trying to drill the Silurians out of house and home. She was wearing sunglasses, and people found this very interesting because sunglasses did not exist yet. When Eleven told her to take them off she ignored him.

A woman's scream pierced the air, which had been so stagnant and quiet aside from muttered conversations and the sounds of buzzing flies. They turned in time to see a relatively young woman, possibly only in her twenties, wailing and screaming at the top of her lungs. It took a few moments to decipher what she was saying and to realise what was going on quickly enough to actually act. She was saying something about her son, and how her son had been taken by a curse. Yes, after listening carefully, the Doctor was very sure she said the word 'curse', and more than once.

"The Curse of Apep! My boy! My child! My love!" she sobbed, then she collapsed to her knees, dressed in rags, in the middle of the market of that tiny village. The Doctor waited for people to rush to her aid, to comfort her, but this did not happen. Instead, people bowed their heads in sorrow and did not look at this scene. The Doctor thought it was outrageous, and immediately stepped forwards to go and help her himself, with the Ponds and River Song right on his heels.

"Are you okay? What's happened?" Amy asked her first, holding her shoulders and trying to steady her. The woman looked at her, saw her weeping face reflected in Amy's sunglasses, and then wailed even more. A terrible sound, wracked with grief, and she almost collapsed by Eleven stepped forwards to support her.

"Take them off," he ordered her now, and she finally did remove the glasses while he shook his head. He was a bad influence on them; they never dressed for the period. Clara nearly _always_ dressed for the period, but he thought she had a thing for dressing up. Not that that was remotely relevant to the struggles of a grieving Egyptian mother. "Did you say curse?" he pressed.

"The Curse of Apep."

"Apep, Apep…" he muttered to himself.

"Embodiment of chaos, ultimate evil," River informed him curtly.

"Right, chaos, blimey, that's not very good. What does this curse entail, exactly? You can trust me, I'm a doctor – a medicine man, a physician, you know?" he said, failing to remember any proper terms. He really should have brushed up on his Ancient Egyptian history that morning, but Amy had rather sprung on him her desire to go see the Sphinx, annoyed that the only time they had ever really seen any of the sights of Egypt it had been in a bizarre parallel timeline. The Doctor tried not to think about all that business, it gave him a headache and felt very long ago now.

"It is death to all who have angered the gods," the woman said, but the Doctor did not believe in angry gods bringing death to young children.

"Your son, may we see him? We might be able to help," he said hopefully.

"Nobody can help him now! We have prayed, and prayed-"

"Maybe we were sent by your gods, to see if we can do anything," Rory interrupted, "Please. I'm a doctor too."

"In your dreams," Amy said quietly.

"Compared to the basic medicine of Ancient Egypt-" he began, but his wife shushed him.

"Come on, now, show us where he is," Eleven entreated helping her back to her feet. Now people around them were growing intrigued, because the unusual tourists were taking an interest in something which wasn't their business. But when people were suffering, the Doctor made it his business, and the woman clung to the glimmer of hope that maybe he would be able to do something.

"Do you have your medical kit?" River asked Rory.

"Never leave home without it," he said, "You never know _what_ might happen on one of these trips. I was there when Jenny broke her thumb."

"No, you weren't," said the Doctor.

"I was," said Rory.

"No. That's my daughter and you didn't see what happened to her," he said very firmly, with a tone of voice that meant he shouldn't be argued with on this. But Rory hadn't had to sit there and watch while his only blood relative had their hand pulled apart. Something else he didn't like to think about, as this staggering woman led them to her son's alleged deathbed. A grim turn of events to their day of idle sight-seeing – why did this always happen to them? Oh well. Perhaps the boy merely had a cold.

With a shaky hand, the woman opened the flimsy wooden door into a hut half built out of the stone walls of the ruins and half out of bits of cloth and more salvaged wood. It looked like driftwood, possibly lugged over from the relatively close-by Nile. Inside, it was stifling, and it stank very pungently of urine. Amy covered her nose. It was tricky to see, with no real light source, but he could make out the tiny form of a young boy no more than ten curled up under a blanket on a tiny, wooden bed, about the size of a camp bed and not much more comfortable. Rory pushed past the Doctor to go and see to the boy, taking out his small first aid kit he took everywhere.

"Is he dead?" asked Amy.

"No. But he's close…"

"Medicine cannot defy the will of the gods," the woman said. Rory said nothing, looking at the boy.

"Sorry, is there pee in here?" he turned to ask the mother, "Like a chamber pot, or something?" The woman nodded. "Can I get a look at it?" She thought this was a highly unusual question, but they all moved back as she slid a pot which looked more like a repurposed vase out from underneath the bed, making the smell significantly worse. Rory braved it and leant over the mouth of the container and shone his torch inside. Eleven didn't look over his shoulder to get a look too, he trusted Rory's opinion on the pee. Then he went back to looking at the boy himself, lifting his eyelids, checking his hands, taking his pulse, et cetera.

"Well?" River prompted eventually.

"I'm no Martha, but it _looks_ like a kidney infection."

"A curse on his kidneys," the mother said.

"There's blood and vomit in here, and he's got a nasty fever," said Rory, "Not to mention the jaundice in his eyes."

"I thought jaundice is from liver disease?" Amy asked.

"Usually, but kidney problems can cause it as well. His eyes are _very_ yellow. I'm… sorry, but it looks like he's in the final stages, it's very advanced," Rory said with some difficulty to the mother. To give her hope and take it away again… "Maybe if we came earlier, or if there are other people here with these symptoms-"

"Many others have died from the Curse of Apep," she said.

"But a kidney infection, or even kidney failure – that's not contagious," Rory was perplexed, "None of this looks contagious." The Doctor put his hands in his trouser pockets and thought. Why would an entire village be dying off slowly of kidney failure?

"We are being punished. Ever since the wells dried up months ago. That was the first time that we have enraged the gods," the mother said sombrely. She had clearly already accepted her son's death, though she was still weeping. He was close to offering her his handkerchief, but suspected his wife had stolen it.

"The wells dried up?" River asked, "Why is everyone still here if there isn't any water? The Nile is barely five miles away."

"Overnight," said the mother, "There was no water in the wells anymore."

"And you stayed?"

"There is a man, a good man, Sati, he brings us water every week from Memphis. He brings it on his own camels, we drink because of him – his generosity was gifted to him by the gods, praise Renenutet for her pity that she would help us while we are ravaged by Apep," she said.

"Does he now…" the Doctor mused, trying to determine how far away Memphis was. They may have to call the TARDIS back down and take a trip to the big city, which would certainly upset Amy's plans to see the Sphinx.

"He is due soon, when the sun is high above Khufu's Pyramid," she said, "Today."

"Today? We're in luck."

"I hope his elixir will help my son, perhaps Imhotep will have sympathy for me. He has never harmed anybody, he is a gentle child…" she looked at her dying son and wept. Amy didn't say a word, only watched, unable to think of what to say that would bring any comfort to this woman who was treating her child like he was already a corpse on his way to be embalmed.

"Don't you have any antibiotics?" River asked Rory as he stood up and brushed himself down, packing his things away in his bag and looking mournful. It couldn't be good to be unable to do anything for a patient; the Doctor hated it. But he was still thinking.

"For any chance, he'd need to be drip-fed antibiotics and fluids, and even then… I'd say he has hours, if that," Rory said quietly.

"I'm sorry," Eleven said to the grieving mother, "I'm a father, and this, if it happened to my…" But it had happened to her, the day she was born she had died in his arms and he had watched the life disappear from her eyes. It was something he never wanted to see again, and every day made him grateful of his second chances to do right by Jenny. He decided he was going to need to take a look at these wells.


	144. Well, Well, Well

_Well, Well, Well_

 _Eleven_

The village's main well was a little out of the way of the village itself, and by out of the way he meant a short walk out of the ruins. Unfortunately, it was a short walk which took them out of the shade of the closest pyramid and also the opposite direction of the Sphinx; but the Sphinx was not what he had on his mind now. The grieving mother had stayed behind with her feeble son whom nothing could be done for, which had flung Rory into rather a depressed mood and he had gone quieter than normal. It was large and made of sandstone, but when the Doctor peered over the edge he saw no water within, just an awful lot of sand. An incredibly suspicious amount of sand, in fact, because the well was filled to just a metre or so beneath its mouth, though it looked like it went much deeper than that. He vaulted the wall and landed firmly on the stuff, which was very tightly packed in.

"Be careful you don't sink in that," Amy said, leaning on the side of the wall. He was just a few feet lower than her eye level there at the top of the well, kicking around in the sand.

"Does anybody have a shovel?" he continued to kick.

"You're not digging it, you'll make a void and it'll turn into quicksand," River said.

"I doubt it," he said, then he knelt down and began to paw at the sand with his hands, getting his fingernails full of dirt in the process. He had a suspicion that he definitely wasn't going to find a void, though, and that digging in the sand couldn't be that dangerous. They were out in the Sahara, everything around them was sand, and none of it was dragging people underground. It was the wrong conditions for quicksand. He scraped away a good few inches of sand and then managed to shove his hand a small way underneath until his fingers touched on cold, hard objects. He dragged them back to the surface and found himself examining a handful of coins.

"Did you find some money?" Amy inquired.

"Impossible," said River, "Wishing wells are Nordic. There wouldn't be Nordic influences down here, we're too early and too far away."

"Sacrifices to the gods, Song," the Doctor said, standing back up and thumbing the coins, "Perhaps it's an isolated event, trying to bring water back to this particular well. They're desperate, they'll try anything – besides, throwing money at one's problems is often a quick-fix no matter what century it is." He dropped the coins back down into the dirt.

"Whatcha thinking?" Amy asked him playfully, still leaning on the edge of the well.

"I'm thinking that this well has been filled with sand," he said, "On purpose. And not by one of their gods. It's packed too neatly and these coins are buried too deep for them to have been hidden by sand blown in by the wind. There's sand, then coins, then sand. Someone wants to keep this well blocked up."

"Maybe it's Apep, and he's cursing them," River said, joining them. "Let me see those coins." Eleven picked a few of them up and held them out to her. Rory had been looking out over the horizon, but now came over to join the rest of them to see what was going on. "Wouldn't be the first time an ancient god turns out to be real, would it? Isn't there an extradimensional god-creature living in the mines underneath your new daughter-in-law's village?"

"She isn't my daughter in law, though I'm not fazed in the slightest by you suggesting that they might one day get married; I would, in fact, be very happy for them if they did," Eleven said pointedly, "But I don't remember hearing anything about an extradimensional god."

"There is one," said Amy, "Donna told me. She met it, said it's weird."

"Well, that…" he stopped, then shook his head, "I will just ask Jenny at the next opportunity."

"Half the time ancient gods in old stories are something to do with _you_ , sweetie," River continued. He couldn't work out if she was trying to get on his nerves on purpose or if her ordinary personality was what was getting on his nerves. "The Time Lords were very powerful. I saw the Singularity as well, you know."

"What's that?" Rory asked.

"It's nothing," said Eleven darkly, glaring at River for bringing that up, "Forget she said anything." He kicked a layer of sand back over the coins he had dug up now, "Where do you think we can find this man from Memphis who brings them the water?"

"Wasn't Elvis from Memphis?" Amy asked as the Doctor climbed back out of the well, which was harder than getting into the well to begin with.

"I don't think the Memphis in Tennessee and the Memphis in Ancient Egypt are the same place," said Rory.

"You humans are just rubbish at thinking of new names for places, that's all. Do you know how many cities Alexander the Great named Alexandria? A _lot_ ," said the Doctor, "And he was a cad. Don't you remember when we met him? He kept touching me." This he addressed to River, because it had been a long time ago but a trip with only the two of them where he had met Alexander the Great. She laughed at the memory. "It wasn't funny! I should have reported him. Harassment."

"Take it as a compliment."

" _Take it as a compliment_? If I were a woman you wouldn't tell me to take it as a compliment," he argued.

"No, if you were a woman I'd've told you to kick him between the legs."

"Well, this is only the weirdest feminist discourse I've ever had to listen to," Rory commented. "I assume the man who brings the water will be in the village. Do you really think someone filled the well with sand?"

"I think they're _filling_ it, it's ongoing, present tense," said Eleven, beginning the walk in the baking heat back to the village and the shade. He could do with some water himself, ice cold and refreshing. Or maybe a nice glass of milk, milk that had been stashed in the freezer for ten minutes' prior and had condensation dripping down its sides… He stopped himself. He had never fantasised about milk before; he usually fantasised about Clara. Maybe he could convince Clara to pour him a glass of milk when he got home later – she could do it in her underwear…

And then he realised he really _was_ getting side-tracked.

"Are you alright? You spaced out there for a minute," Amy's voice cut through his thoughts.

"Hmm? Oh, yes, I'm fine."

"Thinking about something interesting?"

"No," he lied, "Not at all." He cleared his throat. "Let's move on, shall we?" They were on a sand dune slightly higher than the village, which lay just ahead of them, when he spied over the ruined rooftops a caravan made up of half a dozen camels and well-dressed men on the opposite side who had certainly not been there earlier. They were laden with buckets and barrels, but it also did not escape his notice that they were armed.

He skidded down the sand dune and stumbled at the bottom, half-jogging to get to these newcomers, skirting the edge of the village's pillars and its ruins. At least there was more shade down there. He hadn't put on _any_ sun cream and was thinking that this was a dire mistake, along with wearing tweed.

"Excuse me!" he called, waving to hail them down. He had to hold up his hand to shield his eyes from the sun and see their faces, his eyes aching from the brightness of the afternoon. They should have come to visit at night. "Hello there, I'm the Doctor. Are you bringing these good people water?" he asked this of the first person he came across, someone with grisly features – a scar splitting one of his eyelids and half of his lip, which made his face a permanent sneer showing off yellow teeth. They didn't give off much of a charitable vibe. But this man did not talk to the Doctor, he instead barked for somebody else to come using a word Eleven didn't recognise, and then a middle-aged man approached from behind a very decorated camel – if 'decorated' was the word. It looked almost regal. He and his troupe must be very important in Memphis.

"It is me you want to address, my good man," he said, wearing a robe which could not come cheap, made of what looked like leopard skin. "I am Sati, I am bringing these poor people water, and have been doing so since their well dried up." But the well hadn't dried up, the Doctor was sure that someone had been routinely dumping sand into it at night to make sure the water supply remained non-existent.

"How much is it costing them?" the Doctor asked. Sati laughed, then looked at his grim-faced men, and they all chuckled too, though they sounded more threatening than their leader did.

"It is a gesture of good-will, to stay in favour with the gods," he said.

"But if the gods have cut off the well, how do you know they don't _want_ these people to die?" he challenged.

"If the gods want them to die then they will die."

"Interesting, considering they _have_ been dying. So your efforts are futile."

"Maybe, but I cannot give up. I cannot idly stand by and watch this suffering."

"But you're not standing by, you don't even live here," Eleven continued, putting his hands in his pockets, "How did you hear about this?"

"When people came to Memphis begging. I am not sure I like your tone, sir – are you trying to imply something?" The Doctor laughed without humour, then narrowed his eyes at Sati. He forced a smile.

"Not at all. I was just wondering if you might have some water to spare for us weary travellers – we're on our way to the river," he said amicably. Sati nodded and then fetched a flask made of animal skin, which he handed to the Doctor, who shook his hand gratefully.

"If you will excuse us, I have business to discuss with some of these villagers." Sati indicated for his men to follow him, and the Doctor stepped back to re-join River and the Ponds while they and their convoy of camels entered the ruin village through the pillars and old walls. Eleven clutched the flask and waited for them to pass by, receiving many unusual looks, though most eyes found Amy and remained on her until she was out of their line of sight. She either did not notice or did not care.

Once they were gone, he lifted the cap on the flask and drank from it.

"Don't do that!" Rory exclaimed in horror when he saw this. Eleven held up a hand to Rory to indicate he should be quiet, then swilled the liquid around in his mouth. When he was satisfied with his diagnosis, he spat it onto the floor in front of him, making Amy jump aside.

"You almost got me!" she shouted at him.

"Sorry," he said, then he dropped the flask and let the water pour out into the sand. "It's dirty. Bad water. Definitely the route of the kidney problems, if they've been drinking it for months. Could even be poisoned, intended to kill slowly so nobody works out what's going on." On a hunch, he followed Sati and his entourage into the village, with the others still behind him, and he stood carefully out of sight and observed them giving out water.

But they were not only giving out water, he noted. The men were, but Sati stood talking to a young man, barely out of adolescence. In the quiet of the desert his words carried easily, and the Doctor could hear a discussion about the young man's house.

"…with your father so tragically out of the picture, what is keeping you here?" Sati was saying. The young man was sad and unsure of whatever he was being propositioned, and then Sati pulled out a bag of gold coins which made the man's eyes light up. "I will give you a handsome sum to purchase your land here, more than enough for you to move to a city and make your living there. Things are much easier in the cities, by the river. The gods will never let the Nile run dry."

"I am sorry," said the man, "I cannot leave the home my parents and my grandparents built before me. It would do dishonour on their memories, and they rest nearby."

"Now, now, boy," one of Sati's men interrupted, "This is a good amount of money. You think your parents would really want you to turn down this opportunity?"

"What is this house now but a place of sad memories?" Sati added.

"They are sad, but they are mine, and they are happy also," the young man said firmly. And then he was grabbed roughly by the scruff of his neck by Sati's second.

"You're going to take the money and not throw our generosity in our faces like this. Would your family want you to die out here in the dirt, like a rat? Poor and alone? Or take this money and seek fortune in the city? A wife, a child? Because you _will_ die out here if you anger me anymore," he threatened, putting his free hand on the hilt of his sword. It didn't take anymore than this to make the young man grab the coin from Sati, and then he was thrown to the ground to sprawl in the sand. He scrambled to his feet and made a run towards the edge of the village, where the Doctor stood. The soldiers glimpsed Eleven watching as they made sure the boy escaped.

"Hey, are you alright?" Amy grabbed his arm as he passed, and he yelped and lurched away from her like her touch had hurt him.

"I don't want to die today," he sobbed, and then he went stumbling out into the desert in an easterly direction.

"Why do they want people out of this village? Killing them? Buying them out? It's like a siege without any walls," Rory said. He already looked angry about this state of affairs. The Doctor himself was seething, but knew better than to approach Sati and his goons with their axes and swords.

"There must be something here, something important…" Eleven mused. Amy cleared her throat, and when he looked at her she pointed. She pointed right at the Pyramid of Khufu next to them, the tallest of all the pyramids and the one the village was built at the edge of.

"Do you think _that_ is something important?"

"Maybe they're looking for another way into the pyramid?" River suggested, "We do that sometimes in archaeology, and especially with a structure like this. Like a backdoor. Maybe they think they can dig around here and find a tunnel." It made sense, and he didn't have a better theory himself. Not to mention River was a legitimate archaeologist, after all.

"Then I suppose we ought to try and find a way into the pyramid too. One that doesn't involve any digging. Come along, Ponds. We have a village to rescue."

 **AN: As always reviews are greatly appreciated, I live for you guys' reviews. Also I totally have a flat living all on my own now - pretty crazy considering how young and useless I was when this fic began and I didn't know how to do anything for myself. But it did make me realise that the shared living on the TARDIS is very inaccurate to actual shared living because they're not constantly at each others' throats about people not doing their washing up and leaving the shared spaces filthy.**


	145. I Hate Snakes

_I Hate Snakes_

 _Eleven_

In that year, and for more than one thousand years to come, the Pyramid of Khufu was the tallest manmade monument to ever be erected on Planet Earth. Therefore, trying to come up with a way to very quickly skirt the edges of it and find some way to scale the sandy monstrosity was no mean feat. It took them quite a while to spy a sufficiently suspicious opening in its hull, and then even longer to plot a route up the smooth, steep sandstone, with the Doctor tripping and sliding multiple times and very nearly resorting to calling the TARDIS down to try and fly them into it. Finally, though, after being out in the sun for more hours than he liked, he collapsed onto his hands and knees into the cool interior of the biggest pyramid of all, crawling into a corner to catch his breath and wait for the Ponds to complete their ascent. They were not quite as agile as he.

River Song, on the other hand, had been standing in the cave mouth idly shouting noncommittal words of encouragement at them, she herself still a hologram and able to teleport all over the place. It never failed to surprise Eleven when she did this, because he was still not used to people teleporting; Oswin hadn't been able to do it for months ever since she had started wearing her prosthetic leg again, and Clara was still incapable of teleporting at will unless she was in a life-or-death situation. River had been lingering and complaining about being bored, and now it was just she and Eleven and him collapsed on the floor staring at the low, sandstone ceiling. It was gloomy and stagnant, and he couldn't wait to worm his way deeper into the pyramid's layers where the desert heat could not permeate. The Doctor turned his head to watch River, who was paying her parents more mind than him, until she glanced away for a moment and caught him staring. She looked at her hands, pretending to be indifferent.

"Is there something you want?"

"I've never asked you," he began, "But now we're alone – is he really your boyfriend? Would you describe him as a boyfriend? Using that word?" She looked at him, then narrowed her eyes. "What? Isn't an ex-husband allowed to show a healthy interest in these things?" He sat up a little, and River only shook her head, though he caught the ghost of a smile in her shadowed face while she avoided his gaze.

"No, he isn't," she said finally, "It's none of your business, quite frankly. I don't ask you about Clara. But if I was desperate to stick my nose in your life, I suppose I'd rather inquire after Jenny than your child-bride." All of this, while the words themselves may be snide, was said with a joking tone the Doctor understood. Despite everything, he could no longer detect a trace of animosity between himself and River, or Clara and River – far from the other messy breakups they saw on the TARDIS (by which he meant, quite specifically, Jack and his daughter.)

"What about Jenny?" he asked carefully.

"Oh, I don't know. The two of you seem to have been getting on tremendously."

"Two of who?" Eleven made a start when Amy Pond interrupted them. She was a sweating mess when she collapsed over the threshold of Khufu's tomb, and the Doctor was shocked that she even found it remotely within herself to say anything at all. He was impressed, even. Rory followed close behind, and a moment later the pair of them were lying on the floor together.

"The two of us," said the Doctor, now getting to his feet and brushing himself down. He was more or less recovered from his trek up the side of the largest structure currently present on the planet (though it had nothing on the citadels of Gallifrey, despite how famous these pyramids were throughout the neighbouring galaxies.) "River and I. Tremendously. Best friends, aren't we?" River raised an eyebrow at him, but did not reveal his lie. The root of it was only that he didn't want people inquiring about Jenny. He himself did not mind in the slightest, but he knew that she was considerably more private and did not like people knowing things about her if she did not disclose them herself. And it took a lot of coaxing to get her to disclose things to begin with.

"I'm glad you've all made it; I've been investigating," River now declared.

"Have you?" Eleven questioned, "You didn't mention."

"If I'd have told you I would have had to repeat myself now," she said, "And I really can't be bothered." The Ponds said nothing. The Doctor wondered if they could even really hear he and River's conversation over the sounds of their own heartbeats pounding in their ears. Potentially not, then Song would have to repeat herself anyway. He cleared his throat.

"What did you find?"

"The sandstone is very worn around that entrance," she nodded at it, "Bits of rubble broken away. Lots of sand has blown in during that time, and the sand has made some rather excellent footprints." She indicated these footprints now, which the Doctor had not noticed because he had not actually been looking for anything, he had been recuperating and trying to pry irrelevant information out of his ex-wife due to boredom. But now he saw a whole host of footprints, and other artefacts lying in the crevices the high sun did not quite reach. "And do you see all of this? Discarded maps, an old torch-"

"There's been an expedition in here," he said.

"And recently," River added, "For what it's worth, my money is on Sati."

"Mmm," he agreed, "And mine." The Ponds were still lying on the floor. "Come on, now. On your feet. You can't go from strenuous activity to doing absolutely nothing – the shock will give you a heart attack. It's best to keep walking."

"The deeper we get into this pyramid the cooler it will be," River coaxed them, and this finally made them clamber upright, both bright red in the face and glistening with perspiration.

"Again, _how_ are you not sweating?" Rory asked him, "I've had a stitch for the last ten minutes."

"Really? That doesn't sound good. Maybe you should talk to Martha?" the Doctor suggested. Rory gave him a flat stare.

"I'm a nurse."

"She's a doctor."

"She's busy," Amy interrupted, "Something… urgh. I don't know. She's been preoccupied, all over the place, I don't know what's wrong with her. Now then, can we keep moving? Since that's your wonderful idea?" She glared at Eleven, and he beamed in response.

"Of course we can. Now, Song, what were you saying about Sati?"

"I assume they passed through here trying to access the pyramid," she said, "If we're right about them now trying to buy-out the village in order to dig over there, maybe they came up short. But there's always the possibility we'll find something they missed."

"Excellent, positive thinking. Now, then…" he felt about rather blindly in the shadows on the floor until he managed to locate two large torches, wooden sticks with old rags wrapped tightly around their ends, and holding these in one hand he found a zippo lighter stashed in his pocket with the other. It was this he used to light the torches.

"Why have you got a lighter?" Rory asked him, "Did you used to carry a lighter?"

"It's not mine," he said, "It's the wife's. Useful thing to have though, incidentally, though I do wish she didn't smoke."

"Why do you carry her lighter around if you hate her smoking so much?" Rory questioned.

"I have her cigarettes in my pocket as well," he said with a sigh.

"Well, you're whipped."

"I'm what?"

"Whipped. It's a thing Americans say," she said, "It means you'll do everything she wants you to do and you won't even question it." He scowled and ignored this comment completely, and just to spite the pair of them he bestowed his spare torch on River Song, so it was she and the Doctor who were in charge of the lights. River crouched to examine some of the shreds of parchment littering the floor, picking them up and holding them to the flames so that she could decipher them.

"They look like maps," said Rory.

"They are, but they're poorly drawn ones…" she said, looking at a few sheets at once, "I think they're trying to map out the inside of the pyramid, but I'm not sure they've done a good job."

"Shouldn't we take them with us?" asked Amy, "You know, in case there are any booby traps." They all looked at her. "What? I've seen _Indiana Jones_. There are _always_ booby traps."

"No," River said eventually, dropping the papers and standing back up, "They're terrible. They won't help us at all; we're on our own." There had been, this whole time, a shadowy doorway looming in the corner. The Doctor had not paid it much note until their torches illuminated it much more substantially, but after that the void of the entrance lingered in the corner of his eye. It was towards this River Song took off to, and he followed second of all with the Ponds lagging behind. Then they were well and truly on their way to discovering the mysteries of Giza's famous landmarks.

"How much do you know about the pyramids?" Amy asked, "Either of you?" The Doctor and River shared a glanced in the flickering torchlight. Rory was right at the back, them walking single-file through a wonky sandstone passageway.

"Shall I field this one, sweetie?"

"You _are_ the archaeologist," he said, smiling with a trace of encouragement.

"I know that the interiors are a lot smaller than you'd expect," she said, "Smaller on the inside, I suppose you could say. This one, for instance, only has three real rooms. Whether they've been discovered yet, I haven't a clue. There's the King's Chamber, the Grand Gallery, and the Queen's Chamber. And of course plenty of room for all the slaughtered slaves they took into the Duat with them. But there's only really the one entrance, and if memory serves, the route we're taking now is not the one the tourists are going to use in two-thousand years."

"We're in an area nobody has ever seen before?" Rory called from the back. He was barely visible, hidden in the shadows, but Rory was often completely invisible so Eleven supposed it was an improvement to having his detached and ghostly voice echoing around them in the chambers. There were drawings all over the walls, and Eleven could not decipher them. What a good decision he had made in once marrying an archaeologist; River was very useful.

"Nobody except the people who built it," River said, "I suppose this passage will be sealed up at some point. There could be dozens more ways in we don't know about. It's an awfully big monument to bury just the one king, I always thought." The passage opened out a little, into more of a hallway, a large one you might expect to find in a castle, but still relatively enclosed. There were sparse support beams carved out of the solid stone running down the middle. The Doctor wandered over to the nearest wall to try and look at the images.

"Can any of you hear that noise?" Rory asked, but the Doctor was distracted by the hieroglyphs.

"What do these mean?" he asked whoever wanted to answer him. Amy came to hover at his side and get a look as well. It looked to be images of somebody wrestling a snake, a very large snake.

"It's the story of Ra and Apep," said River, "They're mortal enemies."

"The Curse of Apep is what's ravaging the village," Amy reminded them.

"Perhaps it's not a coincidence that that's the name being used. After all, there are probably a dozen nasty gods to choose from who might want to wreak havoc out there. I don't think we can ignore the same image being repeated like that."

"Seriously, the noise," Rory repeated.

"So, what's the story?" Amy asked.

"Ra is the sun god and the most important god in Ancient Egyptian mythology, Apep is a demon of chaos and destruction who takes the form of an enormous water snake. Every night they do battle and ultimately Ra always wins, because the sun always rises the next morning. They would have whole temples dedicated to praying to Ra to bring about his success," River explained.

"It sounds like hissing…"

"I was just talking about snakes yesterday," Eleven mused, "Clara ran into a mad scientist calling himself 'Professor Ouroboros'-"

"Snake eating itself? What a typical thing for your wife, of all people, to find," River quipped. She found it amusing, just like the Doctor had when he had been told about it the previous day.

"If one of you two would bring your torches over here, I could get a look and see what that- ARGH!" Rory Williams screamed and cut off his own sentence.

"Rory!?"

"Father!?" Amy and River exclaimed together, which sort of weirded Eleven out a little bit. He felt that River often tried to avoid calling Amy or Rory by any kind of name, be it their first names or their parental 'titles.' They followed the sound of his scream – and the banging and resounding thud and groan – and found that Rory had fallen down a hole.

"Only you could manage to do something like that in a place like this," said the Doctor, peering over it. It looked as though the hole wasn't supposed to be there, like someone had made it either with explosives or simple brute force. He thought the latter was most likely. It wasn't really large enough for more than one person to go through it at once, and easy enough to avoid now that he and River had taken the light sources over there.

"Oh my god, are you alright!? Rory!?" Amy shouted into the hole, kneeling on the ground to look into it.

"Careful, the floor might be unstable," Eleven warned.

"Clearly it is bloody unstable since my husband just _fell through it!_ Rory!"

"Yep, I'm alright," his voice finally reached them, "Might have a few bruises."

"Bruises!? I don't care about bruises, as long as you're still alive," Amy said.

"I'm definitely still alive, although… uh-oh…" They could just about see him when they squinted, pasty and obvious in the gloom.

"What? What is it?" Amy implored, but Eleven could see what it was. He could see what looked like a hundred writhing, shining bodies down there surrounding Rory Williams.

"That hissing I heard… this room is full of snakes."

"Snakes!?"

"Shh, you might agitate them," River told her.

"What kind of snakes?" the Doctor called.

"I don't know, I'm not a… snake-ologist."

"Herpetologist," River corrected. Amy looked at her. "An expert in snakes would be a herpetologist. Snake-ologist isn't… never mind – look, I'm going to drop the torch down, you'll have to catch it."

"Catch it!? It's on fire!"

"Snakes don't like fire," she said.

" _I_ don't like fire!"

"On three – one, two," and then she dropped it, and Rory yelped and stumbled away from the torch, which landed on the sandy floor in front of him. He was very lucky it was not extinguished by this fall. The snakes under and around it scattered, crawling all over each other to try and escape from the blaze, and Rory reached over to pick it up, now occupying a tiny little circle free of all reptiles.

"They look like cobras – are they cobras?" Amy asked the Doctor.

"Well, cobras are native to Egypt and far from extinct – so it's highly likely that they could be cobras."

"And what happens if one of them bites him?"

"And he's down there? In that hole? I suppose he could be dead in half an hour," said the Doctor.

"Then do something!" Amy shouted at him.

"Oh – right – yes, sorry. I'm coming down! Look out!" he declared.

"You're – what!? No! Don't-!" But the Doctor was gone, jumping down to follow Rory's misplaced footsteps. He landed right on a snake, too, which hissed and turned as if to strike him, but he got out of the way just in time and tripped until he fell right into Rory. The damaged snake slithered away in anguish, but there were so many more he hardly thought that mattered.

"We haven't got any light up here now," River called after him, "Why did you jump down? You're an idiot."

"Yes, it does seem like a bit of an error of judgement in hindsight," the Doctor said. Amy groaned loudly, and within a moment she had dropped down as well. The Doctor smiled at her. "Hello! What brings you to these parts?" She looked like she wanted to punch him.

"You're unbelievable." With a flicker, River appeared in the room next to them, a move which again made them jump. "Well. The gang's all here. Now what?"

"I didn't think that far ahead," said the Doctor, "Anybody have a flute? I could do some snake charming." One of them hissed nearby and was rearing its head to strike.

"Over there, in that corner, there's some slats propped against the wall," River pointed out, "There could be something behind them, a way out. Or a way away from the snakes, at least."

"Then let's go," Amy decided, snatching the torch out of Eleven's hand. Waving the torches at the ground, it was now the Ponds who led the way, forcing the snakes to flee because of the heat of the flames. It worked quite well. "I told you I've seen _Indiana Jones_." River pushed between her parents to remove the wooden barricade from the wall, which sure enough revealed a new crevice which did not appear to be the source of the dozens of restless snakes. It was when they were ducking through to make their escape that the Doctor felt a shooting pain in his calf, and his legs gave out and he fell through the hole behind them. And then Amy shrieked, and he turned to see there was a cobra with its jaws clamped around his leg sending hot venom into his bloodstream.

"Uh-oh," he said, "Get it off me, one of you!" River went to wrench it off, and succeeded despite the snakes strength, though in the process she seemed to tear out one of its fangs. She threw it through the gap behind them and dragged the barricade back across, while Rory went to see what was wrong with the Doctor's leg. "Leave it, I'm fine."

"Fine!? What happened to dead in thirty minutes?"

"A human would be dead in thirty minutes. Believe it or not, I've been bitten by a cobra before. Jenny got bitten by a rattlesnake once and she was fine, a long time ago," he said, though in all likelihood he was not going to be fine. That bite was going to swell and bruise and he was going to be bedridden for a day or so while his immune system fought it off – or perhaps his run-in with the infection induced by the Anobine Cartax weeks earlier had strengthened him enough to manage.

"At least let me get the fang out, it's still in there."

"Fine," Eleven grunted, but he felt as though he were in a compromising positon, lying on his front on the stones with Rory fumbling around with his leg. Amy looked like the stress was getting to her, and he resisted the urge to remind her this had all been her idea. He could have spent the day in bed with Clara _not_ getting bitten by a snake, but here they were. In some chamber.

"I think those snakes were put there on purpose," River said. She was looking around again, having taken a torch from Rory so now it was she and Amy with the lights. "I said it was too much of a coincidence to have all this Apep imagery, and then all these snakes. Snakes don't just accumulate naturally in old ruins, no matter what George Lucas believes. I'll bet it was Sati. To ward off intruders."

"Intruders to what? This is a dead end," Amy complained, "How are we going to get out of here?"

"If worse comes to worst, we _do_ have emergency teleporters," Rory reminded her. Then the Doctor felt another sharp pain and he flinched.

"Is that it out? It's like having a tooth pulled."

"It doesn't look very good, are you sure you're not going to end up regenerating?" Rory asked carefully.

"I'll just have to stay in bed after this," he sighed, trying to get up.

"Stay there, I'm doing you a bandage." The Doctor grimaced.

"What are you looking for?" Amy addressed her mother. River was peering very closely at a large and solid wall. "There can't be anything in here. If there was, then they wouldn't be trying to excavate that village out there, would they?" she challenged.

"Maybe," said River, "Or maybe we can find something they missed."

"Like what? You're going to push a special brick in the wall and a secret door is going to open?" Amy asked snidely. And then River pushed a special brick in the wall, and what could only be described as a secret door _did_ open, sliding apart like the entrance to Diagon Alley in technology the Doctor thought was beyond even the Egyptians. "Oh. I stand corrected."


	146. Tunnel Vision

**AN: Completely forgot to put this in the last chapter, but if you haven't seen yet, my Christmas chapter of _Spook Watch_ titled "A Very Spooky Christmas" is now up and I put a lot of effort into it and it's pretty much the most Christmassy thing I've ever done for fic since it started (including the time they actually had Christmas randomly even though to them it was July) and is the heartwarming story of how Sally Sparrow learns the true meaning of Christmas.**

 _Tunnel Vision_

 _Eleven_

Within minutes, he had a limp. He had a limp and reminded himself of his sister-in-law, and it was a similarity he was keen to be rid of. The abominable wound on his leg was far from fatal, but it was hot and walking on it was almost agony. Just because he wasn't going to die didn't mean it wasn't a hideous turn of events. And there was a wedding to go to in a week! He couldn't have a limp for that, couldn't look like he was some sort of defective consolation prize in comparison to his younger self. He was going to do his best to get his hands on some 'Miracle Medicine' when they returned to the ship, and if that failed, he might even have to waste his regeneration energy on a frivolous wound. Perhaps he could have the whole matter sorted before Clara noticed he had gotten into trouble – it was a ghastly business.

"I'm starting to understand why Jenny is getting so worried about her health…" he grumbled. Nobody had any sympathy for him, which he did not understand. It hadn't been _his_ idea to come to Egypt, and it hadn't been _him_ who fell down the hole in the ground full of snakes to begin with. Yet apparently, he was a blame-magnet.

"I wouldn't worry if I were her," River said.

"If you were her you'd already be dead."

"Sorry if you're still ungrateful for me using up the rest of my regenerations to heal you," she quipped. She was at the front of the group and he was at the back, shuffling, with the Ponds sandwiched between them as though they were children who needed to be kept from fighting. "She was quite alright on Rospaonus."

"Yes, by some miracle; it's only one of the most hostile planets in the known universe."

"What were you up to on a planet like that?" Amy questioned River, as though she were concerned for her wellbeing when – as Eleven had already pointed out – she was dead and buried.

"Looking for something. Crawling through ruins for the second time in a week – we might as well be back there," River quipped, but he didn't want to talk about Rospaonus or what had been found there. "It was this enormous Time Lord ruin, built into a mountain, and-"

"Enough of that," the Doctor interrupted, "Jenny already told me all about it."

"What _did_ she do with the Singularity?"

"Asked me to destroy it," he said stiffly.

"And did you? Or did you just hide it somewhere on the TARDIS?"

"I said, _enough of that._ I don't want to talk about my dead species and the ridiculous things they built on other planets," he said it like it was an order, and really, it was. It finally got River to shut up, at least. Jenny's 'adventure' on Rospaonus was the last thing he wanted to talk about, and especially the Singularity.

The Doctor was aware, faintly, that they were heading down. Down a narrow passage way which was twisting ever so slightly, just too slight to visibly perceive, but enough that he was sure they were descending in a vague spiral formation. Going deeper and deeper into the Pyramid of Khufu, now underneath the desert itself.

"Stop, stop, stop," Amy said very suddenly and very quickly, she herself stopping dead in the passageway so that Rory walked into her. She did not appear to notice this, and had her face scrunched up in an expression akin to pain.

"What's going on?" River asked urgently.

"It's one of her visions," Rory explained, "You know, she has premonitions about the immediate future." In all honestly, Eleven had forgotten.

"I'm always surprised by how rarely anyone actually uses these superpowers," he commented.

"I think they're more hassle than they're worth," Rory muttered, then he gave the Doctor a very telling look, "The things I hear at night…"

"How many times do we have to apologise for that? Honestly. She's not even that loud."

"She is when you have super-hearing."

"Stop listening!"

Then Amy gasped and stumbled, and was about to fall into the wall but she directed herself to fall into Rory, instead.

"Don't touch the walls," she ordered them.

"Why?" asked River.

"I don't know. I saw spikes come out of them." Eleven was filled with an overwhelming urge to touch the walls, but he resisted, instead settling for looking at them. But they didn't have any openings with which spikes might come through. "I told you there would be booby traps. And then after that thing with pushing a trick brick in the wall, and a snake pit?"

"Everyone makes secret doors and traps," said the Doctor, "The Ancient Egyptians did it, territorial cavemen did it, and the most advanced settlements in the galaxy do it. Nobody's free of things they have to hide, don't go thinking this is a wonderful coincidence that you've seen it before in a hundred different blockbusters. There's nothing new under the sun, as they say." When he finished exerting the effort required to talk, he flinched and repositioned himself on his injured leg, wishing he had some a walking aid.

"He's right. It's all very run of the mill," said River, "Let's just carry on. I'm in front, after all. The traps won't work on me." She had a fair point, and they now proceeded even more cautiously. "This tunnel network is enormous," she said only a minute later, "I'm surprised it's never been found, it wasn't too difficult to track down. Sati is already out there trying to dig. But I've only ever seen the incredibly limited maps of the interior of this pyramid."

"So you're the only one clever enough to figure out that you should push a brick on a wall?" Amy asked incredulously.

"Maybe. Aren't you proud of me?" River jibed.

"No, no," said the Doctor, "That makes no sense. They do x-rays and thermal imaging of areas of pyramids in the future, and _I've_ never heard anything about these tunnels, either. Not in any place I history. I think it's a very good point that we found this lost section of a pyramid much too easily, and-" There was a clicking noise suddenly and then a whoosh of air over his head and a crash. He froze. He was at the back of the group, yet somehow he had triggered one of the traps Amy had warned about, and now his fez was impaled on a rusty metal spike wedged into the opposite wall. It was mere inches away from destroying his brain. He had stepped on a pressure plate, he realised.

"I told you to be careful," Amy hissed at him through gritted teeth.

"I was!" he protested, "Why are all the bad things happening to _me_?"

Rory cleared his throat, the Doctor ducking away from the spike before another one shot out and tried to kill him, "You're not the one who fell into the snake pit."

"We _all_ ultimately fell into the snake pit," he snapped, "And I'm the only one who got bitten."

"Jenny's bad luck is rubbing off on you," said River. He didn't find that funny, not in the least because Jenny had died twice in the last six months, "Although, she managed to survive Rospaonus."

"I wish you two would stop mentioning that since _he_ won't talk about it," Amy grumbled.

"He wasn't even there," said River, looking over her shoulder at the Doctor, bookends of their convoy. It was a telling look, a _knowing_ look, one that went beyond suspicion to accusation, and she knew she was correct in what she was accusing him of. He scowled and avoided her gaze, but the memory of it clung to him. He didn't like her smugness sometimes, nor did he like the way she still managed to work out what was going on in his head.

"What were you saying about it being too easy? You know, before that spike nearly got you?" Amy asked.

"I still think it's too easy."

"Don't jinx it," Rory told him.

"Jinxes aren't real," he said, and then he watched his feet and braced himself for another trap. This time though, no trap came.

"People don't think this secret entrance to the pyramid is real, either," said Amy.

"Well, Sati couldn't find it," the Doctor pointed out, "He's resorted poisoning people en masse and filling wells with sand in order to drive them out and dig up their homes. How did you know which brick to push?"

"I pushed a fair few of them," said River, "I was about to resort to saying _open sesame_. Although, I…" The corner sharpened somewhat, no longer the gentle curves they had gotten used to, and River disappeared from the Doctor's sight just as she also stopped speaking, "…I'm not sure _open sesame_ will get us through _here_ …"

"Oh," said Amy, next to see.

"This is a problem," said Rory, third.

Finally the Doctor, scrambling, saw what they meant. Imagine his surprise when he came face to face with a rippling, yellow forcefield. It looked like a mirage, buried down there under the Sahara, bristling with energy. Just looking at it made his hair stand on end, the air riddled with static charge. A _forcefield_. Inside the Pyramid of Khufu! Very purposefully, Eleven stepped towards it and cleared his throat, then he said loudly: " _Open sesame!_ "

Absolutely nothing happened.

"You're an idiot," said River.

"It was worth a try."

"No it wasn't," said Amy, "Should we start pushing bricks?"

"No, no," the Doctor laughed, and in a moment he had drawn out his screwdriver, "Should do the trick. Doesn't look like a particularly complicated forcefield." It shimmered, looking like a waterfall made of golden syrup.

"How would Ancient Egyptians have made a forcefield…?" Rory asked carefully.

"There's only one solution," said the Doctor, "The Ancient Egyptians didn't."

"Oh, god…" he began as the Doctor went to sonic the walls, "You're not telling me…? That thing about how 'aliens built the pyramids'…"

"How has this _never_ been found?" River said, staring at everything. It was really exciting her in her capacity as an archaeologist. "The energy readings alone – how is this being hidden? And we found it so easily – it doesn't make any sense. There was only one real trap." The forcefield flickered and disappeared.

The Doctor limped through on his sorry leg first. How long did he have until a fever set in? Before his limbs began to stiffen? Blasted neurotoxins, he thought to himself. Already he felt his ankle going rigid. But perhaps, now that he thought about it, and now that he remembered River Song's smugness, there was a way he could connive that he might heal himself without sacrificing anything… except his principles…

He had to say, he agreed with everything River was pointing out. It was all too easy and too unusual, like they weren't even really in Egypt, they were on one of those Earth copies. Maybe they were on New Earth, had been all along, or it was an elaborate theme park, and they were going to find a roller coaster buried down there. A roller coaster and a McDonald's – there was always a McDonald's. At the end of the universe there was probably a McDonald's, somehow.

"What do _you_ think is going on? … Doctor?" River had to reiterate because he didn't respond initially. They were in more dark corridors, but he was beginning to notice that these walls were not made out of sandstone. They were glossy and black, like marble, and were so smooth they were nearly mirrors, reflecting ghosts of themselves in the flickering light of the torches.

"Perhaps aliens built the pyramids. Perhaps it was humans from the future coming back to play a joke. I know if Clara were here, she'd suggest maybe there was a civilisation on Earth _before_ humans, other than the Silurians. But she did do her dissertation on H.P. Lovecraft, so she's bound to think that," he said.

"Could it have been Silurians?" Amy asked, "We're going very far underground."

"I don't know," he admitted, and he really didn't. He was as excited to find out as River was; it was better than a birthday. "There are a lot of races, really, who have claimed influence over the pyramids. They're famous around the universe, and I know plenty of alien tourists sneak over here to get a look at them. The Osirans always said they had something to do with it, and they wandered around dressed up like mummies half the time. Of course, you can't ignore the Anubians either, with their pyramid spaceships and their jackal-heads. And then Scaroth – that fiend – kept saying he influenced Earth culture greatly. All _he's_ ever influenced is me staying away from spaghetti for a good few years."

"Maybe it was the Time Lords, all this time," River remarked.

"We would have never interfered with another species. Well, I would, but the rest of them wouldn't – sticks in the mud, the lot of them. I'm glad that…" he stopped talking. He was going to say something about how he was glad that Jenny was the next generation of Time Lord, and possibly even the last generation of Time Lord, but his pride in his offspring paled in comparison to the treasure trove of secrets they found deep beneath the Pyramid of Khufu. When they emerged into a cavern of astonishing size, simply more enormous than he could rightly put into words, all of the mysteries of the Great Pyramids looked to be on the precipice of revealing themselves, and all thoughts aside from wonder disappeared from their heads. Amy Pond even forgot about her Sphinx.


	147. Ancient Astronauts

**AN: Full disclosure, I didn't quite think this out as well as I should have done so I had to go rewrite a bit of the previous chapter – basically, the forcefield stopping them getting into the bowels of the pyramid was permanently deactivated instead of temporarily, because it was the only thing I could think to do to enable the plot to actually move forwards.**

 _Ancient Astronauts_

 _Eleven_

It was one of the biggest motherships he had ever seen. It lay, lopsided and wedged halfway into the dirt, in a humungous cavern of indescribable size. It was as though the Grand Canyon had been given a rooftop and then buried, an abominably huge space beneath the Giza Plateau hiding quite possibly the single most significant archaeological and technological discovery in all of human history. An alien craft, so large its precise shape was indistinguishable, taking up space under all three of the Great Pyramids above. They were on a sandstone ridge overlooking the monster, with carved likenesses of the gods running around the edges of the room like Mount Rushmore, only a thousand times more spectacular and glistening with golden paint, all of it illuminated by bizarre blue flames in torch brackets around the walls. Never had he thought something as extraordinary as this would be hidden in the Sahara, hidden so well, for in all his days he had never heard anything of this thing being discovered. It had lain there for millennia, undisturbed, and now it was silent.

He was perhaps misguided when he decided to make the short leap from their stone ridge to the closest rim of the spaceship, especially given his incredibly achy cobra bite, and he stumbled and lost his footing with a metallic clatter. Ordinarily, he may have been chastised for this, but Rory, Amy and River were much too awestruck by what they had found to even pay attention to what the Doctor was doing. He regained his balance and then crouched again – wincing – in order to place his hand flat on the metal surface of the spaceship. Beneath his skin it felt like ice, a sure sign that it had been inactive for a considerable amount of time. When he rapped his knuckles on it, the noise rang out, hollow. It was abandoned alright, and had been ever since those pyramids had been erected originally.

"This is an impact crater," River finally said, "It crashed here." Looking around, the Doctor acknowledged that she was right. It was larger because of the images of Anubis and Ra and Amun and whoever else carved out of the walls. In an effort to ascribe this piece of machinery to their deities, the Egyptians had made the crater into a grand and royal chamber.

"Nothing left in it now," said the Doctor, "I wonder where they went… probably picked up and evacuated."

"But it's huge," said Amy, "Are you seriously saying that aliens built the pyramids?"

"No," he said, "I think humans built the pyramids on top of this spaceship."

"Why? So they wouldn't forget where they buried it?"

He shrugged, pacing carefully on top of the metal hull, "Maybe? It's still exponentially dangerous. A ship this size probably has defence mechanisms, weapons – if somebody found a way to activate it, they could change all of human history, potentially destroy the planet. Especially in this era, they'd be unopposed. Even the Roman Empire couldn't take on an alien mothership in a fight."

"And we're just supposed to believe nobody has ever found this?"

"That's not true," said the Doctor, "We've found it."

"Yes," said River, "Much too easily."

"So you keep saying."

"Maybe we should get rid of it?" she suggested.

"Get rid of it how?" he frowned, looking up at them all gathered on the ledge, "I don't know where it came from or how to fly it, and it's _much_ too big to teleport. It would be like trying to teleport an entire spacestation! And while it's simple enough to transport the _population_ of a spacestation, the actual _space station_ is… well, it's very heavy, for one thing. And even if we _could_ fly it, removing it would probably destroy the Great Pyramids!"

"Maybe we could replace them?" Amy suggested.

" _Replace them_? The _Pyramids_?"

"With holograms."

"I don't think anybody would fall for that," he said.

"So, what? We just leave it here?"

"It's been left here for two-thousand five-hundred years without anybody stumbling across it," he said. "I don't see a reason why anyone should start now."

"You can't be serious. There's a bloke out there digging already," she told him in disbelief. He said nothing, just looked around at the immense ship beneath his feet. "Doctor?"

River scoffed dismissively, "He has no idea what to do."

"I think the solution will present itself."

"Well can the solution hurry up? It's cold down here." She had her arms crossed tightly about her person.

"I hate to point out that you're wearing practically nothing," he said. That was the wrong thing to say. Rory was frightened on Eleven's behalf after that comment was made about his wife, and he distinctly looked like a man who was dying to get out of the way of any immediate danger. Amy was furious.

"You're too used to being able to say whatever you like to Clara. But I'm not Clara. I'll hurt you." Eleven was intimidated enough that he resisted the urge to point out that Clara would probably hurt Amy back in retaliation, and potentially a lot worse. He was saved from having to apologise, however, by the arrival of some most unwelcome guests. The guests he had really been waiting for, all along – the cherry on his cake: Sati and his gang of wannabe archaeologists. Eleven repositioned himself so that his wounded leg was not so obvious, putting his hands in his trouser pockets and trying to look authoritative. This was tricky because he was still standing on the ship's hull, and was therefore a few feet lower than everybody else. His head was just about level with the edge of the ridge.

"Sati! I was wondering when you were going to show up, my old pal. You see, Amelia. I said the solution will present itself."

"This isn't a solution," Rory hissed, "They're heavily armed."

"So is River," he said, nodding at her. River glared at him and shook her head. "What? You're…? But you're _always_ armed!"

"I didn't think I would need a weapon when we were just coming here to see the sights," she said angrily. And of course neither of the Ponds would be armed. Where was his daughter when you needed her? She always had at least three firearms on her at a given moment. But he did have one trick left up his sleeve, an ace in the hole… River was watching him closely.

"I knew you were more than a mere physician," Sati said to Eleven. He had a dozen men with him, and they all had bows with arrows loaded into them.

"Yes, I have a lot of talents," he said, "For example, I consider myself to have a phenomenal amount of integrity. I would _never_ poison people on purpose and force them out of their own homes, just to try and get my hands on – what? What did you think you were going to find? The tomb of your Pharaoh is a good few hundred metres above us in a different room. You've missed out on that. Is this your trophy? This thing?" He kicked the top of the ship with his heel, flinching, and it clanged. "What are you going to do with it?"

"You shouldn't have made the light wall vanish," said Sati in a cruel way. He was a twisted man. He looked deceptively wizened. "I've been listening to you. Even the Roman Empire couldn't defeat this... _construction._ The knowledge a vessel like this holds about us, about the world, about the gods themselves who must have sent it here – the sheer, unopposed power. I could rule for a hundred years, a thousand years! My bloodline could live on using the power of this object. You are going to witness the birth of the Great Egyptian Empire, the largest empire that will ever exist. This machine, it will teach me everything. It will tear apart the jewels and treasures of Khufu and scatter them like dust – how could gold mean anything when compared with this wonder? I would not have to pay people to work for me. They would do it out of fear alone, fear and worship. I can walk among the gods, I can _become_ a god. And here you are, so big yet so small, insignificant. You are like the fly on the back of the hippo standing on that thing, it will not even respond to your presence. But _I_ am a man of stature, of ambition, I am a puppeteer and it will bend to my will and then the population of Egypt will bend to my will, and then Greece, and Rome, and what is left after that? Stragglers who will submit to me or be crushed. And you, _Doctor_ , and your unusual friends, your friends who came into the Great Pyramid of Khufu and home of the original ingenious progenitors of civilisation without a single weapon. Without even a stone to strike down on my head! Bah! You are ridiculous, and you will die as silently as the people in the village do, slowly and painfully and thinking the wrath of the gods is smiting them. But you will be different, because you will know the wrath of the gods _is_ smiting you, the gods as directed by me!" Silence. Amy, Rory and River were watching the Doctor. He was going to have to do something – _improvise_. He cleared his throat.

"Good speech, very powerful, went on a bit though," he said, "I'd probably give you a seven out of ten for expression. A three out of ten for originality. Had some good metaphors, but the sentiment is very old hat. But I suppose any take-over-the-world scheme gets a bit boring when you've seen every episode of _Pinky and the Brain_."

"What is this? Do you not fear me?"

"No," he shrugged, "You and your bow and arrows? Do you see this ship? I've made whole fleets of hundreds of ships the size of this thing turn around at the mention of my name. Anyway, your quest for knowledge and power is a little bit glum. I don't think you'd be able to unlock the secrets of this ship no matter how hard you tried-"

" _Try_ , Doctor. I will _try_. I will _succeed_."

"I doubt that. I'm here to stop you. As I was saying, knowledge isn't the answer to everything – there's all kinds of things _I_ don't know. I didn't know who built the pyramids or why when I showed up here this morning. I don't know why Stonehenge was built, either – though I suspect it's something to do with a giant game of novelty croquet. And most of all, I don't understand why Kit-Kats come wrapped in tinfoil _and_ in a plastic wrapper. This is why the oceans are so polluted, you know, because of Kit-Kats. Now, I don't like empires and I especially don't like 'ultimate power', but if you're dying in your craving for it, I suppose I can show you for a brief moment exactly what ultimate power looks like."

The Eleventh Doctor dug around in his pocket and drew something out, something which made River Song's day, but nobody else understood its significance. A small, round sphere, about the size of an apple, covered in Gallifreyan etchings and glowing vividly gold when it rested in his palm.

"I knew it!" she exclaimed triumphantly. He pretended like he hadn't heard her, holding up the Singularity for all to see. It was tiny compared to the havoc it could reach, like the reaction inside of an atomic bomb, or the cataclysms within a star.

"This is a lost relic, of my people, so dangerous it had to be locked away. In a place a lot like this. And my daughter made me vow to destroy it, but I suppose we're kindred spirits in a way, you and I. Because I _just_ couldn't let it go, something as significant to me as I suppose these pyramids are to you. But that was a mistake," he looked at it in his hands, then lifted it and said mockingly, " _Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio; a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy; he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is!_ "

"You are a madman," said Sati.

"Mmm. I get that a lot. You enjoy the company of this spaceship so much, I'll be very happy to grant your wish and let you spend eternity in its arms. This is a tomb, after all."

Jack and Jenny and even River to some degree had never even touched upon what the Singularity could do. It was so much more than just an object to emulate the abilities of Rose Tyler. The time vortex merely flowed through her, this device absorbed it, harnessed it, used it in a phenomenally cruel way. Part of the reason it had been locked up never to be used to begin with. It could control anything and everything, he had the raw power of existence quite literally between his fingertips. River had been right about him, like she always was, and in using it he felt as though he had betrayed his relationship with his daughter. But he was going to make it right, all of it, including the fact that there was a gigantic spaceship hidden right outside of Cairo. He only had to think about it to make it happen.

The Singularity began to glow impossibly brightly, going nuclear, hot in his hands like the heat of the sun on the surface above. It was too late when Sati realised that something very bad was about to happen to him. The Ponds looked frightened; River looked concerned, but still had some traces of that smugness in her expression. Smugness that she knew him so well and knew his flaws enough that she trusted others to be able to subconsciously exploit them.

"Shoot them! Shoot them now! I want that orb!" Sati ordered to no avail. The arrows were released from their bows but the four members of the TARDIS crew disappeared in an instance, only to rematerialise with a very bumpy landing somewhere as dark as the caverns and just as cold. But windier, much windier, and there were stars shining above them. Then someone pushed him very aggressively.

"What the hell was that!?" Amy demanded, "What is this thing!?" she tried to snatch the Singularity out of his hand.

"A WMD, I think," said River, acting like she didn't know exactly what it was. He took in their surroundings; there was no doubting it, they were now on top of the Pyramid of Khufu, where once a golden-painted cap had sat but had since been robbed or broken or melted. Now there was flat stone and a view which was to die for, and he could see the expanse of desert for miles upon miles all around.

"You've been carrying this around with you this whole time!?" Amy exclaimed.

"You _hate_ weapons," added Rory.

"It isn't just a weapon," he said, "It controls the universe. On Rospaonus, this is what they found. River, Jack, and Jenny."

"Someone who thought they were a 'chosen one' was trying to get it. Called himself the Conqueror. Jenny made him promise to destroy it, did she not?"

"I…" his arms fell by his sides. "I will. For her. It's too much, it's too dangerous."

"What did you do? Just teleport us out?" Rory asked.

"No. I used some old Time Lord tricks. The TARDIS can make herself into an endless maze if she wants to. I merely mimicked that ability, with this pyramid. Nobody is going to find anything in there ever again except for the very limited areas of Khufu's tomb and a few air vents. Make them think that's the only secret these pyramids hold. A transdimensional maze down there, and Sati is trapped in it. He's going to be on the other side of the wall to that ship for the rest of his life, unable to reach it and unable to leave," he said. It was a very foul thing to have done, and he blamed the Singularity for that. The thing was evil, as far as an inanimate object could be evil, and he did not like that it had given him the ability – the _permission_ , almost – to do something so heinous. Even if it was for the greater good. His hand tightened around it and he put it back in his pocket. He had also healed his leg while he had it at his disposal; Clara was never going to find out about his snake bite. But when he thought of his current wife, he couldn't help but let his thoughts wander to his ex, standing there beneath the desert stars, overlooking Egypt for miles all around. "This was where we got married, was it not?"

She laughed. "I think you might be right. A very fragile parallel universe collapsed around us."

"Funny how it was 'Area 52.' Who knew that it really _has_ been hiding the existence of extra-terrestrial life, all this time?" he mused, going to stand next to her. She took his arm, observing the view, and talked to him very quietly.

"I'm going to check that you've destroyed it, you know," she warned him.

"Of course I will. I know of a very reliable black hole; did you ever hear of Krop Tor? That's where I met the devil."

"You've told me that story a lot."

"It's a good story. K37 Gem 5, that's where this thing belongs. You can tag along, if you like. You're a Time Lord, after all. Witness the destruction of one of the most amazing things they ever created. Well, after me." Behind them, Amy Pond cleared her throat and River slid her arm out of Eleven's. They turned to face her.

"This is all well and good, and I'm glad that you two are flirting again, but now can we _please_ go and see the Sphinx?"


	148. I'm Movin' Out

_I'm Movin' Out_

 _Eleven_

It was a foggy afternoon in Hollowmire when he arrived, but after traipsing through the desert all day at Amy Pond's bidding, the icy chill and humid temperament of the weather was a relief. He was not the sort of creature to thrive in stagnant climates, and was glad to have finally detached himself from his ex-wife and his ex-parents-in-law in favour of his last remaining relative who actually did share blood with him – blood and a great deal of other things. That was what he was thinking about when he knocked loudly and authoritatively on the front door of Ravenwood's lonely house on the moors, the bright red convertible making its home on the driveway after being fixed up and delivered. It was a marvellous car, and he was quite sure he was never going to be allowed drive it.

He heard noises on the other side of the door, and then Ravenwood called in her achingly familiar voice, "I'm literally about to go to work, so you can bloody well clear off!" she shouted, taking him by surprise, as she fumbled with her keys and unlocked the door, "I don't know why you always have to just show up here when… oh, god," she said when she opened it and saw that it was the Doctor. "Shit, I'm so sorry! I thought you were Sally. She's the only person who ever shows up here unannounced."

"If it's inconvenient I can take the TARDIS and come back later?" he suggested. She frowned.

"Why? Jenny isn't going anywhere. You're here to see her, aren't you?" she asked, perplexed. He could see now how it may sound like he was actually looking to talk to Ravenwood, who was getting to look very sallow with sunken eyes and a very peculiar aura. When he looked at her he found himself itching to look anywhere else, and really had to focus quite hard to meet her dark gaze, her irises now sinking into a shade which was very nearly solid black. Her pupils were just pinpricks, trying to keep out the light, visible through the lenses of the sun-glasses she had to wear during the daytime. It was getting easier and easier to tell the two Claras apart because of the vampiric traits of the doppelganger. "Are you alright?"

"Yes, sorry. I was just startled by how… dead you look."

" _Un_ dead," she corrected, "I do have quite an alarming whiff of decay about me these days. I made a baby cry earlier this week – it's thrilling to uncover so many new talents."

"I see that the sarcasm really transcends all the different universes, then?" he jibed. She didn't say anything, but smiled a little, and then there was a strange silence as she stood holding the door so that he couldn't get into the house. "Is Jenny here, or…?"

"Oh, right. She's in the shower. Well, she just finished a moment ago because the water's turned off, but you can wait, if you like? I'm sure she'll only be a few minutes," Ravenwood stepped aside and let him in, and he was startled by how dark it was. Heavy curtains shrouded the windows, and there were dozens of tall and perilous candles on every surface. He hadn't seen inside her house for a good few weeks, but every time he did it just looked gloomier. If Jenny had any influence on the décor, it was invisible.

"It's very dark," he commented, because he couldn't think of anything else to say to her as she sat in her armchair and began to pull on her boots. She was wearing a lot of black and grey, as well. "Do you think you're being a bit theatrical with the vampire thing?"

"Do _you_ ever think you're being a bit theatrical with the absent-minded professor thing?" she came right back at him, "I mean, elbow pads on tweed? Really? Has anyone ever told you that you look a bit like a geography teacher?"

"No, but I'm offended. Teaching is such a ghastly profession, don't you think?" he quipped. She laughed. Then he made to change the subject. "How is Jenny, anyway? In your expert opinion?"

"She's about as enigmatic as usual. What's the weather like out there? Did it look like rain?"

"It's a fifty-fifty shot."

"This is Yorkshire, when is it _not_ a fifty-fifty shot?"

"A very fair point. There's nothing wrong with taking an umbrella with you, though. Just to be prepared. It's the scout motto, after all."

"Is it?"

"Yes."

"I'll take your word for it," she stood up and went to find her coat, which she had left on the back of the armchair instead of hanging it up in the hall. His Clara always did that, too. "Listen, I really have to go, you won't break anything, will you?"

"No, of course not," he said, "I wouldn't want to ruin your hospitality."

"Hospitality. Right." She cleared her throat. "You know, that thing about looking dead – I could say the same to you," she picked up her umbrella from where it was leaning by the door, "If my heart was still beating it might stop with the shock of you turning up on my doorstep like a ghost."

"I'll wear a mask next time," he said. She frowned, as though that were not a viable solution, then stepped into the mist.

"Feel free to make yourself tea or whatever, yeah?" He smiled and nodded. "Bye, Doctor."

"Goodbye, Clara." She closed the door and locked it behind her. He didn't know what to do with himself after that – make tea, or not? In the end, he decided not to, because he couldn't remember how many sugars Jenny took in hers. So he settled to prowl around and see the kind of house Ravenwood kept, out of idle curiosity. And because she was his wife. There were a few family pictures on the mantelpiece, but she was so young in them all she hardly looked like herself. There were no recent photographs, they were all from years before Ellie had died. Typically, she had a lot of books, which he couldn't help but think were a fire hazard along with all the candles, and there was also an empty glass which was stained red on the inside. It must have had blood in it. He picked it up to look at it when someone cleared their throat and he nearly dropped it.

"What are you doing, dad?" Jenny asked. She had just gotten dressed and still had wet hair, and didn't have shoes or socks on. The black eye she had received the day before last was flaring up nastily, dark blue with red splotches. It matched her hand quite well, her hand which still had thick stitches running down it and titanium screws holding it together.

"Nothing," he said quickly, "I was just…"

"It had Jack's blood in it," she said, "Not Clara's. He donated some bottles."

"Willingly?"

"Of course willingly!" she protested. And then a smile finally broke on her face and she came over to hug him. "What are you doing here? You didn't call. Did Clara see you?"

"Yes, we had a very strange conversation where I told her she looks dead and she said the same thing to me, and that my showing up here was like having a ghost knock on the door. But she's gone to work now."

"Did she remember her keys? And her umbrella? The forecast said it's going to rain."

"She remembered both," he told her, "It's awfully dark in here."

"The light hurts her eyes," Jenny said, shrugging, "And at the moment, it hurts mine, too." She indicated the shiner, though she didn't need to, it was glaringly obvious even in the gloom. "Really, though, did you want something? I mean… I don't mind you dropping by, but it's not my house."

"Does Clara mind?"

"I doubt it, she lets the Spooks here all the time."

"I destroyed the Singularity," he confessed.

"Oh. I thought you already did that? I told you to do it days ago."

"I know, but… it's a very tempting device," he said defensively, "I hate to be rude, but is there anything here to eat?"

"I was just about to make breakfast, is there anything you want? We went shopping yesterday, so the kitchen is well-stocked."

"Anything you like. Weren't you telling me about fried egg sandwiches earlier in the week? I wouldn't say no to one of those."

"Oh, sure, but I don't think I'm a match for the woman in the diner who made the ones I meant," she said, smiling and going through into the kitchen. He followed her and she opened the curtains, which was when he realised her flying saucer was hovering silently in the back garden. He hadn't seen it there earlier, so assumed there must be some kind of cloaking or perception filters at work. Jenny expertly went about finding everything she needed in the kitchen, and he had the sneaking suspicion that Jenny knew her way around Ravenwood's kitchen better than Ravenwood did.

"Did you know there's a giant alien spaceship buried underneath the pyramids?"

"There's _what_?" she turned around.

"A giant alien spaceship, underneath the pyramids. That was what I needed the Singularity for, to change their intertemporal qualities so that the interiors are mazes and nobody can find their way to the cavern underneath."

"So aliens built the pyramids?"

"No, the Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids on top of the ship. It crash-landed, I think. It's a sort of 'x marks the spot' thing, but more of a warning than an advertisement for buried treasure. Though it very much _is_ buried treasure. Incidentally, pirates never actually marked their treasure with Xs if they buried it, and I daresay very few of them did – they probably spent it on ale and flintlocks and women."

"Uh-huh…" she poured a generous amount of sunflower oil into a frying pan and left it on the rung to heat up, going to slot bread into the toaster elsewhere.

"But I threw the Singularity into a black hole. River bore witness to it."

"Sounds terribly romantic. Why were you in Egypt?"

"Amy wanted to go and see the Sphinx, that's all."

"Isn't throwing it into a black hole a bad idea? Couldn't it do something really bad?"

"Depends on the black hole, I went to Krop-Tor. I met the devil there, did I tell you about that?"

"Isn't he called Vh'ozuth?" Jenny asked, conjuring a bizarre word he did not recognise.

"Isn't… what?"

"The devil you met, I thought he's called Vh'ozuth? Oc'thubha told me about it."

"Oc-whatsit?"

"Oc'thubha, you know – he's the extradimensional deity who lives in the mines and controls the people in the village through, like, baked goods," Jenny explained, "There's a secret tunnel in the pub you go through. You should meet him! He met the Tenth Doctor, I heard, but not you. Sally and Esther were there."

"What do you mean, 'extradimensional deity'?"

"He likes roller disco."

"He what?"

"And he says 'dude' and 'bro' all the time. I think he's fab. You can't look at him, though, or your eyes bleed and disintegrate and you lose your mind." Of all this, only the name 'Oc'thubha' was something he found even slightly familiar, but it was all very alarming. "He gave me these recipe for gooey chocolate cookies. I already had a recipe for gooey chocolate cookies, but it's really all in what flour you use. I'll bake some, soon, since I'm…" she stopped talking midway through her sentence, then changed topic completely, "You're just here to tell me about Egypt, then?"

"I wanted to see you. I was thinking about Time Lords today, what with using the Singularity, and their relics. Do you want me to leave?"

"No, no," she said quickly, but she didn't say anything else. She was thinking about something, but Jenny was usually thinking about something. He rarely saw his daughter and didn't get the sense that she was a million miles away. The eggs were beginning to spit, and she was buttering about eight slices of toast as they cooked. "Do you want them over-easy or sunny-side-up?"

"The first one. I don't want to bite into this and then spill egg all over myself. Is something the matter? Did you want to go to Egypt as well? You would have been a big help, everyone was completely unarmed, even River."

"No, I'm not bothered about that. You remember I lived on Korix for years, that's a big desert."

"Did you live on Korix?"

"I… oh. It was Ten I was there with, sorry… that was when he said he'd have dinner with me and then he totally welched."

He laughed, then repeated, " _Welched_."

"What?"

"Nothing. It's amusing how the mob slang comes through when you speak sometimes."

"Barely, it was one word."

"Now that I've destroyed the Singularity, where do you stand on the heroin?"

"Pfft! Heroin! Don't be ridiculous," Jenny said very unconvincingly, turning off the gas and separating the eggs so that she could slide them onto the bread. Two sandwiches each. She put on a dash of salt and pepper and then the Doctor sat down at the kitchen table. Outside, it was just beginning to rain; lucky that Ravenwood had taken her umbrella to work with her.

"Did you get rid of it?"

"Of what?"

"Of all the opiates you stole."

"It's complicated. Look, the truth is, I asked Oswin to write me up an easy formula for a contained explosive, because I told her I could read her handwriting, but… I couldn't read it, alright? I usually can, but I didn't know what any of it said, and I'm way too embarrassed to go and ask her to decipher it. So, yes, there's still a very large quantity of heroin on the TARDIS, okay? I'm working on it." While she explained, he took a bite out of the sandwich, and decided it was one of the best fried egg sandwiches he had ever tasted, diner be damned.

"You should have mentioned! We could have taken it to Krop-Tor and thrown it out with the Singularity."

"It might be useful."

"Useful how?" He continued to eat.

"You know, just… it might. Trust me. And I'm not telling you where I've stashed it, so don't even-"

"I bet it's wedged into the wreckage of Adam Mitchell's yacht."

"It's… no!" she exclaimed. He grinned.

"It is, isn't it?"

"Not for long, I'll tell someone to move it. I'll tell Jack, he'll move it."

"He might take it and try to sell it to fund his wedding."

"Well, I… just don't touch it. It's _my_ heroin. And I have other things to talk to you about, actually, so, there. Shut up."

"Oh?" he asked with his mouth full of bread and eggs.

"Yeah. Important things." She didn't explain. He sensed she was waiting for him to put the sandwich down, which he did, though it painted him. He didn't want it to go cold, and you couldn't really microwave eggs to reheat them. She looked at him very seriously after pushing her damp hair out of her face, and leant towards him on the table. Whatever she had to tell him she was not having an easy time finding the words, and he would love to help her but he didn't know what she was thinking at all. Ravenwood had been right, Jenny _was_ enigmatic. "The thing is, dad, that… it's at this point, right, where we've been together for a while, me and Clara, and I have to start thinking in a more sort of, roundabout way about what I want our relationship to be like. And this is all on me, by the way, this is my decision, Clara just told me I should do whatever I think is best, she's not trying to influence me, or anything-"

"I wouldn't think that Clara _would_ try to influence you, to be quite honest."

"I'm thinking about moving out. Of the TARDIS." He had not been prepared for the shock.

"But – no, you can't do that, not after we've finally – and you're – that's not fair," he argued, fully aware that he sounded like a child. Jenny looked hurt, more than her eye and her hand and her other bruises – the bullet wound scarring her arm.

"You can still visit, I'm not cutting you off – you can visit all the time, I'm not moving in with Clara, I'm going to live in the spaceship-"

"It's tiny!"

"It's not tiny, it's the same size as a decent flat. I've lived in worse places. I'm just so tired of getting injured and worrying about how Clara's going to react when I show up with wounds like this," Jenny argued with him, and he knew full-well what she meant. He had been scared of _his_ Clara finding out about the snake bite, so he understood where his daughter was coming from. "It's not about you, or me being bitter, it's just about me trying to look after myself. And I totally got this job, in a bakery, right? There's about a dozen bakeries here. I love cooking! I'm great at it. I'll do those cookies I was just talking about. If I have to pick between Clara and living on the TARDIS then I pick her, I've gone two centuries without the TARDIS and honestly, I'm not sure it's as glamorous as everyone makes it out to be. I'd rather stay in the village. I'm good friends with Sally and Esther, you know. We've got a group chat."

"Yes. So you've said."

"This is the way I _normally_ like to live, I _like_ to briefly settle down in places and get a job, and I _like_ the idea of being here for Clara and of her having an easier time getting in touch with me. What if she lost her phone but she needed me? She would know where to find me if I was here. It's not like you see me half the time even when I _am_ on the TARDIS, and I've barely been there recently. Plus… you know, it's not exactly easy, being around Jack and Ianto. And I've lived alone my whole life, it's not actually that comfortable to try and kindle a family connection based on cohabitation. It's been months, and this is what I'm really sure is the next stage in my life, yeah? And then I could come back if I ever feel like it. If she dumps me."

"I don't think she's going to dump you."

"She might do!" Jenny protested. It sounded like she _wanted_ Ravenwood to dump her. She sighed. "It's really important to me that you understand what I'm doing and why and that you're not angry about it. I've thought a lot, and I don't want to keep getting roped into these schemes and getting myself hurt. I always say that, but it keeps happening anyway, so… this is what I'm doing. I might take up some hobbies. I've been thinking about learning blacksmithing and making a sword, or… painting. Along with the baking, which also includes some cake decorating! I love icing. The colours. I could make wedding cakes – I could even make Rose a wedding cake. You know what, I'm going to call her later and ask her if she has a cake sorted out yet. When's the wedding?"

"In a week. A week today, I think."

"I'll see if she needs a cake…" Now she was off thinking about cakes and whatnot. She did seem very excited about this whole affair. He couldn't work out if he was surprised or not; was he in shock? Or maybe it was just not as shocking as he thought. Maybe he knew now, when he really thought about it, that this had been a long-time coming. She had been ditching the TARDIS to spend time in Hollowmire for weeks, and she was right, even when she was on the TARDIS he still rarely saw her.

"I do understand. It's just big news, that's all. Have you asked her to marry you? Is that what this is about?"

"No, I have not asked her to marry me. We're not getting married. There's too many people getting married right now and talking about getting married – you can't talk to someone on that spaceship for five minutes without them mentioning a wedding, have you noticed?" she said. "I'm not asking for your permission, this is what I'm choosing whether you-"

"And I support you!" he interjected, "Of course I do. I agree with Ravenwood, do whatever makes you happy. But expect visits, and trips. I'll be dropping by, if only to sample all of these cakes. And to meet this Octopus-"

"Oc'thubha."

"Yes, yes, the creature-thing."

"Well, Hollowmire's a weird place. Sally and Esther found a ghost train."

"They what?"

"A ghost train, on the viaduct. And a mind-control top hat. They keep it on a skeleton in the garden."

"I… you have very unusual friends, my dear."

Jenny beamed widely, "Thanks! And I'm sure I'll still be visiting the TARDIS. I'll have to go see Oswin because she'd kill me if I didn't, and I have to keep up with Nios's cooking lessons. It'll probably barely be different, and it's like, a step towards Clara and I living together one day, which we've talked about."

"Really? You're thinking about that?"

"Sort of."

"Hmm," he mused, "I wonder what it would be like if you did live together. Maybe you wouldn't be able to put up with her bad habits."

"She's not that bad," Jenny laughed, "I'm the one with the bad habits, keeping the guns under the bed and skinning dead animals in the garden. Clara would be a saint if she could put up with me, and that's saying something since she's a vampire. Probably couldn't be within a mile radius of a saint. But, you know, I wonder that too, what things will be like for us in the future…"

 **AN: And the next storyline will be in the future, so that's what that segue is all about. Also, Merry Christmas! Or Merry Christmas Eve, depending on where you are in the world (still Christmas Eve here.) Again, if you didn't get a chance yet, be sure to go read the Christmas chapter of** ** _Spook Watch_** **because the main continuity here isn't going to have anything Christmassy in it.**

 **ALSO, I think I'm gonna do joint hen and stag party storylines, so if any of you have any suggestions for that throw them my way - but remember that Jack will be at the hen party, him being the maid of honour, and Donna will be at the stag party, her being the best man.**


	149. Studies in Detective Fiction

**DAY 2,236**

 _Studies in Detective Fiction_

 _Jenny_

"Oi, oi, look who's finally dragged her lazy arse out of bed."

"Alright, leave it out, it's my day off, mate," Jenny countered one of the two laughing constables standing at either side of the front doors of an old and now-derelict town house in a dodgy London slum. They were wearing plastic ponchos and coverings over their fluorescent jackets to protect from the rain, while Jenny carried an umbrella. It was battering against the whole city, and there had been warnings on the news about flooding because the drains were beginning to overflow. Three solid days of rainstorms.

"I don't think I'd leave bed if I had Young's girlfriend, Phil," the second constable, Jenkins, said.

"And I'm giving up an entire weekend of intimacy with her to be here, so you should be grateful," Jenny told the pair of them. Behind her were police cars with no sirens but flashing lights, the entire crime scene cordoned off. In her hand not holding her umbrella she was precariously balancing seven paper cups of tea, cardboard trays of four stacked one on top of the other. She had already given two of them away to another pair of constables standing at the edge of the crime scene down the road trying to keep the press at bay.

"Don't know how you can stand it," Phil laughed.

"Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I come bearing gifts. Take one each, no more, I need to satiate Turner. Who's on forensics?"

"McHale," Jenkins answered, "Elliott's already in there giving him the third degree."

"Giving McHale the third degree?" Jenny was surprised.

" _Everyone_ ," Phil said, "If anyone needs one of those teas, it's him. Go on, Jenny. Turner'll kill you if you're any later."

"I only got called in twenty minutes ago!" Jenny protested. They laughed and she brushed past them, into a house full of white-suited forensics experts combing the place. One of them pointed her upstairs, and she left her umbrella opened and upturned by the front door because it was impossible to put it away one-handed. This was her Saturday morning, her Saturday off, which she had taken off to spend with Clara. She wasn't even on call – but so was the modern world.

She trudged up the stairs of the slum, full of so much junk and damp it was clearly being used as a squat, and found Detective Inspector James Elliott standing over a corpse, accompanied by Chief Inspector Sonja Turner and Head of Forensics Joshua McHale. It was a very bleak room, with peeling wallpaper showing the bare, mildew-covered wood, the ceiling falling apart and a few scattered syringes and hot knives in the dirty corners. It was a ghastly place, and the building was situated right on the edge of an industrial estate with a very bad reputation for sex trafficking. The heavy rain thundered down onto the rooftop, and was leaking steadily through a gap above one of the old windows, spreading mould to all the surfaces and making a murky puddle on the floor underneath the glass pane.

"Oh, she finally shows her ugly face," quipped Turner, then she saw the teas Jenny had brought, "I'll have one of those." Jenny handed them out and then dumped the cardboard trays on the windowsill nearby, where they were going to get soaked by the rain just like everything else in there. It was humid and it stank of the substances growing inside the walls.

"I could have refused to come," said Jenny, "It's my annual leave. I have a right to it."

"And this bloke had a right to live until somebody snuffed him out."

"Nobody 'snuffed him out' if it's another OD," Jenny argued, and looking at the state of the body it certainly was. Turner gave her a dark look, a look which reiterated all of the case details of the recent spate of mystery overdoses, those being that nobody knew how the drug was being consumed, what it was made of, or where it came from. They didn't know anything except that the introduction of a toxic chemical element had caused, in the last month, a slew of grisly deaths in the areas of the city inhabited primarily by junkies and other vagrants.

"I keep saying we're not in vice," Elliott grumbled, "This isn't our area."

"Your area is whatever I say it is," Turner snapped, "You and your bullshit department."

"Gets you more funding," Jenny grinned. Turner was joking. She knew they were useful. And the stuff about the extra funding was true. Elliott was grimacing and looking at his feet. "What's going on, then? Why have we been brought onto this? I'm not familiar with the case details."

"They're very unusual details to say the least," began McHale through his mask. He was barely recognisable, identical to all the other CSIs skulking around. Probably looking for drugs. "Have a look at this," he said, crouching down next to the body. He lifted up the arm and something very grotesque happened: everything underneath the skin slid down. It was like moving around a plastic bag full of water, squishy and slushy. The arm would have lost all form if not for the fact the skeleton was intact, but now the skin sagged down the fingers and sank in a bloated lump at the elbow. She got the impression that if the skin were broken, all manner of organ-coloured fluid would leak out.

"You see?" said Turner, "It's your area."

"It does look like that," Jenny admitted, "It's a drug doing this?"

"Best we can tell," Josh stood back up. Jenny nudged Elliott. He was in a foul mood - she could see now what Phil and Jenkins meant about him going off at McHale.

"Any suggestions?" she prompted him, "You got here before I did."

"I'd like to know where I can find this miracle drug," he muttered. Turner scoffed.

"Don't be so pathetic." Jenny realised what had happened.

"Has she dumped you again?" she asked him. He didn't answer, which meant that yes, he'd been dumped. Again. By Sally Sparrow. She shook her head. "Right, whatever. How many deaths have there been, exactly?"

"This is the seventh, in three weeks," said Turner.

"Have any of them been ID'd?"

"Four, not including this one. It's hard to get a match because of the disfigurements," McHale said, "Keegan and Holloway were working it before, you need to get the case files from them, but they've come up short."

"Obviously," said Jenny, "Otherwise we'd still be responding to UFO sightings and liaising with the HCC whenever someone thinks they've found a Manifest." It was 2025, the Manifest Crisis was still in full-swing and would be for another four years. Jenny hated having to work with the Hazard Control Corps, and usually palmed off those tasks on Elliott when he was feeling himself.

"The four we've identified are all known-junkies. They have minor records and a long history of substance abuse and have taken more or less every drug under the sun," McHale said, "But the autopsies have turned up nothing, and Chambers was nearly sick. Can you imagine? Pathologist for thirty years and _this_ is what breaks him. Kinsey took over after the first one."

"Where are the bodies now?" Jenny said, "Have any of them been buried?"

"Haven't been released to the families, all in storage in the mortuary," Turner said, "Under the guise of a potential biohazard-"

"When really it's because you have no idea how any of them died?" Jenny suggested.

"That's where you come in. We don't want this becoming an epidemic, it could be the new Meow Meow, but with even worse consequences," Turner said, "You're taking point on this, Young. Taking over from Holloway as the new officer in charge"

"Alright, brilliant – so. I want this body bagged and tagged and taken to the morgue, then one of the PCs to order Kinsey to get all the other bodies out of storage and have them ready for Cohen. Warn him I'm calling her in. We need her on this, if he's stumped. Then I want all the case files from Keegan and Holloway on my desk by the time James and I get back from early lunch."

"I don't want any lunch," Elliott muttered.

"No lunch then," said Turner.

"If you want Jimmy at his best then we're going to lunch to talk about his feelings, alright?" Jenny said, "Remembering that you've dragged me away from what was promised to be a very romantic weekend with my girlfriend for these overdoses – which are barely even priority."

"Ma'am?" Jenkins interrupted. He had come in from outside and appeared in the doorway of the upstairs room, addressing Turner. "Emergency. Bomb scare at Woodgrove School. Looks like it might be genuine."

"Today of all days…" Turner grumbled, "Right, I want Keegan and Holloway on it now their other primo assignment has been handed over. They're on point. You're driving me down there, Phil's going back to the station and putting all the OD files on Young's desk and then he can do a tea and coffee run to Woodgrove. Bomb scares always overrun." Then she turned to McHale as she headed out, "You heard what Young said. Bag and tag, talk to Kinsey when you deliver the body. Tell him to make himself scarce for Dr Death."

"You don't want us to help with the bomb scare?"

"Bomb scares aren't unexplained phenomenon. Stay in your lane, detective," Turner called to Jenny as she left, following Jenkins out of the squat. McHale left after her to go fetch a body bag, leaving Jenny alone with James Elliott. Two years ago, he had quit Undercoll to re-join the force, the Metropolitan Police wanting a department dedicated to the unexplained because the volume of bizarre cases had steadily been increasing for decades. Sally Sparrow often joked about it being Scotland Yard's answer to _The X-Files_.

"I'm not hungry," he mumbled.

"Nope. You're my partner in crime, I need you at your best, and we need to kill time until Cohen can get to the morgue," Jenny said. Dr Cohen still worked for Undercoll, but often consulted for them on some of their weirder cases. Jenny had never appreciated her medical genius until she had started working for the police, which was Clara's suggestion, as an alternative to going back to the military. She enjoyed the police much more than the army, that was for sure – she was actually doing good. "We're going to the café round the corner from the station, end of story. I'm paying, you're driving. Come on."

* * *

James said he didn't want any food, but once Jenny ordered herself a lunch of two eggs, ham and chips, he couldn't resist the smell and got up and ordered himself the exact same thing, only with one portion of chips instead of two like her. She did _love_ chips. Before that point, he had been sitting quietly in the corner of the greasy spoon café staring into a cup of black coffee and sometimes letting his eyes wander to the fry cook, who was in his early twenties and very easy on the eyes, Jenny had to admit, if a bit short. The place had an odour of fried meat coupled with disinfectant and coffee, which was a queer but now familiar smell; that café was one of their regular haunts. She had never thought, six years ago when she had met all the new key players in her life, that James Elliott would become someone she confided everything in. But so was the way with police work, and she liked to think it was reciprocal.

"What happened, then? What did she do this time?" Jenny asked. She never knew whether to take Sally's side or James's side when it came to their spats, but often she got the story from James and Clara got the story from Sally, so discussing their affairs sometimes made things strained between _them_. She didn't like James and Sally's messy relationship affecting her own.

"I don't know. I asked to clean up her stuff a bit and she went loopy. I slept in my car last night." She got the feeling that this was not remotely the full story.

"You didn't have to do that, you could have called me – we live in a hotel, there's a lot of rooms."

"Not if she shows up there to talk to Clara."

"Erm, if she's the one who still has a place to sleep then Clara can go there if she's that desperate to gossip," Jenny said. In the last six years, her opinion of Sally Sparrow's character had deteriorated. It was unfortunate, but often the way. It was perhaps something to do with the fact that Clara _still_ drooled over her quite obviously. In fact, she barely even tried to hide it. It wasn't that Jenny _disliked_ her, she just disliked the way she treated James Elliott, who had never wronged her but still couldn't do anything right. It was a stormy relationship and they had been broken up for a solid eighteen months before this most recent attempt to get back together, which had funnily enough been Sally's idea. Esther was quite involved in helping the Manifests and Sarah-Jane's gang, and hadn't been too involved in Sally's affairs for a while. This was probably why she was going off-the-rails a little, she lacked Esther's positive influence and didn't have enough respect for Elliott for him to have the same affect. Jenny would actually encourage him to go have some fling with the fry chef behind the counter, if they weren't on a tight schedule and technically en route to Kinsey's morgue.

"I don't want to upset her by her seeing me."

"You're too good for her! I swear you are. Why do you put up with this? All she does is mess you about. You're like me and Jack."

"That was a long time ago."

"Yeah, because we knew when to call it quits."

"And neither of us have cheated," he pointed out, which cut quite deep, but was true. She and Jack had developed a nasty habit of cheating on each other. But that was all old news, _very_ old news. Jenny dipped a large wedge of ham into her egg and stabbed a chip on the end of her fork as well, getting all the flavours of her lunch mixed up gloriously together. She stabbed another load of chips, and caught James frowning at her, puzzling.

"What?"

"What's the matter with you?"

"Got called away from my romantic weekend," she said.

"No, there's something else. You're never normally like this when you get called in, especially not for something so _weird_ ," he said. He was more intuitive than anyone ever gave him credit for. Intuitive enough to seduce Sally Sparrow multiple times. "And you're usually a _bit_ more diplomatic when I tell you about my fights with Sally. You tell me to 'see it from her point of view.'"

"It's nothing. It's just Clara."

"What about her? It's not this, is it? You're not arguing because of me and Sally again, are you?"

"I didn't even know about it until I saw you today. No. She's just been acting funny."

"Hasn't she got a lot on? You've just decided to open that place for actual business, right?"

"I suppose. It's not really my thing, it's Clara and Nios, it's like their project. But she's just… been off. Vacant. And jumpy. And she asked me to take this weekend off but then she was being really odd, especially this morning – clingy. It's like she's trying to make up for something."

"Maybe she is. Sally always gets really affectionate in the few days before we have a fight. She got me a pack of artisanal beers she hates last weekend. It's so she can have ammo, you know? She does something thoughtful then uses me not knowing what she's thinking to scream at me. And say I never do anything because I'm 'unromantic.'"

"She wanted us to eat breakfast together this morning…"

"Don't even try to work out what they're thinking. It's such a waste of time. This is what's better about men, they're simpler. You know where you stand." He was looking at the fry cook again, who was flipping a burger.

"Yeah…" Jenny said thoughtfully, only half listening to what he was saying. She was thinking about Clara and her unusual behaviour, eating her chips. The cook came over to deliver Elliott his food, and Elliott flashed his best smile. "But it's been six years."

"People get bored," he said, but he was talking to the cook, "Really bored, sometimes." Was Clara getting bored?

Jenny's phone buzzed. When she took it out she saw it was a text message from Dr Cohen saying she was in the morgue and where were they.

"We've got to go," she said. She'd nearly finished.

"What? I only just got my food," Elliott complained.

"Take it with you," said the chef.

"What about the plate?" Elliott asked him. He shrugged.

"You'll have to bring it back later, I suppose." Then he smirked and left to go check on his burgers, Elliott watching him.

"You're unbelievable, she only dumped you yesterday," Jenny said disapprovingly, getting up and picking up her coat and her umbrella, "Now pick your jaw up off the floor and come on. We've got work to do."


	150. Studies in Detective Fiction II

_Studies in Detective Fiction II_

 _Jenny_

"Ah need a word with yous," a thick Glaswegian accent penetrated Jenny's idle thoughts about the goings-on in the secret life of her beloved girlfriend, a secret life she was becoming more and more convinced of the existence. They were in the reception of the mortuary while James finished his food he had brought with him, because Jenny wouldn't let him take it into the actual morgue. Who ate in a morgue? She hated the idea. But Dr Cohen had grown impatient and come to look for them, and now Jenny was on the receiving end of her anguish, "What's with all this puddle shite, eh?"

"Excuse me?" Jenny asked.

"A bag of skin full of goo! Seven bags of skin full of goo! What dae ye expect us to do with tha?"

"You know, work your magic?" Jenny suggested uselessly, trying to smile. Her smile didn't matter though, because Cohen wasn't looking at her face at all. The celebrated Dr Death was scaring the life out of the receptionist, who was on lunch just like Elliott was, eating from a tupperware container full of pre-made pasta salad. But she was sinking into her seat and fixing her eyes on her paperwork as Cohen aggressively questioned the detectives. "It's a drugs thing, look, I've got the case files here," Jenny said, indicating the irritatingly slim brown folder in her hands.

"They dinnae look like they hold a loat of information," Cohen pointed out.

"It was Keegan and Holloway before we got reassigned," Jenny said, "You know what Holloway is like for paperwork – bare minimum. We've got nothing to go on, I was hoping you'd come through for us. You always do. Come on, cutie, we're going to go look at the dead people," she addressed James now, who had been trying to wolf down the remainder of his lunch ever since Cohen had appeared in her usual foul mood. He rammed half of an entire thick slice of ham into his mouth.

"Can I leave this plate here?" he spoke to the receptionist with his mouth full, trying to chew as quickly as possible. He still managed to flash the girl behind the desk, who was not so much a girl but more a forty-year-old woman with photographs of two teenage children next to her computer, his winning smile. "I promise I'll come and get it." It looked like that receptionist would let DI Elliot do whatever he wanted.

"Ye'll have more luck tryin ye charms oan the dead bodies downstairs than up here, pretty boy," Cohen snapped at him coldly. Elliott sometimes reminded her of Clara when he tried to schmooze everyone he met, and then it got worse when he simultaneously reminded her of Jack, and she discovered the striking similarities between Clara and Captain Jack which she had not pieced together before; maybe she had a thing for womanizers. It was only a matter of time before strangers started telling him they liked his accent, and then he really _would_ forget about Sally. God, the two of them were bad for each other. Not that they always had been, they had once worked very well, but relationships deteriorated… and again, she was thinking about Clara, trudging in Cohen's wake.

The seven bodies were arranged on slabs, sometimes topping-and-tailing because there were only four slabs to work with. The most recent corpse alone got its own silver, stainless steel surface and that was all. It was icy cold, as always, and the desk in the corner was a mess with paperwork, food wrappers and coffee cups, all of which would belong to Dr Kinsey because Dr Cohen could not function if there was clutter around her of her own making. She took the idiom 'tidy home, tidy mind' very literally – but she took most things literally. Her description of the bodies, for example, had been very literal – 'seven bags of skin full of goo.' They looked very mushy, she had to admit. Like leather bean bags.

"What we really need is identifications and any information on the compound they've ingested," said Elliott.

"Aye, that's whit ah wis lookin for, but it isnae that easy. Even at the best've times, identifying the corpses of homeless youths? Which ah'm guessing at purely based oan the appearance of their skin, by the way – it's no mean feat, ken?" Cohen said, going over to the most recent body they had found that very morning and pulling on a fresh pair of latex gloves. Her lab coat was already covered in blood, but it looked dry. "See, if ye looky here ah'll show yous what's making it so difficult. Any other John Doe and what ye want tae do is run dental records, ken?"

"Standard procedure," James nodded.

"Except – look," she said, pulling open the sagging mouth of the nearest one. In it, pinkish goop was pooling at the back of the throat, dribbling over the lips and face. Then Dr Cohen reached her thankfully-gloved hand inside this gap and pulled out three teeth, "They're jist floating in there in all that puddle shite. Ye cannae get dental records froam jist teeth. The gums have disintegrated like everything else, it's impossible tae reconstruct his mouth accurately enough tae git even a partial dental match."

"What, exactly, has this drug done?"

"Gooified them."

"Is 'gooifed' a word?" Jenny frowned.

"It's a word if ah say it's a word, likesay. And that's what happened, in us professional, medical opinion. Everythin is goop, everythin except the skeleton. And the teeth. How much is the identity of these people really gunnae tell yous?"

"Apart from us being able to notify their families that they've died, it'll help us narrow down where they spent their time. Maybe scrub some CCTV if we get good photos of them from any official materials," Jenny said, because it was too hard to get a facial match on them. They looked like partially melted, latex masks. The kind people wore on Halloween. Only it was their actual faces, so it was significantly more grisly. "Find out where they got this drug, or who they got it from, or just find an acquaintance who can point us in the right direction without us having to canvas every slum in the city." And 2020s London was a big city indeed. They might as well give up if mass canvasing was their only lead.

"Let me see these," Elliott took the case files from Jenny and opened them to flick through, finding the profiles of the few victims who had actually been ID'd. "Cohen, can you do x-rays? Did Kinsey do x-rays? There's nothing in here about x-rays."

"Kinsey is a lazy wee gobshite who'll do anything tae avoid work," Dr Cohen said grimly, "Why dae ye want x-rays?"

"If skeletons don't melt, then foreign bodies won't melt either," he said, "Ah-ha, here – the ones they've identified was only because they had tattoos or distinctive scars. If they've got any foreign bodies – like a hip replacement or screws from an injury, or a bone malformation, or anything that might show up in medical records, we'll be able to work out who they are." And _there_ was the good detective James Elliott was ninety-five percent of the time, coming back to the surface because he had eaten and flirted with two whole people. He closed the file and handed it back to Jenny, "I'm going to go get coffee and request access to all the missing persons reports from the last two months."

"Wait, what?" Jenny was surprised at his going.

"Coffee, I'll get you one. Both of you." He was already on his way out. He was just leaving her there, in a morgue, with Cohen, who was holding an intimidating scalpel.

"Git some gloves oan and make yersel useful," Cohen ordered her, "Start fishing oot those teeth. Some of them could have fillings, and if we can count them and work oot if there's any missing it could help us find dental records. Ah'm doing x-rays." Jenny sighed, but resigned herself to do what Cohen told her to do. After all, Hayley Cohen was brilliant and had never yet led them wrong. Or anyone wrong, for that matter. And she had done worse things than pull teeth out of liquefied organ gunk… maybe.

It was, ultimately, very unpleasant. Largely because the stuff had the consistency of lumpy custard and was incredibly cold from being locked away behind the doors of a mortuary. Sometimes she had to reach her arm down quite far, and felt like she was trying to do a manual evacuation of a cow.

"Hey, Cohen, can I talk to you about something?" Jenny asked, regretting saying anything almost immediately. Was she really going to ask Dr Cohen about Clara's affairs? Just because Nios, in whom Jenny felt Clara confided in to a greater extent than herself, could have let something slip to her? If Clara told Nios everything, and Nios told _Cohen_ everything, then was it bad of Jenny to talk to Cohen – acutely aware of the inability to lie granted to her by her high-functioning spectrum disorder – and try to glean information from her? Was it immoral? A niggling voice in the back of her mind said that it was, most certainly, immoral, but she was blind. Blind with a paranoia imbued within her by James Elliott and his bitter ravings about Sally Sparrow and their doomed relationship, and the worry that their slow-but-sure demise was mirroring an equally slow one of her own relationship.

"…Is it related tae the case?" Cohen asked eventually, after a _long_ pause.

"No."

"Well, this is work. Isnae personal time, ken? Ah cannae talk about-"

"Please?" Jenny interrupted, though Cohen _hated_ to be interrupted, and regardless of Jenny she finished her sentence anyway before getting back to thinking. When she didn't say anything more, Jenny went ahead and asked. "I'm worried about Clara, I think there's something going on with her." Nothing. "Has she said anything to you? Has Nios? She's been acting funny."

"Ah think everybody is acting 'funny' in everything they do."

"But, really, it's like she's hiding something. Do you know anything?"

"Ah ken a loat of things."

"About Clara."

"Ah know her birthday, how tall she is, her surname, her star sign?"

"I know all of that, too," Jenny was growing impatient. "Anything about if she's hiding something from me." Silence. " _Cohen_."

"Looky here, there's seven dead people here and you're supposed tae be oan the case, but ye cannae pay attention because yer too focused on yer fanny. Ah'm no interested in whitever's goin oan between yous, so can ye try tae keep it oot of my – and your – workplace, likesay? Ah'm busy taking x-rays trying tae help _you_ , after all, technically ah can jist leave." Jenny decided to drop it, lest she upset Cohen so much that she actually did storm out of Kinsey's morgue and abandon the case. They needed her expertise on the toxin still.

"Fine, whatever…" Jenny mumbled, "Back to the case. Do you have any ideas what kind of substance could have done this?" Cohen did not even hesitate in her answer this time.

"Ah've git a list of mibbe a dozen or so toxins which _could_ potentially affect the human physiology in such a drastic way, but ah'll need tae do a proaper chemical analysis. The issue is _everything_ in the body has been broken down, it'll even be hard tae git a viable blood sample. It's jist mush. The AI ye've got living in yer phone would be better help than me, ah cannae narrow it down without scientific investigation and ah dinnae have the equipment. Ah could mibbe work it if ah took the bodies back tae headquarters, but it would require a loat of admin Darling willnae want tae do in order tae officially take over the case."

"I'd rather not resort to Helix," Jenny said, "He's not admissible in court."

"If ye find out what it is ah may be able tae work backwards and find yous more specific trace evidence in these boadies. Mibbe see if anything can be extracted from the bone marrow, likesay."

"Do you at least know _how_ they're taking whatever they're taking?"

"Ah have a theory, actually. Ah think it's being inhaled."

"Smoked?"

"Nah, sortae like… nitrous oxide."

"But if they're breathing it in then there might still be trace evidence on the teeth," Jenny realised.

"Aye, why dae ye think I've git ye picking all the teeth out? Scrub 'em down, ken? Ah already told ye a dental recreation will be impossible. Ah'm no collecting teeth for the good've mah health, Major." She liked when people still called her Major. It was something Cohen did because she liked to be addressed by her own professional title all the time, so she gave the same courtesy to Jenny, and she had known Jenny as a Major longer than she had known her as a Detective. "But, eh, ah'm still no sure of havin' the correct equipment."

"What's this about equipment? Tell Darling she isn't reclaiming another case from us, I don't care how angry she still is with me for quitting," James Elliott announced his return in his usual, buoyant way, carrying coffee cups. Jenny could smell her mocha from the dead body she was standing beside, her hand in its mouth down to her wrist, two teeth in her grip. It was like Teletubby custard. "Eurgh, what are you doing, Jenny?"

"Fishing for teeth," she said, drawing out her hand and then showing him the two teeth sitting there in organ-coloured slime in the palm of her hand. "The good doctor thinks that the toxin is being inhaled, like laughing gas, and that there might still be trace elements on these teeth. She wants me to use Helix to work out what it is."

"Uh-huh. I've been thinking about this drug," he began, "Oh – and – I went and took the plate back to the caff, and I got that cook's phone number."

"Brilliant, I'm so happy for you. You've been single for less than twenty-four hours. You really need to stay away from that woman," Jenny shook her head. Elliott seemed not to hear any of her sarcasm and was just beaming to himself. Jenny cleared her throat. "The drug? What were you thinking?"

"Oh. Turner thinks this is a new street drug, yeah? But a drug with mortality rates this high in just two months and with such strange symptoms would have been discovered weeks ago. There would be junkies in hospitals and A&Es. _Unless_ it has a one-hundred percent mortality rate. Everyone who takes it dies."

"So?"

" _So_ , what drug dealer wants to kill their clientele? None, that's who. If they all die, they can't carry on being dedicated customers, can they? They can't even get addicted if they die after one hit. Like when people have bad reactions to solvents and aerosols, yeah? Some people die straight away after snorting deodorant and sniffing glue." They were all agreed, at least, that the substance was _somehow_ being inhaled.

"So do you think they're suicides? Maybe this thing is marketed like a bullet to the brain, we can't know for sure."

"Suicides or murders, maybe. But I think what we have to do is start picking up drug dealers. Chances are, if this lot did this One Hit Wonder drug, they've probably done a ton of others. And now they're dead. So the dealers aren't going to be happy about who's killing off their clients – besides, who sells suicide in a bottle, anyway? We'll just talk to Jenkins and ask who some of the regulars are they pick up for possession with intent and we'll go work them over. Because before, if this was a new drug they're all getting rich off, they would have stuck together and not talked to us in a million years-"

"But with someone picking off their customers and limiting their income with a mystery substance…"

"They might talk to the cops. Tell us what they know."

"Brilliant – you call Jenkins and ask about that, get a list of known-dealers and their locations. I'll print off the missing persons list you got access to for Cohen, and she can carry on working on these bodies to try and identify the substance. If it's in the air we might be able to track it – the HCC have equipment like that we _might_ be able to wrangle access to." Of course, she could use Helix for that, too – but again, it was inadmissible in court. They couldn't try and get a conviction based on some random and uncorroborated bits of information DI Young had conjured from thin-air with her magic robot friend. "I'll just go wash my hands."

"Ah've nearly finished these x-rays now, dae ye no wannae wait for the results?"

"No, just send pictures," Jenny said, peeling off her gloves and their lumpy cud, "Then get on searching those teeth."

"The equipment-"

"Yes, okay, the equipment, here," Jenny dug around in her pockets and found her phone, "My passcode is 0711, alright? Ask Helix to run the tests _before_ you do the x-rays while I go wash my hands and print, okay?"

"Alright."

"Fantastic!" Jenny grinned, kissing Cohen's cheek (much to her discomfort) and then dashing off in James Elliott's wake to follow up on his hunch.

 **AN: I was so tempted to write in Elliott's Welsh accent like Cohen's Scottish one but it's WAY harder to write a Welsh accent phonetically than a Scottish one.**


	151. Studies in Detective Fiction III

_Studies in Detective Fiction III_

 _Jenny_

"She's not replying to my texts," Jenny said, scrolling up and down her message thread with Clara as though it held a clue for her to analyse. But there was nothing of note. When she looked back, most of the messages between the two of them consisted of her letting Clara know that she was going to be late home, something had come up, she had been asked to work overtime, an extra shift, don't wait up for her, she would make her own dinner, she would see her in the morning. And Clara's replies were nearly always in emojis or acronyms, love hearts, OKs and smiley faces, and kisses. Often, Clara ignored her and waited up anyway, or ordered takeaway for them both and left Jenny's on top of the microwave for her, or made sure something they were going to watch together was recorded and unwatched until they were both at home. But now, Clara wasn't saying anything.

"Maybe she's busy," said Elliott, sipping cold coffee, leaning on the car door with the window rolled down; the rain from earlier had cleared up. They were parked on the opposite side of the street to an alleyway which was a known spot for drug deals, waiting for a ne'er-do-ell called Ricky Collins to show his face, a real scumbag Jenkins often picked up and convinced to act as an informant. He was sketchy and slimy, and their first (and hopefully last) stop in the quest for information about the drug Elliott was calling 'One Hit Wonder.'

"Busy doing what?" Jenny asked.

"I don't know, Young. Forgotten to charge her phone? Dropped it and broke it? Nipped to the shop and left it behind? It could just be in a different room? Maybe she really just hasn't heard it? Maybe she's asleep?"

"She was awake when I left this morning."

"People can go back to sleep."

"Maybe she's upset with me…"

"Did she _say_ she was upset with you?"

"She's been acting weird. And I asked Cohen about it and she refused to answer, flat-out."

"Since when was Cohen refusing to talk about personal things with someone a sign that something was wrong?"

" _I_ should be able to tell that something's wrong. I think she's hiding something. And now she's not talking to me? Maybe I should call her…" While Jenny was thinking about that, Elliott's phone began to vibrate on the dashboard. A picture of Sally Sparrow, smiling warmly, came up to accompany her contact name. James swore to himself and rejected the call, then switched it off. They had walkie-talkies if someone important needed to get in touch with them while they were on duty. "What _did_ happen between you this time?" That was her third call to him he had declined in the last hour.

"I don't know. We were due an argument. Things change, people change."

"I don't think either of you have changed."

"Then maybe that's what the problem is," he sighed, "She's going to say sorry and expect me to say sorry back, even though I'm not even sure what I should be apologising for, and then she'll shout at me again. I'm reevaluating my priorities. I've been a Detective Inspector for years, maybe I want to aim for a promotion, how does _Chief_ Inspector James Elliott sound?"

"Like a mouth full."

"Just because 'Major' only has two syllables." Jenny smiled a little. "Maybe you should revaluate your _own_ priorities, too."

"In what way?"

"Do you care about this job more or do you care about your girlfriend?"

"I'm not going to quit."

"I didn't say quit, just maybe stop taking overtime at every opportunity? Makes it look like you don't actually want to spend time with her. And I bet you didn't even argue with McHale when you got called in this morning – you _could_ have refused. If Turner made a fuss, take it to a tribunal. You'd win," he shrugged. She wasn't going to do that, though. But did Clara really think that Jenny didn't want to spend time with her? Elliott's attempts to talk things out with her were just making her worry even more. Wasn't that a primary reason why people cheated? Being ignored, made to feel like they weren't valuable? She knew that she had felt pretty worthless when Captain Jack had refused to get her an engagement ring, and _she_ had begun to look in other places… had she pushed Clara to the edge with her latest career obsession? "Here we go, Ricky Collins, two o'clock," James interrupted her. Jenny followed his gaze and saw Collins, a deceptively weedy man who looked quite poor but was wearing what she recognised as an incredibly expensive pair of the newest Nike trainers. He was also holding a shiny, gold-plated iPhone to his ear. Was there ever a more obvious drug dealer?

She and Elliott got out of the car together to cross the street.

"Okay, you're good cop, I'm bad cop," Elliott said.

"What? Why do I always have to be good cop?"

"Because you're adorable." She scowled. "Oi, Ricky Collins?" he shouted, then he pulled his badge out of his pocket and held it up, "I'm DI Elliott, this is DI Young, we want a word with – shit!" Collins dropped his phone and ran, turning on his heel and vanishing right back down the alley he had just come out of. The two detectives gave chase immediately, Jenny trying to remember the best routes around the area so that she could head him off – he had quite a good head start.

"Keep on him, I'll cut him off," Jenny said to Elliott, then she veered off left while he carried on going right, and found herself in another abandoned building with smashed in windows, broken down doors, and graffiti-lined walls. To her horror, she also realised it was an old meat-packing plant, and it had quite the odour about it. She ran up a metal staircase, three flights, across balconies, until she was on a narrow catwalk suspended above the floor of the factory, which looked to have closed down some time earlier. She knew that there were dead-ends and high fences where Ricky Collins had chosen to run, and so despite her strange detour she knew she could still catch him out. It was almost too easy to climb onto the rusty and very thin railing of the catwalk – which wobbled and was suspended only by chains – and then do a jump to grab the ledge of one of the open, smashed skylights, trying not to cut her hands. Then haul herself up through the roof, thinking back to her circus days, and run along top at odds to where Elliott and Collins ran below, doing a Spiderman-like leap from the roof of the meat-packing factory down onto the lower roof of a smaller, storage warehouse next door which was still, technically, owned by Sprite, but they had left it empty a decade ago. It was actually still full of Sprite, too, interestingly enough.

She ran across the flat roof, trying not to succumb to the desire to break in and steal an enormous amount of lemonade (maybe Clara would tell her the truth about what was going on if she got her the gift of sixty cans of stolen pop?), and dropped over the edge, sliding down a drainpipe just as Ricky Collins climbed over a fence. He was in exactly the right position for her to push off from the wall like a champion swimmer in a pool and deliver a flying kick to his face.

"Holy shit," said James Elliott. She wasn't even out of breath, but he was, struggling to heave himself over the fence.

"You need to go to the gym more," Jenny told him, standing over Collins, who was winded half from the force of her kick and half from shock, because he hadn't seen her coming down the side of the roof.

"They should let more ex-circus performers into the police," Elliott grunted, landing and staggering on the other side of the chain-link.

"This is assault and battery," Collins complained, "Totally unprovoked. I was only stretching my legs, I missed my morning run today."

"You forget about that, and we'll forget to pick you up for possession with intent, does that suit you?" Jenny said to him. She was so used to dealing with criminals. Probably because she _was_ a criminal, in some quite extreme respects. "We just want to talk, Ricky." He got back to his feet, rubbing his feet.

"You damn near knocked out my teeth," he complained.

"You're fine. You'll just have a cut lip," she said, "Now, we've got some questions."

"About some mysterious deaths," said Elliott, "We might make you for it. How does a manslaughter charge sound to you? Maybe even murder in the third degree?"

"Or you could just answer a few questions," said Jenny sweetly, trying to regain her 'good cop' composure after kicking him in the mouth. "We've got half a dozen dead people who had all ingested what's looking like a dangerous new street drug."

"And you're going to tell us what you know about it and hope we don't decide to search you for drug paraphernalia. You've probably got a few thousand pounds worth of drugs on you."

"What drug?" he asked, looking between them shiftily. He was almost as short as Jenny; no wonder he rolled over so easily.

"Phytolomide Neotracin," said Jenny. That was what Helix had identified it as, anyway. No nickname or special use had come to the fore, all they had was a fancy name and a jigsaw of chemical symbols, some of which she was sure she had never seen on the periodic table. Predictably, Collins looked blank.

"Come on, think harder," James ordered him.

"I don't know the real names for this stuff," he argued, "Be more specific. What does it look like?"

"No idea, but it has some nasty side effects," said Elliott.

"Is it a downer?"

"You tell me – would you feel 'down' if all your internal organs, muscles and soft tissue dissolved into goo?" Elliott said, "That's what the bodies are. Bags of skin full of pulp and viscera. Only skeletons and teeth are intact. You're sure you haven't heard anything about that?"

"Nothing."

"I knew you were a low-life, but I never thought you'd stoop to killing your own customers."

"Piss off, mate," Collins spat on the floor at Elliott's feet.

"Hey," Jenny took the lead again, "He only means that some known associates of yours are the people who have turned up dead. We don't think you'd really kill your client-base, you'd lose your money."

"I don't know, Young. He's got a dodgy look about him. I think we might break a confession out of him in interrogation," Elliott threatened.

"Samantha Olson? Neville McBride? Neville's body was only found this morning," Jenny said. Cohen's x-raying and cross-checking medical records and missing persons reports had come good; only one of the seven was still unidentified. "Both had criminal records, both got arrested and charged with possession and both named _you_ as their honorary dealer in previous statements. And now they've had all their innards turned to slime."

"We could pin this on you sooner than you could blink, Ricky."

"Help us out here, yeah?"

"Alright, alright. I know what you mean. There's been a lot of talk about it, on the streets. They call it White Doom," he confessed, "I've only seen it once. Comes in this tiny little canister, you're supposed to inhale the whole thing – I guess it's a gas. I've never sold it, I've never even touched it, someone else showed it to me."

"Where did they get it from?" Jenny asked.

"They said they got it from one of Needles' crew."

"Needles? You mean Harry Phelps?" Elliott asked.

"Yeah, that geezer. Needles Phelps." Jenny knew the name. There wasn't an officer in all of the Met who didn't know that name – Needles Phelps was the primo heroin supplier in the city. That was why they called him 'Needles.' Apparently, he'd expanded into an area even more destructive, this 'White Doom,' so-named because its consumption meant certain death. "Listen, officers, I don't want to get on the wrong side of Needles and his crew, but Sammy and Nev? They were good customers of mine. Reliable. Good people, too, in bad circumstances, stuck on the streets."

"A drug dealer with a conscience? I'm weeping," said Elliott dryly.

"And the bloke who had the canister I saw? Said he got it from one of Needles' guys who dropped a whole bag full of them in the gutter. Nobody would drop product like that just in the road. And I've heard of more people dying than you've found. In fact, I haven't heard of anyone who takes it and lives. I'm not even sure Needles is letting it onto the street anymore – you can't get people hooked if they die straight away."

"So, where's he keeping his stash?" Jenny asked.

"Or do you want us to make good on our threat to bring you in? Aiding and abetting? Obstruction of justice?" Elliott added, "We could get a good prison sentence out of you. Get a dangerous criminal off the streets. Let everyone in prison know you're a snitch? How long will a snitch last behind bars? A week? Two?"

"Alright, alright. But I want protection."

"Protection?" Jenny frowned.

"Ha! You think I'm going to give you the location of Needles Phelps and his whole gang without a guarantee of protection?"

"I think you might give us it if we start breaking your fingers one by one," threatened James, "Say you fell over the fence. Who are they going to believe?" Ricky went silent, thinking. James made a move to step closer to him, and he shrank away.

"Alright, alright! There's this care home, okay? An old care home. That's where they've got their meth lab set up, at least. Since you lot raided the last one in the dockyards."

"Yeah, sorry, we have a tendency to raid drug labs," said James sarcastically.

"He's going to leave soon, though, because of the heat around the White Doom."

"So hurry up and give us the address before we beat it out of you."

"Aurora Acres. The building is condemned. It's been a property guardianship for years before – hey! You said you'd protect me!" They had turned and begun to walk away from him, now getting all the information they needed.

"Actually, we didn't," said Jenny, "So I'd get far away from here, if I were you. Just in case Needles Phelps finds out who grassed him up and orders a home visit from behind the bars of Her Majesty's Finest Cell."

"Oh, fucking hell! Fucking pigs!" he shouted as he ran between them and away again, off down the street, splashing through the puddles and the mist. They let him go without a fight. Elliott was already unhooking his radio from his belt.

"This is DI Elliott, come in Turner," he said into it. In the meantime, Jenny checked her phone and found that there was still no message on it from Clara.

" _You better have some good news for me, Elliott. I've spent the last two hours trying to find out who called in a bomb hoax to a primary school_ ," Turner responded.

"Got you an early birthday present, ma'am. The drug they took, it's called White Doom and it's being peddled out of the derelict Aurora Acres building by Needles Phelps and his gang. Apparently, he's got the only stash and it's all in there."

" _Is this credible information_?"

"Credible enough."

" _You're sure? Harry Phelps?_ "

"The one and only."

" _Get down there and don't make a move until backup arrives – we're going full SWAT on this one. Keep your heads down and out of sight. Is that clear_?"

"Yes, ma'am. Over and out."


	152. Studies in Detective Fiction IV

_Studies in Detective Fiction IV_

 _Jenny_

"This is a nasty one here," Elliott said, eating a sandwich and slouching in the car. Jenny had the radio in her hand and was waiting for the call from Turner for the raid to start, but this was one of the differences she noticed with the army and the police. In the Alliance, she would have led the charge from the front, she wouldn't send her men into fire blindly. But in the police, she had to hang back while the armed SWAT officers did their part, which had been a hard thing to get used to; but then, she _was_ only armed with her fists and a baton. James carried on eating his sandwich, trying not to get dressing on his fashionable and very tight jeans, reading through the police file for the Aurora Acres Home for the Elderly on the car's in-built police computer. They had the grubby building in sight and were waiting for the rest of Turner's subordinates to arrive – it had the potential to be the biggest bust of the year.

"Oh yeah?" she asked, watching the building, holding the radio next to her face with her finger on the button, ready to go.

"Closed down fifteen years ago for gross negligence," Elliott said, "Half the staff were arrested, all the senior staff convicted, and one of them is still inside for four counts of manslaughter. It's been scheduled to be demolished for the last eight months, but no sign of anyone coming to do the deed."

"Grim," she said, "Being a drugs lab is almost an improvement."

" _All units be advised, SWAT vans incoming from the north-east and south-west_ ," said Keegan over the radio; he was in the control van.

"What does that give us? Thirty seconds?" James asked.

"Twenty, put your sandwich away, get your stick out," Jenny ordered him.

"You sound like my ex-girlfriend."

"Accepted it then, have you? A whole day and you've moved on."

"I'm looking for something on the rebound; if Clara finishes with you, what's say we find a dark corner in the care home over there?" he smirked. Jenny narrowed her eyes at him. "I'm joking."

"Is this why she dumped you?" she asked. He scowled while he wrapped his sandwich back up. "Do you think she's going to finish with me?"

"I think those are our boys," he said, spotting a huge, dark blue van coming their way and breaking the speed limit. It veered to their left the same time an identical one came from the opposite direction, followed from behind by more response vehicles which didn't have their sirens on, lest they alert Needles Phelps to their presence. They all came barrelling to their position and stopped on the dead grass in front of the building, then Turner came over the radio shouting the order for the raid to begin.

" _GO! GO! GO!_ " The back doors of the vans were kicked down and two-dozen armed Special Weapons and Tactics officers with armour and helmets came running out to break in. Elliott left his sandwich on the dashboard and wiped his hands on the leather car seats despite Jenny telling him not to because the car didn't belong to them, it belonged to the Met. They got out the same time Turner and Holloway appeared from one of the other response cars, with Turner listening to the chaos of the SWAT teams on the radio. From outside, they heard gunshots.

"You succeeded where we failed, then?" Holloway looked between them. "I don't want you leaving my name out of the report – we warmed this one up for you."

"Ordered some x-rays, roughed up a drug dealer – I'm sure you boys could have managed all that," Jenny said. But he was grinning, and he shook both of their hands. They all worked for Turner, and any victories they achieved themselves automatically became victories for her and therefore victories for the entire team. Really, though, Jenny thought that most, if not all, of the credit belonged to James Elliott. _She_ hadn't done much of the deducing herself at all. He probably could have handled the whole thing himself and she could have stayed at home. "It was mainly Elliott, so direct all of your praise or jealousy in his general direction."

"I'll put him to the top of my hit list," Holloway quipped.

"All PCs to the front doors, we need to be meeting them on their way out and getting them under arrest. Keegan, bring the van round," Turner said into the radio.

" _Be right there, ma'am_ ," said Keegan.

"Who was it who fed you this information?" Turner asked Jenny and Elliott.

"Ricky Collins, known drug dealer, bad habit of snitching. We had leverage over him when we identified more of the victims and connected them to each other – he felt sad about this 'White Doom' killing them," Elliott interrupted, desperate to shine now Jenny had spoken highly of him. Who knew, maybe he would get that promotion he was angling for? She'd be happy for him, and she thought he deserved it.

"A commendation might be in order for our Welsh boy here," said Turner, "We'll see what kind of haul we pull in – oh, and here he is! The man of the hour! We've been looking for you for a _long_ time, Harry." Harry 'Needles' Phelps was being dragged out of the building effing and blinding, spit flying from his mouth with as much volume as the swear words, trying to fight his way out of the hands of two SWAT officers.

"You piece of shit pig cunt!" he screamed at Turner, who was completely unfazed.

"Nice to see you too," she said.

"You'll never put me away, you fat bitch."

"Resorting to petty insults? I might cry," she said, "I think we've got a pretty good chance of getting you behind bars. One of you lot stop idling and take this low-life away, get him out of my sight."

"I'll do it," Holloway jumped at the opportunity, "Can't have Elliott taking all the glory – I'm putting Needles Phelps on my arrest record." He smirked at them both, then went to force a pair of handcuffs on Phelps. After he was grabbed, there was a steady trickle of drug dealers and junkies all being forced out by constables and other officers, some trying to escape by climbing out of windows and making a run for it. "Harry Phelps, I'm placing you under arrest. You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything you do say may be given in evidence."

"Come on, you two. Let's see what we've won," said Turner, heading towards the care home. Jenny and Elliott followed hastily, with Elliott looking like all his Christmases had come at once. But Jenny was still thinking obsessively about Clara, in spite of their enormous victory, and the fact she _still_ hadn't answered her texts. She had even tried calling when they had been in the car on their way over, twice, and the call had been declined. What was going on? She was getting desperate.

"Needles didn't keep a very clean shop, did he?" Elliott commented. All the windows were barricaded and the air was full of smoke, steam and dust, "Didn't he take any pride in his work?"

"Smells like a meth lab in here – I thought Needles only works with heroin?" Turner said.

"Maybe he was in the middle of expanding?" Elliott suggested. Turner took her radio back out.

"Keegan, can I get an ETA on the K-9 unit?"

" _K-9 unit, ma'am?_ "

"Yes, the K-9 unit, I want the best sniffer dogs in the country down here."

" _You didn't request any-_ "

"This is the biggest bust of the decade! Of course I want a bloody K-9 unit! Get on it, now. And I want McHale notified as well, get forensics over, we've nearly cleaned out all the wildlife," Turner said as another drugs fiend was dragged past them by a constable. "Hold on a minute," she stopped the PC to speak to Needles' lackey, "Point us to the White Doom and we might offer you a healthy plea bargain."

"In a floor safe in the head office, only Needles knows the combination," he said. Turner nodded and let the constable take him away.

"That's just what we need, a floor safe," she complained.

"Don't worry, I've got a special knack for breaking into safes," Jenny said, and Turner raised her eyebrows at her, "What?"

"I'll pretend I didn't hear that." It wasn't hard to find the main office, nor to find the floor safe, because the carpet had been ripped up at one point in time leaving it there for all to see. It was no small safe, either; Jenny wondered if had been dragged there and installed by Needles rather than belonging to the people who used to run the care home. "Go on then, Young. Show us your party trick."

"It's an analogue safe, this'll be easy," she said, pulling a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket so that she didn't contaminate the crime scene with her fingerprints. No electronic lock, no biometrics, just a wheel. She didn't even need to use her screwdriver. It took her an entire forty-three seconds to crack the twelve-digit combination – which was actually very shabby. She used to be able to break a lock like that in fifteen, back when she still worked for the Blacklight Society and was thieving professionally. She opened the heavy door and pulled out a very strange-looking metal container which had been forced open using a blowtorch. "Here we go…" she opened it herself and found inside a whole load of unusual canisters. She stood back up to show it to Elliott and Turner.

"Is that our White Doom?"

"Elliott calls it 'One Hit Wonder' – I think that's way better," Jenny said.

"It is, but I'm not paying him to be witty," Turner commented, "What is this stuff? I don't recognise the language."

"As best I can tell, it translates to Breathe-EZ. But 'easy' is spelled 'E-Z' to sound friendly," Jenny said, examining it. When she glanced at the list of ingredients she recognised the main two that Helix had said were the main elements, "Ah-ha, look right there. It says _Phytolomide Neotracin_ , among other things." She held it out to them.

"Yeah, that's not in English," said Elliott, "Or any language I've ever seen."

"Nor me," Turner said.

"It's another talent I have," Jenny said, "I'll get an official translation, put in a request with Undercoll. It's alien. I don't know the species, but as far as I can tell it's the extra-terrestrial equivalent of an inhaler. This is your 'White Doom.'" She put the box down on the desk for it to be bagged up and taken back to the station by forensics when they combed the place. "I'll bet there isn't any more of it. My dad once told me a story about an alien ambulance that crashed in London in 1941 and released all these tiny robots into the air, and all they did was heal people, but they learnt wrong and went rogue and before long there were a bunch of gas mask zombies running around."

"She's a weirdo, but by god is she worth every penny," Turner said approvingly. The Met had no idea that _she_ was an alien herself. "Now then. Didn't you have a romantic weekend planned? Best get back to it. You can file your report on your next shift, leave it for now. It's going to take the rest of us all weekend to catalogue the evidence in here and process the suspects."

"Thank you, ma'am," Jenny said, ducking out of the place at the first opportunity. Elliott smiled at her and gave her a small wave of goodbye, because he wasn't taking the rest of the day off and was going to have to help clear out the crime scene. When she was back out in the street she pulled off her gloves and took out her phone right away, to make another call to Clara. It was only the early afternoon, she'd only been gone half the day, if that. She walked back to the car listening to the dial tone, and just when she was expecting the call to get rejected _again_ , Clara actually picked up. "Clara? Oh my god!"

" _What? What's the matter?_ " Clara asked.

"Nothing – I mean – I just-"

" _You've called me six times today – I'm kind of busy, Jen_ ," said Clara.

"Busy how? I thought you were staying in."

" _Something came up_."

"Something like what?"

" _Just something – listen, is this important?_ " Jenny was hurt.

"It's just – we've carried out a major drug bust and solved this case, it was this alien medicine, see, and-"

" _Yeah, that's brilliant, I'm proud of you, can you tell me about it later, yeah? I'm really in the middle of some-_ " Clara stopped talking and Jenny could have sworn she heard someone talking to her, someone female who was not Nios. " _Just a second_ ," Clara's muffled voice called to them. She had covered the microphone. " _Jenny, I'm sorry-_ "

"I've got the rest of the day off now, and tomorrow, all my leave reinstated. Where are you? I can drive over, and-"

" _You can't_ ," Clara said quickly.

"Why not? Where are you?"

" _Why should it matter where I am?_ "

"I-"

" _I'm sorry, lovely_ _– I really am. I'll talk to you later, okay? We've got a lot to talk about. We'll go out for dinner. I'll see you soon. I love you_ ," and she had hung up before Jenny could say it back. That was the frostiest conversation she had ever had with Clara to the best of her recollection, and it stung her. And they had 'a lot to talk about'? Since when did they have a lot to talk about? A lot to talk about like how Sally and James had a lot to talk about? What _did_ that mean?

Desperately, Jenny dialled a different number, her own landline, praying that Nios, at least, was still in and could shed some light on all this. If she was going to be broken up with, or worse, she wanted to know. At least Nios was reliable enough to answer the phone.

" _Hello?_ " she said.

"Ni – it's me."

" _Oh, hi. Aren't you at work?_ "

"No, I've just knocked off, solved some mysterious deaths, carried out the biggest drug raid in a decade – listen, can you tell me where Clara is?"

" _Uh…_ "

"Nios."

" _Not really._ "

"But you know where she is?"

" _Well…_ "

"Don't you lie to me, or I swear I'll go back to the police morgue and start putting the screws to Hayley. She's there trying to ID bodies for us and I need to talk to her anyway to get her to cross-check an alien language for me," Jenny threatened.

" _Fine! I'll tell you. But don't go mental, you sound mental right now_."

"I'm not remotely mental. I've never been less-mental."

" _That's exactly what you'd say if you were mental_."

" _Tell me_ , or I _swear_ I'll-"

" _She's taken your spaceship. She's gone to 1817, to Winchester. July the 12_ _th_ _. She's only visiting someone, she'll be back for_ -"

"Winchester? 1817? What could she want in… oh no. She is not-" Jenny hung up the phone and bit her lip to suppress her urge to swear. She _never_ swore, but this was what she had been reduced to. By Clara. Clara Ravenwood, the two-timing… She would have thought she learned after everything that happened with Jack.

She scrolled through her contact list for a third time and finally resorted to calling one more number, in lieu of having her own spaceship now that it had been so heinously stolen by the love of her life: Jenny called her father.

* * *

"Hello!? Is anybody in!?" she hammered her fist on the wooden door of a townhouse, which was both large yet modest, despite the fact its façade was painted a rather sickening shade of pus-yellow. It was an insufferably hot summer's day, and she was not dressed for that weather at all and so was suffering outside. People in the street kept looking at her and her strange clothes and behaviour, them with their lacy dresses and their parasols, _gossiping_. She glared at them, and the women hurried along. One coach driver cast a worried eye over her and then picked up his reigns and took his carriage a way down the street so that he didn't have to be near her. She kept knocking on the door, desperate for somebody to answer before she had to try and break in through one of the open windows.

She was about to beat her fist on it one final time when it was opened by a middle-aged woman, who looked furious about the entire situation.

"What possible reason could a stranger have for making such an offensive disturbance?" she demanded, but she demanded it surprisingly politely. She wouldn't want to make a scene – nobody ever wanted to make a scene, when more often than not making a scene was the best way to get things done.

"Don't think you can pull the wool over my eyes," Jenny said, "I know what you're doing, Austen. Getting your claws into Clara, into _my_ Clara, making her-"

"Get in here," the woman hissed, going red. Was she embarrassed? Embarrassed because she had been caught out? She dragged Jenny into the house and closed the door behind her then, just as Jenny was feeling especially triumphant about wheedling her way inside without having to break anything, she slapped her very hard around the face. Jenny was shocked, and clutched her burning cheek. "Who do you think you are? You haven't got the remotest sense what you're talking about, miss."

"What the devil is going on, Cassandra? You remember the doctor said to keep the noise to a minimum. This degree of stress is bad for her," a tall man said, coming out of a different room with a book in his hand. Jenny realised that the women who had slapped her was, in fact, _not_ Jane Austen, and was her sister. "Who's she?"

"She says she's here for Clara," Cassandra said.

"Then by god, let her upstairs. I can't think with all this noise. Just make sure she knows to whisper."

"But Jane is so weak now, Henry-" He waved her away and returned to whence he had come from, and Cassandra scowled at his seeming lack of concern. Jenny didn't wait for Cassandra to allow her upstairs, she marched upstairs of her own accord, though she did in fact tiptoe just in case the upstairs residents had not yet noticed her arrival – knowing Clara the way she did, it wouldn't surprise her.

She made out the sounds of whispers when she reached the landing, Cassandra not bothering to shout after her, and strained her ears to listen, though she failed to make out any words clearly. Jenny identified the room they were coming from and slinked ever-closer, reaching out a hand for the doorknob. She heard a sound like a fumble on the other side of the wood, and took that opportunity to fling it open with all the vivacity she could muster, and what she saw made both of her hearts stop dead.

There was Jane Austen, spindly and sickly, wrapped up in bed with a flannel on her forehead, a chair dragged right up to her bedside, a manuscript on the table. And there, too, was Clara, _her_ Clara, whom she had only seen a handful of hours ago. But Clara was on the floor, she was on one knee, right in front of the chair and at Jane Austen's side, and in her hand, she was holding something which still managed to shine despite the fact the curtains were almost entirely drawn and the room was filled with shadows. There was no doubt about it, Clara Ravenwood was holding a diamond ring, and she met Jenny's eyes with a look of fear, and took in the whole scene.

"Jenny!" she exclaimed, looking at Jane, looking at the ring, then looking at Jenny, "…Shit."


	153. Studies in Romantic Fiction

**DAY** **2,** **236**

 _Studies in Romantic Fiction_

 _Ravenwood_

The curtains hadn't been shut properly. A shaft of sunlight streaming through them and illuminating Jenny woke her up, clawed at her eyes, but she didn't look away because she liked how Jenny seemed to glow beneath the sun. Clara felt bad for keeping their living conditions so squalid ordinarily, anyway, and supposed the sun would be keeping Jenny warm. Warmer than she was, at any rate. Jenny ought to be warm that morning. Minimal discomfort. It would ruin all of Clara's plans if she woke up in a bad mood, so Clara braved the sunlight for once and forced herself closer around her girlfriend, letting the softness and the familiar smell of Jenny's hair bring pleasantness back into her day.

It was too early for her to be awake, but she was antsy. She could smell food cooking, three floors down, and wondered if that food was meant for her. She needed to check the time, that was for definite. Absently, trying to distract herself, she observed the dust in the air hanging in the sunbeam. Vashta Nerada, allegedly. Clara just thought it meant the room really had to be cleaned, but it was so packed full of stuff gathering dust it was hard to clean. There they were on a double bed which took up most of that little attic room, stacks upon stacks of books towering around them. It wasn't even a double bed, even, a proper double bed would mean there wasn't quite space for the wardrobe shoved into one corner amid the masses of paperbacks.

Jenny's ringtone was a piercing sound. Her ears were too sensitive at the best of times, so to a woman who was more or less half-bat that twinkling, horrible noise might as well make her eardrums burst. It woke Jenny up, too. Clara didn't know where the phone was and was too disorientated by its shrillness to find it and switch it off so that they wouldn't be disturbed. Why wasn't her phone on silent? Her phone was always on silent. Except this weekend. This Saturday which was supposed to be their Saturday, and their Sunday, too, and then their Monday morning.

"No, no, no, no…." Jenny mumbled, groaning, twisting around in discomfort. It was very loud, and quite possibly in their bed. She didn't know Clara was awake, she was too tired to notice that; as she began her search for the phone, Clara sighed and moved her arms so that she no longer had one of her hands tightly over Jenny's waist, or tangled in Jenny's hair. Clara freed her up to search and then lay there, only now closing her eyes against the sunlight, listening to Jenny's phone call. She hoped that it was just the Doctor, that perhaps he wanted to arrange some sort of father/daughter thing, as he so often did, and that Jenny could just blow him off and say she had her Clara's company pencilled in for her entire weekend. It wasn't, though, it was one of her other commitments.

" _Can you be at Ballard Street in twenty minutes?_ " the voice of Joshua McHale asked as soon as Jenny retrieved her phone and answered it, without so much as a 'hello.' Head of Forensics Josh McHale, that should be, Clara corrected herself internally as she listened. Jenny groaned exasperatedly and collapsed back down onto her pillows.

"No," she said firmly, Clara's arm snaking back around her waist. That was about the moment that Jenny, glancing over her shoulder with surprise that Clara was moving, realised she was awake. Eyelids nearly closed, Clara smiled slightly. The closest thing to a good morning she was going to be able to manage, because no doubt Jenny would have to cancel their plans for a duvet day and go whizzing off somewhere. To Ballard Street, presumably.

" _Yes_ ," McHale said.

"No. It's my weekend off, my one weekend I've taken off to spend with my girlfriend," Jenny said.

" _Your weekend off has been cancelled._ "

"We're not even in the same department. You can't cancel my annual leave," Jenny argued. Clara kissed her neck lightly as she talked on the phone.

" _Turner can, and has, you're needed in Ballard Street ASAP_ ," McHale told her. When Jenny groaned again and rolled onto her back, Clara had to stop kissing her, and instead just rested her head on Jenny's and tried to ignore the sunlight that was still pouring through the thin gap in the curtains.

"It's. My. Day. Off."

" _She. Does. Not Care,_ " Josh copied her.

"That's because she's an unmarried spinster," Jenny grumbled, still staying in bed, half in Clara's arms. Then she added, "Don't tell her I said that, will you?"

" _You're not married, either_ ," he pointed out. Clara's heart skipped a beat when he said that. Well, Clara's heart only beat once a minute, it was just a figure of speech. DI Jenny Young was _not_ married, that much was true. She said nothing. " _You're going to want to see this body, Young. It's another of those ODs Keegan and Holloway were on._ "

"You're investigating ODs now?" Clara whispered, perplexed. Jenny sighed and brushed Clara's face with the back of her hand.

"Apparently," she answered, covering the microphone with her hand.

"Do you have to go?" Clara asked pleadingly.

"I don't want to get reprimanded by Turner… I'm sorry, Clara."

"No, it's okay. You go, solve crimes, save lives," Clara managed a fang-filled smile.

" _Leave the woman alone_ ," McHale interrupted loudly, " _Ballard Street, twenty minutes, be there or Turner'll put you on nightshifts all week_." It wasn't quite worth the risk of Jenny being stuck on nightshifts. She worked a lot still when she was home at night, but she also spent that time with Clara. He hung up.

Sadly, Clara said, "You'd better go."

"Are you sure? You made a big deal about me taking the weekend off. I can just refuse-"

"Look, if they want you then it's probably important."

"Maybe James will-"

"I wouldn't rely on James today," Clara said, who had received thirty-something paragraph-heavy texts from Sally Sparrow during the night explaining her latest falling out with her ailing, on-and-off boyfriend. Jenny groaned theatrically and beat her fists on the mattress, then made a show of dragging herself out of bed. Clara watched her. "Did the phone wake you?" she asked, Clara sitting up as well.

"Oh, no, I was already up," Clara admitted, crossing her legs and pulling the sheets over herself, staying away from the sunbeam on the bed.

"You were? It's ten in the morning," Jenny said, frowning at her as she got up to search desperately around the room for clothes.

"Yeah, well, I just made up my mind to wake up early," Clara shrugged, trying to be nonchalant, "To spend more time with you."

"Aw," Jenny smiled, and Clara smiled back, somewhat awkwardly, "Well, at least now you can lie in."

"Mmhmm," she nodded.

"Yesterday's socks will be alright, won't they?" Jenny asked, "Have you done the washing?"

"No, um, Nios said she would do it," Clara said, and Jenny gawked at her.

"Nios? Nios said she would do our washing? Did she said she would do it, or did she say she would set fire to it?"

"I'll do it while you're out," Clara offered, "Yesterday's socks will be fine, don't worry about it. The police won't care if you smell."

"But _I_ care if I smell. Do I smell?"

"Of course not," Clara assured her. Jenny came to sit back down on the bed while she put on the dirty socks and then her shoes afterwards. Clara shuffled over to lean over her shoulder, "Although, Ballard Street's really not that far, don't you think you might have time for breakfast?"

"Breakfast? I don't have time to cook breakfast," Jenny said, "I might have time to make a coffee, but that's it."

"I didn't mean you making it-"

"Well we also don't have time to go out anywhere, unless what you mean by breakfast is just yoghurts? Do we have yoghurts? I might have one…" Jenny rambled on about yoghurts and breakfast biscuits and whatever other vaguely healthy snacks she could think of for a few minutes, Clara resting her chin on her shoulder as she talked. When Clara went to kiss her neck again she moved away, smiling, but puzzled, "What's with you today? You're being clingy."

"I am not," Clara objected, "I just love you, that's all. Is that not allowed?" she challenged. Jenny stopped halfway through tying her shoelaces and studied Clara for some moments, Clara who just met her gaze defiantly.

Jenny leant in and kissed her on her lips for a few seconds, and then commented, "You're acting funny."

"I'm acting the same as always," Clara argued, wishing Jenny hadn't moved away so soon. Jenny didn't believe her, but she just smiled, going back to her shoes and then standing up a moment later.

"You usually just _let_ me go to work when I get these calls."

"I _am_ letting you! I just told you to go," Clara said. There was no point telling Jenny not to go, of course; she knew from experience that that would always be a losing battle. Jenny just seemed amused, and not all that fussed to get to the bottom of Clara's 'odd behaviour.' Given the circumstances, the circumstances which Jenny in all her obliviousness knew nothing of at all, Clara thought she was behaving very well.

Jenny was picking her coat off the back of the door when she accidentally pulled Clara's dressing gown (which she rarely wore because she was rarely all that cold, but had hung up yesterday for a very specific reason) down, too, and with wide eyes Clara watched it fall to the floor. When Jenny stooped down to pick it up, she exclaimed, "No!" and Jenny frowned at her. "Just… give it here, I'll wear it." She lunged for the dressing gown and carefully grabbed it out of Jenny's hands, taking care to keep it the right way up lest the pockets empty themselves onto the carpet.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing," Clara said quickly, putting the dressing gown on, "Just thought I'd come downstairs with you. Might as well, since I'm awake. I'll put the laundry on, I think, in a bit. Have an early start."

"You've only had four hours of sleep," Jenny said. Jenny was wrong, Clara had only had two hours of sleep, because she had been thinking. But she wasn't going to tell Jenny that.

"So have you," Clara pointed out, "And you didn't sleep for nine days before that."

"That's true…" Jenny sighed, pausing. Clara put her hands in her pockets. "Oh well. I've gone much longer without sleeping before." She shrugged and went to open the battered old door that went from the attic to the second floor, jumping down a narrow, crooked staircase. Clara followed, ducking under the wooden beam wedged between the walls that was there to support the roof and very inconvenient. Gave the place character, though. "You really could just go back to bed, you know."

"I don't want to go back to bed, not without you," Clara said. Dammit, she thought to herself, keep a lid on it or she'll be onto you. She knew though, deep down, that Jenny would never catch on. When Clara said that, Jenny laughed fondly, unknowingly, and Clara's fingers found the cold ring in the pocket of her dressing gown. Good; it hadn't fallen out somewhere anomalous in the inn. She didn't know what she would do if she lost it.

"Honestly, just go back to bed."

"I'm alright," Clara said, thumbing the ring. She hoped Jenny didn't notice her fidgeting. Clara followed her all the way down the next two flights of stairs down to the bar, which was completely empty with the chairs stacked upside down on the tables. Except for one table, a table for two, with the chairs pulled down and the placemats laid, cutlery at the ready. Nios was as good as her word, then.

"You look tired," Jenny said, walking through the room. Then she saw the table. "What's that? Does Nios have guests?"

"Probably just me, forgetting to stack the chairs," Clara said, "Oh well. Shame to, uh, waste it?" They were supposed to be opening the Lost Cosmonaut for business in the next week or two, and they were very nearly finished redecorating.

"It's just tables."

"Yeah, but, we could have breakfast. Can't you smell that? Seems like someone's cooking."

"Cooking? Who?"

"Just Nios, probably." Confused by this, Jenny brushed through into the kitchen to find Nios standing there in an apron adorned with pink flowers (which happened to belong to Jenny herself) frying bacon. Nios looked up when she did, and Clara, behind Jenny, put a finger to her lips in order to get Nios to be quiet.

Stiffly, Nios said, "…Good morning."

"…What's going on?" Jenny asked, looking from Nios to Clara and back to Nios again. Nios met Clara's eyes, so Jenny did as well, turning to face her, and Clara faltered for a few seconds.

"Well, I… I don't know, do I? Nios can cook if she wants to cook."

"Why would she be cooking when she can't eat?"

"I was bored," Nios lied, giving Clara a cold look, indicating that she ought to be grateful for this. And of course Clara was grateful, so grateful, she had never been more grateful for anything in her life as she continued to finger the engagement ring she was keeping hidden in her pocket.

"Shame to let it go to waste – why don't you stay for breakfast?" Clara said.

"Clara, I have to be at Ballard Street in fifteen minutes," Jenny said, then added to Nios, "McHale's called me into work. Something about overdoses."

"Oh," Nios said flatly, glancing at Clara again.

"Are you sure? It's almost done," Clara said, motioning to the bacon on the grill.

"Yes, I'm sure," Jenny said firmly, "I honestly can't stay and have this weird breakfast with you. Are you sure there's nothing going on? You're being really strange. You have been all week – all month, even."

"I haven't," Clara argued, "I've been the same as always."

"Right…" Jenny said unsurely, "…I'm just going to get a coffee when I get there, I think…"

"Really? You won't stay? I thought you might want to call your father, maybe."

"What? Call my father why, exactly?"

"You never know. A lot can happen in one morning," Clara said. Jenny just looked at her very suspiciously, and she tried to force an innocent, sweet smile onto her face.

"Well, um, I spoke to dad just a few nights ago…" she said slowly, "Nothing new to tell him. I better go now. Twenty minutes to Turner is half that to the rest of the world, and I'm a good enough Time Lord that I don't have a reputation for tardiness."

"TARDISness," Nios interjected, and they both looked at her, Clara making a face to try and get her to shut up. Jenny laughed a little and then made to go to the backdoor in the kitchen that led to the bins and out onto the street eventually. Nios had that door open to let the smoke out, anyway; it would be inconvenient if Jenny had to go unlocking the main doors on the other side of the floor.

"Are you sure?" Clara asked, getting desperate, touching Jenny's arm lightly to get her to stop. She pulled her hand holding the diamond ring out of her pocket now and held it behind her back, the delicate thing right at her fingertips.

"Seriously. _Clara_. What's the matter?"

"Nothing!"

"Then I'll go, I'm sorry, but I have to go to work. You're alright with that, aren't you?" she asked, slightly worried.

Turning the ring around in her fingers Clara assured her that she was definitely alright with that, why wouldn't she be? And of course she was, even if she was annoyed at their weekend being interrupted. It was supposed to be romantic. If McHale had just waited a few more hours to call, they might have been… well, she didn't know. She could only hope. Jenny wasn't budging from her work duties, though.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," Clara insisted, forcing a smile, "Now, go, go solve a murder. Do it quickly and you might make lunch." Jenny smiled warmly, and then, on a whim, stepped forwards to kiss Clara again, but properly this time. Clara heard Nios scoff. When Jenny leant away, Clara continued to go towards her until she nearly fell forwards, almost stumbled.

"Clingy," Jenny commented for the second time that morning, again heading for the door to leave.

"Wait, one last thing," Clara said, taking her hand quickly, with vampire-speed.

"What?" Jenny asked, and Clara froze under the gaze of her familiar blue eyes, under the enormity of their depth and age and warmth. She held the ring in her other hand, felt the words nearly come tumbling out down her tongue.

"…I love you," she said, chickening out. It wasn't the right moment, anyway. It wouldn't be romantic if she asked it now, and she wanted a romantic story to tell.

"I love you, too," Jenny frowned, "But I have to go to work." And finally she did, disappearing through the door and out of Clara's sight. In case she was still within earshot, Clara refrained from cursing out loud. She just stood there, stuck in place, ring in her hand. At least, it was in her hand until somebody indiscreetly stole it from her.

"So you didn't ask, then?" Nios questioned, holding the ring and looking at it like she was appraising it. "I could run after her and ask her now, it's not so hard – ' _Jenny, will you marry me?_ '"

"Give me that back," Clara swiped for it. Nios let her take it.

"I don't understand why you were planning on proposing over breakfast, anyway. Strikes me as a terrible idea."

"So that I didn't spend the whole day obsessing over it and giving myself away. Which I nearly did anyway, and she's not even been awake for fifteen minutes. And you can bloody well shut up about proposing, you're not exactly on your way to becoming Mrs Nios Cohen now, are you?"

"We're not interested in getting married."

"Well _she_ is, so you can piss off. And let me have some of that bacon. The cat can have the rest, where is he?" Clara looked around for Batfink, but he couldn't be nearby; if he was, he would have attacked Jenny.

"I think he's out. Probably killing small dogs."

"That was one time," Clara grumbled, "And I paid for the cremation cost of the remains. He's a sweetie." Nios was unconvinced.

"So, what's the new plan? Wait until tomorrow morning?"

"I don't know. I'm gonna have to think about it. In a bit. After I put the washing on and have a shower. And drink some blood. And eat that bacon."


	154. Studies in Romantic Fiction II

_Studies in Romantic Fiction II_

 _Ravenwood_

She sat at the bar slowly eating toast at some time roughly before noon. She hadn't been able to go back to sleep, and while she was really suffering the ill-effects, she couldn't bring herself to go to bed again. Maybe Jenny would find a way to leave work early, so that their day could reconvene, carry on where it had been left? Her eyes had defocused from the newspaper article she was trying to read, and she realised she had been chewing one soggy wad of toast for longer than she should have been. Picking up her mug, she took a hearty swig of tea to wash it down with, and began eating the other slice. The front-page news was just something to do with more scandals in the House of Commons, but Clara thought the House of Commons was one big scandal and none of the words sank in.

"Is there anything good in there?" Nios asked, returning from the cellar at that moment with a fresh bucket of paint. She was painting her bedroom upstairs but apparently couldn't get the precise shade of blue she wanted, so kept mixing all the paint they had downstairs for painting the main room. She set the paint bucket down on the bar next to Clara.

"I'm trying to see if there's anything about those murders last week. You know, the one where the alien-bloke was harvesting human organs to sell to intergalactic restaurants as a delicacy," Clara said.

"What are you looking at that for?"

"I'm after the address – I'm thinking of stepping up from drinking human blood to eating human meat," she quipped, smiling at Nios as she took another bite of toast. Nios had made the toast for her, incidentally, in exchange for being allowed to mix all the paint to her heart's content. "I just want to see if Jenny's mentioned anywhere, she got a commendation for it. Because I collect the newspaper clippings."

"Do you?" Nios asked, surprised.

"I have been since she started working; don't tell her, it's a secret. I'm going to compile them into a scrapbook and give them to her on her birthday in a few months," Clara said, "My fiancée, the hero cop."

"You haven't asked her yet."

"I know, but she'll say yes, I'm sure of it," said Clara, "That's why I was just going to propose over a nice breakfast she didn't have to make while she has time off. I think the ring is a romantic enough gesture – it's got a black diamond. My future wife will absolutely not have your ordinary, run-of-the-mill engagement ring. See?" Clara took the ring out of her pocket again where she was keeping it, not in a box because she really wanted to take Jenny by surprise. This time, Nios didn't grab it out of her hand, and merely examined it from where she stood. "Do you think she'll like it?"

"I think she'll love it just as much as that old scarf she still wears constantly." Clara couldn't keep the goofy smile off her face as she stashed the ring safely back in her pocket. "What's your new proposal plan?"

"I don't know. Dinner?" she suggested, "Maybe I should just bite the bullet and take her to a restaurant, like normal people…"

"Seafood!" Nios exclaimed suddenly, "Take her to a seafood restaurant."

"Oh _yeah_ …" Clara's eyes grew wide with this realisation. Jenny did adore seafood, and seafood restaurants were some of the restaurants where there was a lower amount of garlic than most. She could normally cope with them once in a blue moon, and her proposal was more than a good enough excuse. "I'll do that. I'll start googling it now. You're beautiful – if Jenny says no, I might ask _you_ to marry me."

"I'm taken, unfortunately."

"Really? Even with the bribe of some delicious seafood?"

"Even then." Clara pouted. When she put the newspaper down, Nios picked it up and started skimming it as well. Clara unlocked her phone to look up any seafood places she might be able to get somewhat last-minute reservations for, but when she did she came face-to-face with all of Sally Sparrow's texts from the middle of the night. Clara had not responded to any of them because she didn't want to get involved.

"Guess what?"

"What?"

"Sally and James have broken up again," Clara updated Nios with all the gossip she didn't really care about. "Apparently he's trying to control her 'every move' and he 'ordered her' to clean up what was 'basically no mess.'"

"They've split up because he asked her to tidy?" Clara nodded. "Maybe it'll be for good this time."

"I'm sick of their fights. I always hear the other side to Jenny and then we argue about it – I hate that. Why should we be arguing about what's going on with Sally Sparrow and James Elliott? I wish Esther would come out of hiding and sort it. She doesn't even _need_ to be in hiding because _she's_ not a Manifest."

"She has the symptoms of a Manifest, and she's still wanted by UNIT," Nios pointed out. Esther was still an integral part of the Manifest underground, but it was going to be another few years until the HCC and its tyranny was shut down completely. Clara hated that, seeing so many stories in the papers about more and more Manifests being detained, the spin they put on it to make it seem like they were doing everyone a favour – it reminded her of when people lost their jobs or went to prison for being gay, and she had a very personal stake in that shameful part of history. "I never thought they were good together."

" _Never_?"

"You just _think_ they're good together because they're both pretty," Nios said, "But they're not. Ever since that ridiculous scheme he concocted to make her jealous at Rose's wedding."

"You're very pessimistic, sweetheart."

"I think you can tell from the beginning whether things are going to work out or not."

"Sure, sure." Clara didn't believe her. "Do you think I should run out and get a new dress quickly?"

"No."

"Really?"

"She'll definitely work out something's going on if you book a table in a restaurant _and_ buy a new dress. Just wear whatever her favourite dress of yours is," Nios advised. Clara nodded, taking in this information, and went back to searching around Google Maps for places with at least three stars in a decent radius. Clara scrolled and Nios skimmed, actually reading the stuff about the newest accusations of political fraud.

A yowl and a male scream of terror erupted from the other side of the building. It was coming from the back alley the kitchen opened onto, and both Clara and Nios heard it clearly despite the distance. She dropped her phone and Nios dropped the paper, but Clara won the race to open the door and see what was going on; she had learnt a lot of tricks in her six years of being a vampire, like how to move very fast indeed. A tall man in a raincoat was being savaged by a black monster on their doorstep, a black monster Clara shortly recognised as her own cat.

"Oi! Batfink!" she shouted at it, approaching. It was a good thing the rain was still pouring and the clouds were blocking the sunlight so that she could go wrangle the cat and pull it off the poor man, though Clara was suspicious of him loitering around outside the back door of the building. She dragged the enormous Maine Coon off him and it clung onto her and began to purr when she scratched the damp fur behind behind its ears. "I'm so sorry! He attacks everybody, he's like a guard dog. My girlfriend is absolutely terrified of him, and she's in the police."

"He came out of nowhere!" the man exclaimed. He had scratches on his face.

"Yeah, he does that, I can't apologise enough – what were you doing in the alley?" she inquired, trying to ignore the rain battening down on them.

"Looking for the way into this building, I couldn't seem to find the front door but I have to meet somebody at this address."

"Oh, really?" Clara frowned, still stroking the huge cat in her arms, holding him to stop him from lunging and attacking the stranger again. Maybe this unknown was some contact of Jenny's there to give her unofficial advice – it wouldn't be the first time that had happened.

"Clara Oswald," he said, "Do you know her?"

"I…" she stammered. Nios had been standing in the doorway listening the whole time, avoiding the bad weather, but now her attention was piqued. "Uh…"

"I've been instructed to deliver a package to a woman named Clara Oswald at this address on this date and this time," he said.

"Package?"

"It's only for her to see."

"I'm Clara Oswald," she confessed finally. Perhaps she was now Clara Ravenwood, but what package for her Other Self could be so confidential that she wasn't allowed to shed her own eyes on it? And she rather thought it might be for her, since it was _her_ address, after all. "Sorry, you took me by surprise. I've changed my name. It used to be Oswald, it's Ravenwood now. Still Clara, though." She smiled. "What's the package?"

"I… think it might be better if I come inside, if that's alright with you?" he said. Clara squinted at him a little, but couldn't place him anywhere. She was sure she had never met him before.

"Yeah, alright, if you go in and then I'll put the cat out and make sure he won't get back in for the time being. He's an outdoor cat," Clara nodded for him to go in, and Nios stepped aside, still silent. She was like a cat herself, it took her a very long time to warm up to strangers. Maybe it was a synthetic thing. Clara dropped the cat back on the ground and shooed him away before returning to the interior of the hotel herself, shutting and locking the door behind her.

"This is a hotel?" he asked, looking around when Nios led him through the kitchen and into the bar, "Surely it should be easier to find the front door of a hotel."

"Depends on what kind of guests you want to attract," said Clara quite cryptically. They weren't really in the market for human patrons. "What's this package, then?" It was probably ill-advised to let strange men saying they had packages into your home, but she wasn't scared. Mainly because unless he had a stake or a crucifix she probably wasn't in any danger, and Nios was right there. Plus, she had one of Scotland Yard's top detectives on speed dial.

"I don't know," he said, "We've been instructed to never open it, that Clara Oswald had to open it."

"By who?"

"By my…" he paused and thought, then shook his head. "I don't know, my great-great-great-great aunt, or something. She lived over two hundred years ago, this thing has been in the family for a long time, I don't understand how she could know where _you_ were in the future."

"Who's your aunt?"

"Jane Austen," he said, and Clara's smile vanished.

"What?"

"The novelist, you know-"

"Yes, I know who she is," she said awkwardly, "She gave you something to give to me? What is it?"

"Here," he opened his coat and drew out a very large, thick envelope.

"Ni, could you be a dear and get my flask?" Clara asked. She needed blood, desperately, and was clenching one of her fists. Nios went over to the bar to retrieve the flask where Clara had left it and brought it over to her, while this man – this Austen descendant – slid Clara the envelope over the table. She opened it and found a very thin cardboard box, a little like a cake box, and opened _that_ to find a manuscript. An incredibly old and fragile manuscript; the kind she wouldn't normally so much as touch without wearing a pair of gloves in case the pages disintegrated between her fingertips. There was that, and a letter, which she very carefully unfolded. She recognised all of the handwriting very well. The letter was very short, however, and was simply instructions to deliver the manuscript that exact address on that day at that time.

In awe, Clara very delicately turned the manuscript to its first page and deciphered the slanted handwriting and the many crossings out to be as follows:

 _A Gentleman & Lady travelling from Tunbridge towards that part of the Sussex Coast which lies between Hastings & E. Bourne, being induced by Business to quit the high road, & attempt a very rough Lane were overturned in toiling up its' long ascent half rock, half sand_-

"Oh my god," she breathed to herself, and immediately began flipping through the rest of the pages until she located something truly remarkable at the headings of one of the pages, a page wedged only a third of the way through the whole lump of pages: _Chapter 13_. "Holy shit."

"What is it?" Nios asked, which made the stranger jump.

"Yes, what is it?" he pressed her.

"It's _Sanditon_ ," Clara said, "Or – she's renamed it, put a proper title, it's called _My First Goodbye_ now. But she never finished it, famously, she got too ill and put down her pen – she even made a note of it. But this is it! This is her last novel, but it's completed, and she sent it to _me_ , to me _now_ , _finished_!"

"But who are you?" the man asked, "How would she know you existed?"

"It's complicated," Clara said, flicking to the end because she was dying to find out what happened – though she assumed all the characters ended up getting married off happily-ever-after, because that was always what happened at the end of Jane's stories. "It's got a character in it called Clara, Clara Brereton. She's very kind, very poor, and very beautiful."

"Oh, how you are enjoying yourself," Nios quipped.

"I don't understand," said the man, "How-"

"Shh, I'm trying to read," Clara hissed at him, then she looked up and addressed them both, "This is totally like _Back to the Future_. You know, when Doc goes to 1886 and asks them to send Marty the letter explaining what happened when the DeLorean got struck by lightning? This is _exactly_ like that."

"Only, you don't have a time machine to use to go back and visit my aunt," the man said. Clara laughed slightly to herself, and went back to scanning the pages. And what she gleaned from the excepts she skimmed was marvellous, truly marvellous. It was something of a hobby of hers – what with her being both a Literature scholar and Jane Austen's ex, female lover – to keep up with the queer theory surrounding the woman. And there was a lot of it, as there was around more or less every female author. Of course, Clara had the added advantage of knowing the truth about Jane Austen and how she 'swung', as it were, but what she read still surprised her. Quite possibly the first blatant work of what could be called 'lesbian fiction' in all of modern English literature – where it was none other than whom she was sure was her namesake, Clara Brereton, and the novel's protagonist, Charlotte Heywood, who wound up falling into each other's arms.

But that wasn't even the most interesting thing; the most interesting thing was the very last paragraph, where Charlotte Heywood professed her everlasting love for 'Clara.' Only, Charlotte began to speak of not having much time left, of weakness, and of wanting to see her – _Clara_ – one last time. Before ' _Sanditon is overrun by tourists forever_.'

"What is it?" Nios asked, "Are you okay?"

"It's a love letter," Clara realised, "The entire thing."

"To who?" the man was desperate.

"To me," she said, "Obviously. You're probably not gonna believe this, but I'm a time traveller, and I sort of… went back in time and… got with your great-great-great-or-whatever-aunt. Got with, as in, like, a gay way. She wasn't straight. She never got married."

"You can't go see her!" Nios exclaimed, "Not today! Not when you're meant to be _proposing_!"

"I have to!" Clara argued, "This novel was completed on her deathbed, Ni. The fact she managed to finish it was a miracle. I have to go see her, I can't say no, not when she's dying. Not when she's done this. You just don't understand because you've only ever been in love with one person – if Astrid Eicher had written a letter like this to Jenny, Jenny wouldn't hesitate to go and be with her at the end, she'd run off straight away. If Jane wants me to be there by her side when she… then I can't refuse. Do you see? I have to go. I have to go _now_."

"No!" Nios protested. The stranger was still reeling from the revelation of his distant relative's sexuality. "Absolutely not." But Clara was standing up already, she was searching for her coat and her umbrella. "Can't it wait until tomorrow, at least? Until everything with Jenny? Your reservations?"

"You make the reservations for me."

"I won't be a part of this."

"Nios, please," Clara went to talk to her directly, putting her hands on her arms and clutching her, "Do you think if you and Cohen broke up that if one day, years later, she asked you to be there when she-"

"Don't say things like that."

"Nios, she's _dying_. I'm not going to be able to think about anything else until I do my part, do the good thing. What if I'm the love of her life? I can't abandon her. I just can't. It's not like we broke up on bad terms – it would just never have worked. There's never been any animosity. Just let me go in the spaceship and don't tell Jenny. Make something up, I don't know. She'll have to hear it from me or she'll get all jealous and think I'm cheating on her, you know how she gets when anyone ever brings up Jane Austen. She can't even sit through _Bridget Jones' Diary_. Please cover for me, I'll be back before you know it, alright?"

"…Fine. But you're making your own proposal dinner reservations and you're making them now, before you leave. Under my supervision."

"Great! Thanks so much, Ni," Clara hugged her tightly, "You're my favourite evil robot in the whole world."


	155. Studies in Romantic Fiction III

_Studies in Romantic Fiction III_

 _Ravenwood_

She must have looked a sight. Her hair still wet and stringy from the rain in 21st Century London, she stepped out of an invisible spaceship into a glorious summer's day in 19th Century Winchester, polar opposites of each other. The centre of a smog-filled rainstorm to an unpolluted world with a burning sun in the sky and lush green fields all around, and the town just at the fringe of her vision. Descending the steps of Jenny's flying saucer, Clara took care to open her umbrella, the enormous black one she had to protect from sunlight. She was also wearing her longest coat and had her glasses turned to their highest intensity, and even wore a pair of leather gloves to prevent her hands from burning in case she had to reach out of the shade of her umbrella. In these cases, she thought about how profoundly lucky she was to now be cold-blooded, but she did have the unfortunate habit to begin to give off quite an odour if she spent too much time in the heat. Like a corpse.

It was midday in July, and such fine weather meant that there were people out and about, people everywhere, and she did wonder if it may have been better to come late at night. But there was the possibility that Cassandra would refuse to let her in if she arrived at night and woke them up, and Jane would be too weak to allow her in herself. Then again, she didn't look _too_ unusual, she realised as she came upon the town, as every woman she saw who had even a little bit of money and status was also out waving a parasol. Admittedly, she was still wearing all black, but she was still hard to notice; unless she did something rash to draw attention to herself, being a vampire meant becoming a blind-spot in the eyes of most people because light passed right through her. It did not take her long to locate the house because it happened to be painted bright yellow, and because she had visited it before, a few times. She had been brought there once on a family holiday by her mother, more than twenty years ago now, before she really knew who Jane Austen was.

She knocked on the door very loudly and clearly and then stopped to wait. While she did, her phone began to buzz in her pocket, and she stole a glance at it very carefully – for she could not have the residents of 1817 seeing a mobile phone, or she would have the same fate as the rogue time traveller in that old Charlie Chaplin film – seeing it was Jenny trying to ring her. But she really couldn't answer, not in her current situation, and it was with a heavy heart that she forced herself to decline the call. It did not take long for somebody to answer the door, though, and of course it was the one person she had expected to answer.

"Cassie!" she exclaimed with a grin when Cassandra opened the door, Cassandra who cast a sickened look over her person and shook her head. She hated being called 'Cassie.' Clara forced herself to stop with her cocky smile, designed to irritate, because she became conscious of her fangs.

"To what do we owe this displeasure?" Cassandra had never forgiven Clara for so heinously seducing her younger sister. It was practically criminal.

"Your sister has requested my presence," Clara said, "And I'm always happy to offer my company."

"Yet we haven't seen your sorry face for many-a-year now, have we, Clara?" she said coolly.

"I'm surprised at you answering the door yourself, where's the maid?"

"She is gone to buy eggs," Cassandra explained. She did not make any move to let Clara in. "Are you wearing spectacles?"

"My eyesight is going in my old age," she said.

Cassandra scoffed, "Old age? You look the same as always. If a little sickly."

"For god's sake, Cassandra," a man's booming voice came from inside the house, and Henry came out of a back room she assumed must be a study holding a book, "You will be letting all of the hot air into our cool interior if you stand with that door open for any longer."

"Excuse me, Henry," said Cassandra, "It is just that we have a rather unwelcome visitor."

"Unwelcome? Who? Why… if my eyes do not deceive me, am I looking upon Miss Clara Oswald? Is she returned to our hospitality? How wonderful, Jane will be thrilled." This was Henry Austen, their brother – though, the two girls did have six brothers. More siblings than even in Oswin's enormous family.

"Jane is resting, Henry."

"Nonsense, she has been begging the maid to bring her eggs all morning, wretched girl. She will be quite alright to hold a conversation. Let her in, won't you? No use standing around idle in this heat. We do not want two sick women to deal with do we, Cassandra?"

"Yes, brilliant, let me in, please?" Clara said, "You know, invite me."

"You normally push straight past me."

"I've changed," Clara said. _I've become a vampire and now I have to be invited in to places, to make it harder for me to feast on the blood of the innocent._ "Please, Cassandra?" Between the two of them, that was the equivalent of grovelling. Literally grovelling, hands and knees.

"Fine. You can come in."

"Thanks," said Clara, closing her umbrella and coming inside, relieved to be out of the sun. She was already exhausted, but weather like this made her dreadfully lethargic. She didn't wait for Cassandra to give her directions, just high-tailed it up the stairs, jumping the last few, before she could get another word in. Even if she hadn't been to the house before, to that very room, the smell of death was something she recognised well and knew how to follow. It was July 12th, 1817, and Jane Austen's date of death was exactly one week away. She knocked tentatively on the wooden door and strained her ears. She heard a cough and a voice trying to tell her to come in, one she made not have heard at all were she human.

But she was interrupted, interrupted by her phone going off again, for the second time in some ten minutes. She checked and again saw it was Jenny – was she okay? Clara again was forced to decline, but unlocked her phone to text Jenny asking what was wrong. She couldn't be in grave danger if she was repeatedly calling – she was probably just trying to find out if she needed to get any milk on the way home, or something. Clara would also expect a call from James Elliott if something devastating had happened.

After putting her phone away, Clara braced herself and entered the room, which was gloomy and warm with the curtains drawn closed over the summer afternoon. And there was Jane, Jane who was still, in her final days, a damn sight prettier than that ghastly sketch Cassandra had done eons ago which was the only trace of her likeness to survive. Cassandra had never been a particularly good artist, for all her trying with her watercolours. It pained Clara a great deal to see Jane wasting away, grey and aching. It must be obvious to everybody who saw her that she was about to die, and she was only forty-one, some seven or so years older than Clara. But she looked older now, though her expression still lit up when she saw it was Clara come to see her.

"Am I hallucinating?" she asked hoarsely. Clara smiled slightly, trying not to look sad, and pulled up the chair from the writing desk in the corner. On it, she spied the same manuscript she had just been delivered, completed and wrapped up, waiting to be delivered to her in two hundred years.

"Nope, not at all," Clara said, "I got your message."

"Was it published?"

"No. Only the first twelve chapters, under a different title. Cassie wouldn't let anything compromising get out," she sat down at Jane's side.

"I didn't know where I should send it."

"You can write the instructions now, I suppose," Clara said, "It must be one of those completing-cycles things. Where they happen backwards. Happens a lot in my line of work."

"Time travelling?"

"Exactly," Clara said.

"Then it must really be happening. I must be dying. If I wasn't, you wouldn't have come."

"I would have," Clara argued, "Anytime. It's not my fault you live before telephones exist."

"But I'm dying?"

"You know you're dying, Jane," Clara said softly, "You wouldn't have asked for me like that otherwise. With your love letter. Which was _incredibly_ romantic, so, props to you. Pat yourself on the back. But I'm not here to rekindle anything."

"I think it's still there, rekindling unnecessary." Clara laughed.

"You _would_ think that."

"Help me sit up."

"Is that a good idea?" Clara asked.

"I always have good ideas," she said. Which was ridiculous, she often had dreadful ideas, indecent ones that made Cassandra wonder how the pair of them were even related – though really, Jane and Cassandra were thick as thieves and always had been, despite Cassandra's monumental horror at what had gone on between her sister and Clara. Clara leaned over and helped sort out the pillows, propping Jane up through she was still terribly sickly. "I am ready now."

"Ready for what?"

"For you to tell me everything, of course, my dearest! Where have you been, what have you seen? You seem very different, vastly so, from the last time we spoke. These spectacles, for one thing. And yet, strangely, you remain looking like yourself, as if a painting. Yourself but changed."

"Yeah, I have changed…" she sighed, "Here, give me your hand." Jane lifted her hand above her bed sheets and Clara took it, clammy and shaking.

"My word! You are like ice. Is my fever so developed?"

"No, no. It's me. I'm cold. I'm dead. I died."

"So you _are_ a dream."

"I'm not a dream. I'll tell you a story. There's this monster, you won't have heard of it right now, no-one's really going to know about it for seventy years yet. This folklore, a creature, called a vampire. Most people will tell you it comes from Eastern European legends, but really, it's from everywhere. Always these myths about monsters who look like our deceased loved ones come back to life, they feed on human blood, they're nocturnal – it's sort of a theme. You could find it if you looked into it, this universal fear of things that look familiar, but they're evil. Except… it's not a story. Just like things that come from outer space and other planets, and people who can travel back from the future and tell you all kinds of secrets aren't stories, either. These vampires, they're real, and I went to Whitby in the 1880s and there was an entire group of them living there, preying on innocent people, breaking out of mausoleums and living in the catacombs underneath the abbey. And one of them bit me, and when they bite you… they make you into one of them. They don't age, they don't decay, they stay young and live forever."

"I could never believe that my Clara has become a monster."

"Well, no, 'monster' is a very subjective term, I suppose," she said, feeling her phone vibrating in her pocket again, though she made up her mind to merely ignore it, "But, I'm one of them."

"A creature? Who feasts on human blood? Is nocturnal? It's the middle of the day, in summer."

"I'm braving it all for you," she said, before she realised how much that sounded like she was giving Jane false hope about becoming lovers again. That was out of the question, and not just because she wasn't single – but also because she absolutely couldn't have a relationship with a human. Not without being at risk of killing them. "I'm fine. I've got my umbrella to hide from the sun, I've got these glasses – that's what they do, block out sunlight."

"What happens when you go into the sunlight?"

"Oh, I get migraines, but if I stay out for longer than a few minutes I start to burn. I'd die eventually. Maybe twenty minutes maximum of direct sunlight? And that's only because I get blood from a special source with… extra nutrients. Normally I'd burn immediately."

"All of those summer afternoons we spent together… do you recall when we went strawberry picking? That was a splendid time, I truly enjoyed it."

"I enjoyed it when we snuck away together for a while," Clara said wryly.

"Oh, stop. Is that all you think about?"

"It generally seems to be."

"You are a scoundrel, Clara Oswald, you truly are. Perhaps you are a monster after all." She laughed, looking at Jane's hand in hers. She was only half there, though, the rest of her was worrying about Jenny and her persistent phone calls. Maybe things weren't okay? Maybe she should answer the next one… "If I heard you correctly, one bite and eternal life is granted?"

"Don't get any ideas, I didn't come here to give you the 'gift.' You can't eat garlic, and you can't go to church or read the bible or have anything to do with religion."

"Religion?"

"Some people would call me a demon," Clara said, "Religion is not really as big of a thing in England in the future. I've got nothing against it, I just can't have anything to do with it at all. Can't even look at a crucifix. Plus, you know, I'm not sure you would like drinking human blood."

"We would be together for always, though. I could just continue living, until one day I would catch up with you, and I would know all the things you speak of. I would have lived them myself."

"You're wasting your breath, I've never turned anyone and I'm not going to start. Besides, I…" Again, she felt her phone buzz and she bit her lip. Jane had seen her phone before, she knew what it did – it was everyone else in the century she had to hide it from. "I have to take a call right now, I'm sorry." Clara let go of her hand and walked away from the bed, into the corner of the room as she answered.

" _Clara? Oh my god!_ " Jenny exclaimed down the phone.

"What? What's the matter?" Clara asked urgently, hoping she was not going to be asked to go and retrieve Jenny from a hospital – again – after she received some minor injury. She hoped she was okay.

" _Nothing – I mean – I just_ -"

"You've called me six times today – I'm kind of busy, Jen," Clara said softly. She was trying to get Jenny off the phone as soon as possible, if only because it was just plain rude to talk to someone on the phone for a long time when you were with somebody else, but she was trying to be gentle about it.

" _Busy how? I thought you were staying in_."

"Something came up."

" _Something like what?_ " Jenny was pressing her for information, but why? God – Clara thought – she hadn't worked out about the proposal, had she? Maybe she had found the receipt for the ring, or Nios had let something slip – or Cohen. Jenny saw Dr Cohen all the time at work, and Clara didn't know how much Nios had told Cohen about her proposal plans. And Cohen could not lie.

"Just something – listen, is this important?" Clara asked quickly, wanting to get to the bottom of if Jenny was okay or not.

" _It's just – we've carried out a major drug bust and solved this case, it was this alien medicine, see, and_ -"

"Yeah, that's brilliant, I'm proud of you, can you tell me about it later, yeah? I'm really in the middle of some-"

"Who is it you are talking to?" Jane interrupted from her bed, and Clara covered the microphone for a second.

"Just a second," she hissed at Jane, then went back to Jenny, "Jenny, I'm sorry-"

" _I've got the rest of the day off now, and tomorrow, all my leave reinstated. Where are you? I can drive over, and-_ "

"You can't," Clara said quickly. She was sure she sounded very suspicious, but she had to tell Jenny in person about having to go and see Jane.

" _Why not? Where are you?_ " Jenny continued to press, with an odd tone in her voice. A cold one, full of edge – as if Clara was being interrogated. It irritated her a little. What was she being accused of, exactly? Of wanting to marry her girlfriend?

"Why should it matter where I am?" she sounded a bit snippy herself now.

" _I-_ "

"I'm sorry, lovely – I really am. I'll talk to you later, okay? We've got a lot to talk about…" she was still thinking about her proposal plans and her reservations at the seafood place, "We'll go out for dinner. I'll see you soon. I love you." She hung up and put her phone away.

"You love a girl named Jenny now?" Jane asked, "Is 'Jenny' short for 'Jane'?"

"It has twice as many syllables, and no, I've never heard of anybody calling someone 'Jenny' as short for 'Jane,'" Clara sighed and came to sit back down. "I was just about to tell you, honest – she's been calling all day, that's all, I thought something was wrong." To Clara's surprise, Jane didn't seem upset about Clara having moved on. She smiled a little, in the way old friends did when they met after a long time and found they still clicked. She supposed it was a lot like that, really.

"Tell me about her."

"Oh, she's… great. I mean, she's wonderful. Incredible. Brilliant. She's just… she's beautiful, as well," Clara said, feeling a smile creep onto her face, "She's the Doctor's daughter."

"Really!" Jane began to laugh at this revelation, but her laughter quickly descended into an unpleasant coughing fit and Clara held her shoulders to stop her from convulsing too much with the effort. She fell onto Clara's shoulder and Clara let her stay leaning there, at least for the time being. "Scoundrel," she murmured. Clara smiled. "A true rogue. Your dearest friend's daughter."

"I don't really see him anymore. At all. Not for a long time. Not the Doctor you met, at any rate."

"If that is so, how did you reach me today?" Jane said, lifting her head from Clara's shoulder and falling against the pillows again.

"Oh, Jenny's got a time machine of her own, I've borrowed it."

"Is she much like her father?"

"Well, she's infinitely kind, infinitely brave, she's a genius – she can speak every language in the universe. She's a trained chef, she was an acrobat before, now she works for the police, in the future. She's a detective, solves crimes."

"My word. How could I compete?"

"Well, she's very jealous of you," Clara said, "I forgot to say – I think they did it after the last time I saw you – they've put your face on ten pound notes. I've got one, actually…" Clara dug around in her pocket and found a ten pound note, one of the new plastic, waterproof ones, and showed it to Jane, who was in awe. "Jenny always says, how could she compete with a woman whose face everyone in England carries around with them? But I've got a thousand pictures of Jenny on my phone so I carry her around with me, too. As well as you."

"May I keep this?"

"No you may not – I don't think it's biodegradable. It won't rot and then somebody might find it," Clara said, snatching it back, "Your vanity knows no bounds. The drawing isn't even a particularly good likeness." She put it away again, but as she did her fingers touched the ring she still had on her.

"I don't see any good reason why this girl of yours should envy me. How old is she?"

"She's going to be two-hundred-and-fifteen in a few months, actually," Clara said, "She doesn't age, either. And because she's an alien, I'll never want to drink her blood."

"I must say, this sounds like a perfect match – the sort of match only _I_ could have dreamt up, in all my wisdom."

"Yes, your famous wisdom. I'll tell you a secret."

"Do confess."

"I was going to propose this morning. You know how I'm always telling you women can get married to each other in the future?"

"You _were_ going to? What changed your mind?"

"Nothing, she got called into work, that's all. It's not like crime stops in London just because _I_ want to get married," she joked. "Do you want to see the ring? It'd be nice to know what you think."

"Then show it to me," she managed a smile. Clara was beaming with the excitement of showing off this ring, of just the thought of her incoming proposal. She heard somebody knocking very loudly on the front door downstairs, and looked around. "That will only be the maid returning with the eggs. I ran her out awfully quickly, she most likely forgot to take her key." Clara assumed Jane was probably right, and so tried to block out the noise from downstairs as she fidgeted in her pocket. "I never would have thought _you_ would propose to somebody."

She laughed, "Neither did I, really. But Jenny's oblivious. She can't even deduce her own feelings, let alone somebody else's. I have to do everything. And she had a bad experience, with her ex-husband – he never got her a ring and she's always been upset about it…" there were loud voices now, Clara thought Henry had come back out of his study again. "Here it – bollocks…" she had dropped the ring on the floor in the dark room. She looked around to see if she could see it glinting, and thought she spotted it near the foot of the bed on the floorboards. "Hold on."

"I am."

She pushed back her chair and knelt on the floor, picking the ring up.

"Here," she stayed on the floor and showed it to Jane. "It's-"

The door was thrown open with such verve Clara thought it had been kicked very violently. She had been trying to ignore the noise and so hadn't heard anybody come up the stairs, and so jumped when this intrusion occurred. They had been gravely wrong, however, about who had been at the door downstairs, for it was none other than her girlfriend – her lovely, wonderful girlfriend – with her face contorted in a dreadful expression of pure rage, horror, upset and envy, standing their gawking at the scene. And it was then that Clara realised what the scene was – that Jenny had just barged in on her kneeling at Jane Austen's bedside holding a diamond engagement ring, after a rather frosty phone call where Clara had refused to disclose her whereabouts or activities.

"Jenny!" she exclaimed, meeting those blue eyes that had never looked so cold and angry before. "…Shit."


	156. Studies in Romantic Fiction IV

_Studies in Romantic Fiction IV_

 _Ravenwood_

"I swear to _god_ , this isn't what it looks like!"

"Like I trust a vampire who swears to god."

"Alright, then I swear to, I don't know, the devil, or something. I swear on Satan's creepy little goat-legs that this is absolutely not what it looks like, Jen," Clara got back to her feet awkwardly, still holding the ring in her hand. "What are you doing here? How did you know where I was?"

"Why are you proposing to Jane Austen, is a better question!?" Jenny demanded.

"Shh! Keep your voice down, she's sick," Clara indicated Jane.

"I don't care if she's _dying_ , you-"

"She is dying!" Clara shouted at her. Now they were both making a scene. It was probably stressing Jane out, but no doubt Cassandra downstairs was eavesdropping on every word and marvellously enjoying something going wrong for Clara.

"So you're going to marry her out of pity, then? What is it, her dying wish?"

"Oh my god!" she exclaimed in horror, "Right, you. Come here. I'm sorry about this, Jane." Clara apologised over her shoulder as she grabbed Jenny by her arm probably tighter than she should have done and dragged her out of the room. She pulled her across the hall and into some other bedroom she assumed was Henry's going by the state of it – Cassandra could never stand for things to be messy, and it was quite damnable in there. "You total – you – you've got absolutely no idea how angry I am with you right now!" Clara hissed furiously.

"Oh, you're angry!? How do you think I-"

"I am _this close_ to hitting you," Clara said, holding up her finger and her thumb barely half a centimetre apart, "Right around your pretty face, just thumping you."

"How have I done anything wrong?" Jenny was even smug about this, somehow.

"Because it's for you!"

"What's for me?"

"The ring! This bloody engagement ring!" she brandished it in Jenny's face, "This is for you!"

"…No," she said.

" _Yes_. It's got an inscription. It says ' _Your two hearts beat for both of us_ ' in it. Does that sound like it's something I asked for with Jane in mind? She hasn't got two hearts." Jenny stared at the ring, and suddenly – though she had had so much to say up until that point – she fell completely silent. Clara clenched her fist around it to keep it out of Jenny's sight; she did not want her to look at it. "I was showing her it and I dropped it and knelt to pick it up. That's all."

"…Why were you showing her it?"

"For the same reason I've been showing it to Nios. Because I love you so much that the thought of marrying you causes me too much happiness to be able to contain it, and I want to tell everyone how wonderful you are. I was just telling Jane. She thought you sounded great, by the way, but no doubt she thinks you're some lunatic now for pulling this stunt. I hope you're proud of yourself. This is why I didn't tell you where I was, because I knew how you would react about me going to see her – but what was I supposed to do? She finished her last novel _for me_ and dedicated it _to me_ and sent it _to me_ through time, passing it down through her family for about as long as _you've_ been alive, begging _me_ to come and visit her one last time because she knows she's going to die. And she is going to die, she's got a week left to live," Clara lowered her voice considerably, "What would you do if it was Astrid?" Jenny was still wordless, because Clara was right. Clara watched her, and then sighed and put the ring away again, which Jenny noticed.

"What are you doing?"

"Putting it away."

"Why? Aren't you going to ask me?"

"Ask you what?"

"Ask me… _you know_ …"

"No, I don't bloody think so. If you must know, I'm actually having second thoughts right now, because you clearly don't trust me. We saw each other – what? Three, four hours ago? And in that time you've convinced yourself I'm having an affair? Why would you even say yes if you think so low of me? Do you think I would throw away six years like that?"

"Clara…"

"I don't want to hear it right now, to be honest."

"It's just – you've been acting strange! Like you were hiding something! I thought you were trying to make up for something, like you did something bad."

"No, I just really love you and was struggling to keep me proposing a secret. But you've ruined that now, haven't you? And as if you think I would ask you to marry me with my dying ex-girlfriend in the next room. I declined your calls because I'm in 1817 and they don't have phones and I was outside when you were ringing. I did text you."

"You didn't."

"I did, I texted to ask what was wrong, if you were alright," Clara said, getting her phone out to prove she had done this. But in fact, she hadn't. The message was still there, with her usual reams of heartfelt emojis because she sometimes couldn't put her affection for Jenny into words and resorted to sending pictures, sitting in the box waiting for her to press send. Clara sighed and showed it to her. "Alright, I _tried_ to text."

"Oh."

"What's the matter, Jen? Why have you reacted like this?" Clara asked, because now she was worried about Jenny's state of mind. Clara knew she had a bit of an issue with jealousy, but this was ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. "Is something going on with you?"

"…Look, I don't want to blame James, but… did you know he and Sally have split up again?"

"Yes," said Clara stiffly.

"It's just that – I was talking to him and I was asking him about you, because you were acting strange, and he was answering, but he was talking about Sally, and he's saying this stuff like 'women are nice to you when they're trying to make up for something or are about to argue with you.' I shouldn't have listened to him, I don't know why I… this is my fault. I'm sorry. I'm sorry for all this. God, it's…" She pressed her hands into her eyes and looked phenomenally upset. Clara stepped forward and put her arms around her in a hug. She didn't forgive her for her behaviour, not yet, and she was still angry, but it wasn't nice thinking that your significant other was having an affair.

"It's okay," she said, "I'm not cheating on you. But I can see how it would be stressful, me coming here without saying anything about it. I just knew you would have an overreaction like this, but not _this_ bad. Maybe you're working too much? You're just _too_ suspicious of people now." Jenny pushed out of the embrace to narrow her eyes at Clara. "What?"

"You _do_ think I work too much."

"I didn't say that."

"You did!"

"No, I'm just making suggestions – you're fine to work as much as you like, Jenny. I couldn't deprive the mean streets of London from having you around to make them safer," Clara said.

"You don't want me to work less?"

"I wouldn't _complain_ if you wanted to work less, but I don't mind. I mind if you become so bogged down in a quagmire of criminals, evidence and police work that you don't even trust me to tell you the truth about if something was making me upset. That you see me with an engagement ring and the first thing you think is that I'm cheating on you rather than I'm going to _propose_ to you. I was just telling Jane about how oblivious you are to other people's feelings, too."

"…Have I ruined everything?"

"That depends what you mean by 'everything.'"

"Our relationship."

"No, I don't think so. Not quite."

"…How were you going to… you know? Do it?"

"Over breakfast this morning. That's why Nios was cooking and why I wanted you to take the weekend off work," Clara explained, "And then I changed my mind and thought I might bite the bullet and just make reservations at a restaurant – Nios said a seafood restaurant, she suggested that. There's a table booked for half past seven tonight."

"Oh. Can we still…?"

"I'll think about it. While you try to work out how to apologise and explain your behaviour in a way that doesn't make me think you've totally lost your mind." They stopped talking, with Jenny unable to decide what she wanted to say next, what would make everything better. Clara looked at the floor and tried to subdue some of her anger, but she had been telling the truth about having second thoughts because of Jenny's apparent lack of trust. "I'm going to go back to talk to Jane. Are you going to come and meet her properly without screaming at me?"

"I don't know…"

"I want you to meet her properly. Prove that I wasn't lying when I was just telling her all about how wonderful you are."

"…If you really want, then…" Jenny couldn't actually bring herself to say she wanted to meet Jane Austen, but her silence was enough. Clara held out her hand for Jenny to take, which she did. After all, Clara would forgive her eventually, but she was going to make her suffer a bit first. Stew in her guilt for a while longer, until she was so apologetic she exploded.

Clara pushed open the door into Jane's room slowly so as not to startle her, not like Jenny had done kicking it down like it was a murder suspect's flat, and dragged Jenny over to the edge of the bed.

"No – I'd rather stand," she said, tugging her hand free of Clara's. Clara shook her head at her and then returned to her place in the chair at the bedside. Jenny hovered in the shadows just behind her, trying to ignore the fact that Jane Austen was studying her.

"Right, whatever… Jenny, this is Jane Austen, my _ex-_ girlfriend, emphasis on _ex_." Jenny grimaced. "And Jane, this is Jenny Young, my current girlfriend who is very sorry about barging in here like a psycho and accusing me of infidelity."

"Who could blame her? You are a prize flirt. I am charmed to make your acquaintance, Miss Young."

"It's Inspector Young, actually, I told you. She's with the police," Clara said, "I think she prefers Major Young, though."

"Do not try to tell me that women may be soldiers as well in the future, Clara dear. I can stand them marrying each other – but soldiers? With their inherent weaknesses?"

"Never had you pegged for a sexist."

"Pegged?" she asked.

"I mean, I never thought you were a sexist," Clara said. That had always been the problem, things lost in translation. She generally blamed Americanisms slipping into British use.

"If women are not inherently weak then explain my condition. I am only forty-one, you know."

"Medicine's rubbish right now," Clara shrugged, "And maybe you're just pathetic." She laughed slightly. "You're always ill."

"And do you never fall ill?"

"Not for years! When was the last time I was ill, Jen?" Clara asked her. She didn't need to ask her because she knew the answer, but wanted Jenny to at least _try_ to involve herself, instead of standing around brooding. If Jenny could stand around brooding forever then she probably would.

"It was when I broke up with Jack," she said, "I came over and you were full of cold and I had to force you to take the day off work. It was Bonfire Night, 2016."

"See? Years ago."

"You were _quite_ sick though," Jenny pointed out.

"Not as bad as you when you got the flu."

"It was a lot worse than the flu…" she muttered.

"Tell me, if you will, what is it like to be the Doctor's daughter?" Jane asked Jenny, taking her by surprise. But Jane didn't have any gripes with her; all the animosity was something Jenny had imagined for herself.

"I couldn't say, I've never been anyone else's daughter to compare it," Jenny said, and Jane laughed. Jenny was stunned; what had she thought was going to happen? They would get into a fight over Clara? An old-fashioned duel? With swords and pistols? Clara wouldn't be surprised. "I don't know. Everyone tells me I'm just like him."

"You live in his shadow, perhaps?"

"She's two-hundred years old, she's got her own shadow now," Clara quipped, "I think she's way more impressive. She's an acrobat, did I mention?"

"You did."

"She was in the circus. Did the high-wire, in outer space."

"Why did you ever leave?"

"Me?" Jenny asked. Jane and Clara both frowned at her. "I mean – obviously me. Well, just, you know, the usual reasons. Somebody got murdered and it was very nasty business. Then someone else fell in love with me, but they were really mean about it. Shouted at me and said I was so obsessed with my father that I couldn't see what was in front of me. And everyone thought I was a human, and I didn't like being mistaken for a human."

"Obsessed with your father?" Jane asked.

"He abandoned me. Thought I was dead, left me on this planet, never looked for me. Only reconnected recently. He's still trying to make up for it, I think he will be for a long time."

"And why were you ashamed to appear human?"

"I was a lot younger, I was only in my twenties. There's going to be a terrible war, from 1939 to 1945, and a lot of atrocities will be carried out by both sides. I couldn't stand it. I left. It was before I learnt that more or less every species go to war like that."

"But you were a soldier?"

"I believed in the cause that time," Jenny answered rigidly. She hated talking about herself, Clara could tell. No doubt she wouldn't say a word if she didn't know that Jane would be dead within a week. "I defected eventually. There was an incident." She was referring to the Polaris Death Charge, but there was no point bringing all that up. Even Clara barely followed the politics of that conflict. "Sometimes you have to do grey things in order to make a difference for the better."

"It's totally hot when you're all ambiguous like that," Clara told her. She blushed slightly. Clara didn't think Jane noticed this.

"Grey how?" Jane inquired.

"I don't like to talk about myself," she finally said.

"The best kind of person is one who doesn't like to talk about themselves. Clara has hardly said a word about herself during the duration of her entire visit today. Everything she says has been about you," Jane told her. "Which is a stark change from the ordinary."

"Are you implying I'm vain?" Clara asked her.

"Not implying, stating."

" _I'm_ vain? I'm not the one who names all of the prettiest, kindest, most popular characters in all of my stories after myself, am I, _Jane_? Jane Bennet, Jane Fairfax, to name a few?"

"Coincidence."

"Of course it is."

"You, dear," Jane addressed Jenny again, "Seem to be a person with a great many stories she will never tell to anybody. I suppose I will have to believe you about being a military man, you have all the habits of a war hero. Modesty in the utmost."

"And you seem to tell too many stories," Jenny said quietly. This, again, made Jane laugh. She was very good-humoured, really. After all, she was on her deathbed and still managing to hold a conversation. Clara sighed, and began to think about things again. She took Jane's hand gently when she next spoke.

"I'm not sure how much longer I can stay," she said, conscious of Jenny. "But if you want me to, you know, just say the word. Or if you want me to keep coming back every day, until-"

"I won't hear of it," she said, "I wanted to see you one last time, dearest. I do not wish for you to bear witness to my decay, which I am holding off with great effort at this moment. The doctors have said I may only have days. Cassandra and Henry are both here, after all. I could not bear if you saw me leave this world, especially when you yourself have faced and defeated death before."

"You can't defeat it, there are always side-effects," Clara said, "Are you sure?"

"Perhaps you will stay a while longer, just today? Tell me more about your time away, your adventures – I do love to hear of them. Give me some wonderful scenes to imagine while I lay here in my bed. I am afraid I am too weak to even so much as draw back the curtains and take in the sunlight."

"Sure, Jane. Whatever you want. I'm here."


	157. Another Girl Another Planet XXIII

_Another Girl Another Planet XXIII_

 _Ravenwood_

The rain had subsided a little in the afternoon while she had been away, Jenny told her, but by the evening it was dark out and they were in the middle of a storm. Thunder and lightning was forecast for the night, and the black clouds blocked out the moon and the stars. She could see nothing but car headlamps gliding past like ghosts, the cars themselves blotted out by the inky night, through the soaking window pane of the restaurant.

"I hope no one notices," said Jenny, looking at the window as well. She was talking about the mirror image in the glass, one of an attractive young blonde wearing her best dress with her makeup done to perfection, having a romantic dinner with a spectre who did not appear in the duplicated picture. Clara's food shifted around her plate and disappeared, and her chair was pulled out. Waiters spoke to the unoccupied space and smiled and brought more drinks. Long ago she had gotten used to not having a reflection; Jenny would sometimes sketch her, but rarely.

"They won't. They'll be too busy looking at you in the glass to notice that I'm not there," Clara did her most charming smile, "You look beautiful. Really, you do. The belle of the ball." Jenny looked down at her plate to hide her blush, fidgeting with her mussels and shoving them around the plate. Clara was eating calamari because it was her favourite. Unbeknownst to Jenny, Clara didn't have the engagement ring on her anymore, she had hidden it away in their bedroom again. "Tell you what I love – those lobster rolls. You remember when you used to go all the way to Maine just to get those lobster rolls for me and Esther?"

"I still would, but I'd feel bad about having them without Esther around."

"She'll have to show her face soon. Sally's spiralling and I miss her, it's been months. She's never visited since we moved."

"It's just a few more years until the HCC goes bust," Jenny reminded her, which she had to remind Clara often. In fact, it was something they had to remind each other, because they both found themselves appalled by the treatment of Manifests. It was like living in America during the Red Scares, shipped off to Guantanamo for a stray comment about being partial to vodka and ushunkas.

"I want her help with powering the hotel to keep it off the grid," Clara said, "There's only so much perception filters and transdimensional technology can do." Really, Clara just missed her. She missed living just down the road from Sally and Esther, though she did enjoy having Nios just down the hall, and sometimes Dr Cohen, who _hated_ Other Her but _loved_ asking questions about what it was like to be a vampire. Clara couldn't work out of Dr Cohen was building up the courage to ask her to bite her; she was surprised Jane Austen hadn't asked her to bite her; Sally Sparrow never _stopped_ asking her to bite her.

Thunder rumbled outside. Clara liked storms. She liked that they now slept in the attic instead of the cellar she could listen to the rain drumming on the roof; it gave her an excuse to stay awake longer talking to Jenny, whispering sweet nothings while the clouds revolted above. She ate another morsel of squid. Traffic was backing up in the road, and now there were red and orange lights rippling in the waterfall-window. A memory rose to the surface and she nudged Jenny underneath the table with her foot.

"Tell me about your big case. Is it going to show up in the papers?" Her scrapbook of news clippings had come to mind.

"Oh," Jenny smiled slightly, pleased that Clara had asked, "Yeah, definitely. Might be front page news, but I'll only be a footnote. I told Turner to give James most of the credit."

"Really? That's noble."

"Not at all," Jenny shook her head, talking with her mouth full. She chewed her food and swallowed it before resuming, "He did nearly all the work, made most of the breakthroughs. He wants a promotion, anyway."

"He'd be your boss."

"I wouldn't mind," she shrugged, "I can have a boss. It'd be like you and Dylan. Anyway, Keegan and Holloway were put on these overdose cases because they thought it was some new and incredibly dangerous street drug…" Jenny told her the whole story of her day, of the 'skin bags full of goo' and of she and Elliott's impeccable good cop bad cop routine where they weaselled information out of a drug dealer, and then finally their heroic and legendary bust of Needles Phelps.

"D'you ever feel like a traitor? Like, you were raised into an organised crime family? And now you work with the police?"

"I always told Viola to stay out of narcotics."

"Do you, though?"

"Not like a _traitor_ so much, but more like I don't really belong with the police. Like there's something fake about me. Which there is, because I'm faking being a human. Any other questions?" Jenny asked. Clara saw _that_ coming a mile off, a complete diversion of the conversation into proposal territory. She had a look in her eye, a kind of sparkle.

"Like what?" Clara pretended not to know what Jenny meant.

"Like, you know. Questions."

"Do you think Sally and Elliott will stay broken up for good this time?" she asked. It was a question, so Jenny couldn't really complain, though she did have an excellent look of disappointment about her, like a puppy being denied a treat. Clara had made up her mind, anyway, she was not going to propose. Not tonight, not any time Jenny would see it coming.

"I hope they will, they're bad for each other. James already tried to pick up two different people today, a boy and a girl, and he says he wants to sort out his priorities and start putting his career first. Hence his new aim to get a promotion. But no, I'll give it a week until one of them caves and begs the other to get into bed with them," Jenny said, "Which is bad, because I told James he could stay with us."

"Wait, _what_?" Clara hadn't heard anything about this.

"He slept in his car last night, Clara. Besides, what if they _do_ stay broken up for good? He'll just live in his car? We own a hotel."

" _I_ own a hotel, Ashildr gave _me_ the deed," Clara reminded her. "It's fine. Just stick him in one of the en suite rooms and tell him not to ask Nios to cook for him or he'll end up castrated. And if Sally shows up at night begging…"

"I'm sure you'll love to eavesdrop on them going at it." Clara glared at her. "Do you really not mind?"

"If he stays for too long I'll just start charging him for the room. Why would I mind? He's really hot. Maybe we _won't_ put him in an en suite room – if we do that then I can 'accidentally' bump into him when he's on his way back from showering," Clara said, "I might accidentally pull down his towel and then accidentally take a photo of his dick."

"For what possible reason?"

"Like, uh… I could send it to Sally."

"She's probably got pictures of it already."

"I'll send it to you, then."

"What?"

"When you're at work, and you're talking to him, I'll just text you a picture of his dick and you'll see it and then you'll have to carry on talking to him and act like you didn't just get sent a picture of his dick."

"…You know what, maybe James can keep living in his car. Because I'm concerned about him charging you with something and then you'll end up on the sex offenders register for the rest of your immortality." Clara smiled a little as Jenny's focus waned and she wound up staring out of the window watching the progression of the storm again. Clara had nearly finished eating her slithery chunks of squid; she wondered what Jenny was thinking about, but whenever she asked she rarely got a straight answer, only a vague half-finished thought.

"Hey, so, I saw this video today," Jenny returned as soon as Clara began talking, "It's like this bowl of rice, yeah? And there's a squid on it with no brain and they poured stuff on it and it started dancing. And it was dead, and they were totally going to eat it." Jenny laughed, and Clara couldn't work out whether she was laughing _at_ her or not. "What?"

Jenny shook her head slightly, grinning – she had been done eating around ten minutes ago. "You're so adorable. It's called Odori-Don, it's Japanese. They usually use cuttlefish, actually. The soy-sauce has a lot of salt in it and it reacts with the muscle cells and makes it move even without a brain. Do you want me to make it? Is that why you brought it up?"

"No, I didn't know what it was, I thought I'd ask you. You know everything about food."

She laughed again, "I don't. Why didn't you google it?"

"I like listening to you explain things. Anyway, I've thought of a question," she said, putting down the cutlery on her plate. Jenny perked up immediately, sitting up straight and failing to hide her hopeful expression. As if she thought Clara was really going to propose like _that_. "Do you want to get dessert?"

"Oh," Jenny's face fell.

"What's up? You don't want dessert?"

"I just thought you were going to ask something else."

"Like what? More drinks? I could actually go for another G&T. What are you drinking?"

"Lemonade."

"With what?"

"With… ice?" Jenny said uncertainly.

"I thought it had vodka in it?"

"Uh, no, it's just lemonade. There was this whole thing with this old Sprite warehouse earlier, so…"

"Oh. Maybe I won't have another G&T, then. I don't want to wind up drunk if you're sober," Clara said, picking up the drinks menu again and looking for the alcohol-free section. "There's a ton of mocktails, do you want to get mocktails to share?"

"Sure. You pick something."

"Okay, then I pick… blueberry and elderflower." This was a good choice, because Jenny loved elderflower. Clara thought it was okay, and she could abide by it, but there were no other mocktails that she even remotely liked the look of. "Do you want dessert, though?"

"Do _you_ want dessert?"

"Yes."

"Let's get something to share," Jenny suggested.

"No. I'm not sharing food with you, I've made that mistake in the past. You just eat it all and then I can't even complain about it because you're cute. I'm sick of it. No way."

"Let's get the profiterole tower – do they do profiteroles? We can just split half of them and then-"

"Listen, lovely, if you want profiteroles then you can get some for yourself. I want some ice cream."

"Maybe _I_ want ice cream."

"Then I'll have cake."

"I could go for cake."

" _Oh my god_. Stop it," she was laughing, "Stop it, stop it. I'm ordering you profiteroles, okay? You can have a whole profiterole tower to yourself because I'm treating you now for your big case today. And I'm going to have sticky toffee pudding because it's freezing out there. Hey?" she waved down a nearby waiter with a smile and gave him their new orders. He took the dirty plates away with him as he left. It was so busy in there, it was the sort of place where there were so many people that everybody went unnoticed. It reminded her of something Scott Fitzgerald once wrote. "Do you definitely have the rest of the weekend off?"

"Yeah. Unless, I don't know, there's an emergency. Like riots in the streets, or something."

"Don't jinx it."

"There's this storm out, if it's a bad storm their might be looting. But – I'm joking, though. I mean, there could be looting, but I'll turn my phone off. Well, I won't turn my phone off in case James actually _does_ decide he needs a room, but he'll probably just go out and have something to drink and then beg Sally to let him inside."

"Inside her pants."

"Oh wow, you're hilarious."

"You know it, babe," Clara winked at her. Jenny pretended to be annoyed for a moment, but couldn't fight the smile away.

"Don't call me 'babe.'"

"Sure thing, babe. Whatever you want, babe. Oh look, babe – our drinks are here, babe," Clara said as a different waiter descended on them with a pitcher of elderflower and blueberry and two fresh glasses. Jenny half-pouted and half-glared at her. Clara poured two glasses and then took a sip, wincing when the elderflower vastly overpowered the blueberry; she had been hoping it would be the other way around.

"You don't like elderflower," Jenny pointed out.

"It's _okay_."

"You should have got something else."

" _You_ like elderflower," Clara said.

"I could drink the whole thing, you know – just go get another G&T. Do you want me to go order you one?"

" _You_? No, you'll get ID'd again." That had happened before, because she did look _quite_ young.

"It was like, _one time_ I got ID'd," Jenny said, "And I had psychic paper, so it didn't even matter."

"You're being too accommodating."

"I'm just trying to make up for today," she said eventually, "I've made a mess."

"Jen, it's fine. It's okay."

"You're not angry anymore?"

"I don't really know. I'm kind of out of focus. I mean, she's going to die, I might never see her alive again," Clara sighed. She had been thinking about in the back of her mind all day, but thought it would be disrespectful to try and forget about it. She had read about Jane's death on her Wikipedia page many times, but now it seemed a lot more real. Probably because it was.

"Oh, yeah…" There was a flash of lightning outside which rendered Clara briefly blind, it was like someone shining a laser pointer in your eye. It was so disorienting, the explosion of light brighter than the sun, that she didn't brace herself for the thunder. This was especially loud and right in her ear, so two of her senses were knocked out of commission by the bad weather. Her disorientation ended in a few moments when somebody was clicking their fingers in front of her face and saying her name. "Clara? Are you okay?"

"God, yeah. Sorry." She rubbed her head.

"We really should have sat further away from the window," Jenny said.

"They didn't ask me where I preferred when I called to book this morning. And I like looking out of the window."

"Maybe you shouldn't have boarded up all the windows in the hotel, then," she suggested jokingly.

"I love the rain. And the thunder." It was then that their desserts came, nice and prompt, and Clara occupied herself by shovelling as much _very_ delicious sticky toffee pudding into her face as was physically possible. Jenny was doing something similar with her ghastly mountain of profiteroles, and they were both eating too much to really talk.

"Are you going to ask?" Jenny spoke a good while later, when she was just scraping up the last dregs of her chocolate sauce and licking the spoon clean.

"Ask what?" Clara frowned, playing dumb. Jenny put down the spoon.

"You know what."

"…Oh, you mean-? Am I going to ask you to marry me?" Clara ate another chunk of warm sponge.

"Yeah."

"I don't think so. Not today."

"But – I thought that was why we came here?"

"It was going to be – but I just want a nice evening," Clara said, "We've both had a rough day. We deserve something nice." But Jenny didn't seem happy about this. "I haven't even got the ring on me."

"That's because I want it on _me_."

"Ooh, nice one."

"Thanks," she paused and thought, watching Clara eat, "Maybe I'll just ask you, then."

"Ask me what?" Jenny scowled.

"Ask _you_ to marry _me_."

"You wouldn't do that."

"I would!"

"Go on, then," Clara challenged.

It took Jenny a long time, a lot of deliberation, and Clara thought she had every muscle in her body tightly clenched and constricted when she said, "Will you marry me?" It was a monumental moment.

Clara smiled at her, "No."

"Wha-!? What do you mean, 'no'!?"

"You haven't got a ring! And you didn't get down on one knee."

"You're totally being mean."

"I'm totally doing it on purpose. Look, I'm not going to propose here because you'll see it coming. You're waiting for it every time I open my mouth, and I want to catch you out. Plus, you know, I hate to keep bringing her up – but I sort of _don't_ want the date I ask my girlfriend to marry me to be the same anniversary as the last time I saw Jane Austen alive…"

"Oh, yeah. Right – no, I get that," said Jenny, nodding. There was another flash of lightning outside, which again served to make Clara woozy. Woozier than before. "You know what, I want to get out of here. Out of the storm."

"Really? We've still got loads of drinks left."

"Forget the drinks, you don't like them anyway. We've got drinks at home."

"Why are you so eager to leave?" Clara puzzled.

"I was _thinking_ about seeing if you would get off with me in the toilets, but this storm is only supposed to get worse and worse. I'm gonna call a taxi."

"Don't do that."

"So you want to get the bus?"

"It's not that far home," said Clara.

"In this weather? You want to walk?"

"What? You're scared of a little rain?"

"I'm not scared of anything."

"Except ladybirds."

"Hey!"

"And rain."

"I'm not scared of the rain."

"Prove it," Clara challenged, "Prove you don't have something against getting wet."

" _Why_ did you have to phrase it like that?"

Clara leant on her elbow and looked at Jenny very intensely, smirking. "Come on. I've got my umbrella. Let's just walk back. Save money. I think it looks like a nice night. Don't be wimp."

"Fine. You're on. I'll get the bill."

* * *

"Okay, I admit it, this was totally a bad idea," Clara said through laughter a brief while later, as they walked through the steadily flooding streets huddled tightly underneath the umbrella, dragging their feet through the overflow from the drains now sloshing over the pavements. They were both having to hold onto the umbrella to keep it from blowing away in the gale force winds which, Jenny was right, were only supposed to get worse as the night progressed.

"We should have got a taxi," she called loudly over the wind. It was like being in a hurricane.

"Are you kidding me? They'll charge double in this weather. No, no – a little rain never hurt anybody," Clara said.

"It did, like in that film."

"What film?"

"You know – that one with all the water. And there's the kid and he has the paper boat, and it gets pulled into the storm drain and then there's that evil killer clown, and it rips his arm off and then he bleeds to death. You know – what's it called… _Finding Nemo_."

" _Finding_ -!? You mean _IT_."

"I mean _Finding Nemo_."

"That's the animated one where the clownfish with the bad fin gets lost."

"In a storm drain."

"Not in a storm drain."

"Look, they both have water in them, they're like, the same film. And _Waterworld_."

" _Waterworld_ is about global warming."

" _Yeah_ , but it's got water in it," Jenny said knowingly.

"So does _Titanic_ , what's your point?"

"That water has hurt people."

"I said _rain_ never hurt anybody, it didn't rain in _Titanic_ ," Clara pointed out. And that was the moment that the wind picked up again and a powerful gust blew straight at them and sent Clara's umbrella into oblivion. Not that the umbrella had been doing a particularly good job anyway since the rain was basically going sideways, but it was her favourite umbrella. Her one she used to block out the sun. "No, no! Wait here, I'll fly after it."

"Don't do that!" Jenny exclaimed, "You're so tiny when you're a bat, the wind will kill you! Like when birds always fly into the Statue of Liberty and die because the big light disorients them."

"It's nothing like that."

"Clara, please, just – let's go home, leave the umbrella, I'll get you a new one, I'll run out in the morning, okay?" Jenny pleaded with her, taking her hand. Clara turned back and met her eyes; she wasn't wearing waterproof mascara, so it was running and it made her look like she had been crying. For some reason, this made Clara laugh. "What?"

"C'mere, lovely," she took Jenny's other hand and leant in to kiss her, with freezing cold rain pouring down onto them, meaning they were both soaked to the skin in just a few seconds of the umbrella having blown away. "Tell you what film _I_ like about rain," she said quietly, or as quietly as she could with the storm raging around them (not actually that quietly), " _Singin' in the Rain_. Totally romantic."

"Do you forgive me yet?"

"Hmm, I don't know. I'll have to think about it. I think if you kiss me again, that might take up the amount of time it would take to-" Jenny pressed her lips to Clara's and cut her off completely, and soon enough Clara forgot all about the cold and the rain and Jane Austen and even about her long-lost umbrella.


	158. Another Girl Another Planet XXIV

**DAY 2,237**

 _Another Girl Another Planet XXIV_

 _Jenny_

Jenny could not remember the last time she had been allowed to sleep in without being woken up by a ringtone or an alarm. She really _could not_ remember. A new day was dawning and she didn't think she had ever felt so well-rested before, so engorged and bloated on sweet, blissful sleep that she was practically woozy, and strained to remember what had happened the night before to put her in such a wonderful state of mind. They had walked home staggering into each other during the biggest storm of the year, through flooded nooks of Soho and Fitzrovia, laughing and lovesick. They had collapsed into bed after a hot shower and were so exhausted that they both fell fast asleep right away, wrapped up together as the gale force winds howled outside and rain cascaded onto the roof like bullets, bombs and shrapnel. Only Clara's presence could make Jenny drift into a deep sleep in a situation as loud as an active warzone.

She wanted to go back to sleep so badly, but the desire to see Clara now that she had thought about her and how fantastic she was enticed her powerfully enough to open her eyes. And she was shocked by what she saw. Just yesterday, she had burst into Jane Austen's bedroom as she lay there, frail and dying, and saw Clara kneeling on the floor with a glittering engagement ring in her hands. The same ring she had later thrust bitterly into Jenny's face, boasting about the romantic inscription and her plans and her schemes – and then, before she could get a proper look at it and drink in all of its features and its feeling, it had been removed from her sight and hidden by Clara again. Until that moment, that precise moment, when Jenny opened her eyes to see her left hand on the vacant pillow next to her, with that same shimmering, ebony-coloured jewel nestled comfortably on her finger.

Clara spoke, "I hope I'm not being too presumptuous by putting the ring on you before you really had a chance to say yes." She was sitting with her feet up on the bed at the side, in the comfortable old chair she usually had wedged underneath her crooked writing desk in the corner. She had a book in her hands, but she put it down when it was clear that Jenny had woken up. Jenny was intoxicated looking at the black diamond. It looked like outer space and it twinkled like there were a million microscopic stars and galaxies swirling around inside.

"…Maybe I'll say no."

"Good morning to you, too," Clara laughed. She didn't think Jenny would say no, and honestly, Jenny didn't think she had the capacity to say no, even as a brief joke. Clara watched her and she couldn't decide what she thought was prettier at that precise moment, the vampire or the ring. "Do you like it? I didn't know if you would like a black diamond or if you would think it was tacky."

"No-one's ever got me a diamond ring before."

"But do you, though?"

"It reminds me of you," she smiled, entranced. She felt like a character in a treasure-hunting flick who could never quite resist the temptation of the gaudy, cursed artifact, and stole it only to perish in some grisly yet completely avoidable manner. "Like the scarf."

"That's just what Nios said you would think…" Clara cleared her throat and then stood up, "Anyway, I suppose I'd better do my due diligence and do this properly, yeah?" She picked up her chair and dropped it back down on the wonky section of floorboards where her desk rested. "Floor's kind of dusty over here… oh well." And then she made Jenny _gasp_ – literally, audibly gasp, which was wholly embarrassing – by dropping to one knee. Jenny hasted to sit up in bed as Clara took her left hand in both of her own.

"You don't really have to-"

"I absolutely do have to, so be quiet. Let me think, I wrote this down… I have a whole _thing_ , you see, to say. I've been practicing it in the shower when you're out," Clara explained. Jenny made an 'aw' sound like she was watching a video of tiny kittens crawling over each other on the internet somewhere. "Okay. Here goes. Jenny: the second ever thing I noticed about you is that you are an amazing shag. Seriously, mind-blowing, probably the best coitus in the history of, like, everything-"

"You wrote this down?"

" _Yes_ , it's very sincere, alright? You're the best coitus in the history of everything. The _first_ thing I ever noticed about you is that you're blonde and I _love_ that. And it's crazy to think that we slept together before we actually had a proper conversation, and that the happiest moments of my life have all come out of a bet you had with your toxic ex-husband. It's also crazy that people always warn against going out with somebody who's cheated before and they kept reminding me of it like you were going to do it to me – but honestly, I never thought you would, I've never worried about that once. I'm so glad you made that ridiculous bet, I'm so glad that I was made into a trophy in a bizarre alien sex game, and I'm so glad that I became a poisonous home-wrecker and we're a completely chaotic pairing – I'm glad about all that because I'm in love with you and I have been for years and I don't care how messy and ridiculous we look to other people. I mean, you're an alien and I'm a vampire for god's sake, that's pretty ridiculous. Plus your father is married to me from another universe and he used to be my best friend – it's insane that we work together, it's so insane that we're going to have to get it in writing, you know, legally, just to check that it's even real.

"I remember when I first told you that I wanted to marry you one day, and promising that I'd get you a real ring and it would be special and meaningful, and how I said that after losing everything that had been important to me before except for you and my dad when I died, the only thing to really aim for anymore was one day marrying you. And that's been my goal, and even though we're not in some fancy seafood restaurant anymore or at the top of the Eiffel Tower or over Niagara Falls and we're just in our crooked, wooden bedroom in this rickety hotel my ex-girlfriend gave me, I'm still trying my hardest to make sure that this is a moment we can both remember and we can look back on as being heartfelt instead of overdone or cliché. I don't care where we are or when we are, the only thing I care about is that we're together and that we're happy. And that _you're_ finally happy, after going through so much, you know, strife and so many difficulties in your life. If I can ease the burden you carry around with you even just a tiny bit, then I'll dedicate my life to doing that. It's a miracle that we've found each other and that the universe aligned just enough to give us both this perfect chance at happiness, after both of us falling through time and space and tragedy and often feeling totally alone, and if I ever lost you I don't know what I would do. Plus, since I'm a vampire, I'm really limited with dating options so we sort of _have_ to get married, like, logically."

"Of course," Jenny laughed. She had tears in her eyes, and she wiped one away from her cheek with the back of her hand. Clara was trying not to fall into the same weepy trap, but it was a struggle.

"So, then. Jenny Young, Jenny DeLacey, Jenny Kitzler, Jenny Harkness, Jenny Valentine, Jenny Acallaris, Jenny Raxis, Jenny Howler – Jenny Whatever-You-Want-Your-Name-to-Be – what do you say? Will you marry me?"

"Yes, obviously, of course I will, one-hundred percent!" Jenny declared, then Clara lunged for her and hugged her tightly and with such force they toppled backwards into the bed together again, and Jenny laughed and cried at the same time while Clara kissed the side of her face two-dozen times, grinning. "I didn't have much choice, you already put the ring on me."

"Ha, ha. Very funny," Clara said, brushing away one of Jenny's tears. Jenny sniffed.

"I'm sorry, it's stupid to cry."

"It's not stupid at all, lovely," Clara said softly, holding her. "I'm totally on the brink of crying myself. I mean, I, unlike you, have never been married before. It's super exciting. _But_ , that reminds me, I've got a present for you."

"A present!? What? Do you mean apart from the engagement ring!?" Jenny exclaimed as Clara let her go and went to crawl across the bed to dig through the end table. Jenny sat up again to watch what she was doing. Clara pushed papers around and all the other junk she kept in there, like half a dozen watches she never wore and a hundred old receipts, until she dragged out something wooden Jenny recognised as her jewellery box. "What are you looking for?" Clara didn't answer, just opened the box and fished around in it. She had quite a lot of jewellery, and Jenny didn't have any, she didn't even have her ears pierced despite people constantly trying to persuade her.

"Found it," she declared, balling something up in her fist and then putting the box down on top of the end table, nearly knocking her alarm clock off in the process. "You remember ages ago, when I said I'd propose but you'd have to get me a ring as well because I'm not _not_ wearing an engagement ring?"

"Vaguely."

"Well, here you go," Clara held out her hand, and in her palm sat another ring with a much more modest diamond in it. It was scuffed and looked old.

"You bought two engagement rings?"

"No, no, this is… it's my mother's," Clara said, "From my dad. And it was my gran's before that, it's old. Not as old as you, I don't think, but it's been in my family for a long time, just descending down the Oswalds." Jenny took it and looked at it.

"Okay, so, you want me to get down on one knee and make a speech too, or-?"

"Oh, no, you can just put it on my finger."

"You couldn't have put it on your own finger?"

" _No_ , that's not how it works," Clara laughed holding out her hand.

"Whatever you say," Jenny just agreed with her and slid the ring down Clara's finger.

"I love it, you're so thoughtful," Clara quipped.

"Yeah, so, uh, when do you want to get married, then?"

" _When_?"

"Yeah."

"…Hadn't really thought about it."

"Oh. What _have_ you thought of?"

"Not much. I've thought that I can't get married in a church or in any kind of even remotely religious ceremony?" she suggested, "We don't have to talk about that now, there's, like, no rush. I mean, I don't want to rush. I want to enjoy being engaged and having a _fiancée_ because 'fiancée' is such a great word. Don't you think 'girlfriend' sounds totally boring compared to 'fiancée'?"

"Not 'wife'?"

"Aww, look at you," Clara touched her cheek, "You're so cute."

"Weddings take a _lot_ of planning though."

"And we don't have to start now."

"Are you sure?"

"Do _you_ want to start now?"

"Like… kind of?" she said, "I'm excited!" She beamed, but Clara's expression changed to one Jenny could not read at all, like she was thinking very hard about something. She almost looked sombre. "What's wrong?"

"I have to tell you something," she began seriously, taking her hand again and then lowering her voice, "I didn't tell you sooner because I didn't want to, like, ruin this whole thing and taint it, but… you know how you let James stay here? And you said Sally might show up trying to jump his bones? Well, that totally happened. _Is_ happening. I didn't bring it up because I know you can't hear it, but _I_ can hear it and it's very annoying. Do you want to get out of here?"

"Uh… let's have a barbecue. On the moon."

"Barbecue?"

"There's emergency barbecue supplies downstairs."

"What? There are?"

"Of course there are! You can't _plan_ a barbecue, it has to be spontaneous because of the weather. You always have to be ready for it. We've got coal, firelighters, burgers, steaks – alligator steaks, my favourite."

"I like the barbecue part, but not so much the moon part."

"Well, I'll compromise. We can have a barbecue wherever _you_ want."

"How about some empty, desert island somewhere, yeah? On the beach. We can look at the stars, and it'll be warm even at night. And we can wear bikinis."

"You just want to stare at me in a bikini."

" _Literally_ yes, that's the only thing I care about. Please wear the blue one. Bikinis are great, they're like underwear but you can wear them in public, and it's fine? You know, at a pool or whatever, and there's kids there around their mother who's like, half naked. And then if that was at home, everybody would be like, 'that's weird, she just sits in her house in a bra and knickers all day.' But if it's a _waterproof_ bra and knickers then no-one minds."

"You have too much free time, you know. You just think about kids' mums without any clothes on?"

"Sometimes I think about _your_ mum without any clothes on."

Jenny glared at her, "Don't say stuff like that about my mum."

"I didn't. I just think it. And I bet she thinks the same about me, too."

"God. Why did I just agree to marry you?"

"Easy. Because you're pathetic and you love me."

"Mmm, and I always will."

 **AN: Quick poll. What do you guys think should happen to Sally Sparrow in the future? I can't decide whether she should end up becoming a vampire or not – which would happen as a result of her suffering some grave injury/disease and having to be bitten to save her as a last resort. Because I feel like that's lazy, but then I'd feel bad for Esther being left alone again, plus if Ravenwood is the one who bites her there could be some hilarious side-effects like she has to do what Clara tells her to do and stuff. The only reason she's never been mentioned in any of the future Clarteen storylines is that I can't work out if she's dead or not.**


	159. Remote Viewing

**AN: So I have rewritten this chapter completely, that's why it's taken me a few days to update, because I nearly had the next one finished before I realised I really didn't like the whole thing. And Adwin were fighting in the original draft of this and I never like them fighting, I vastly prefer this version to the last one. Although, there was a great joke in the draft of the next one which now won't involve the Spooks at all, where Sally's eating a month-old chocolate mousse and Adam says that's gross and she says that "sell-by dates are a conspiracy to increase food wastage and make people spend more money on more food when the food they had was already fine."**

 **DAY 157**

 _Remote Viewing_

 _Adam_

"Do you have to do that, babe? You know it scares him," Oswin said disapprovingly, watching Adam Mitchell drive a remote-controlled BB-8 around the floor in front of the sofas after Sprite. Sprite reacted to the BB-8 the same way a small dog would, by jumping around in fright. He would bark if he had the vocal capacity; as it was he kept beeping. Oswin sat on the sofa with her feet up – both of them, prosthesis attached even though it was mildly uncomfortable – drawing diagrams and writing equations on a tablet with an electronic pen. " _Mitchell_ ," she said sternly, and he looked at her. "Leave him be. C'mere." She held her hand down to the floor and waved her hand a little so that Sprite came to be rescued, crawling up her and perching on the cushion she was leaning on, next to her head. Sprite bleeped in her ear. "I _know_ , he _is_ a nasty boy."

"Hey!" Adam protested, "I'm only kidding."

"He doesn't know that. He's like a child. You're like one of those people who makes fun of toddlers to their faces because you think they don't understand, or they'll forget, when actually they're a lot more intuitive than you give them credit for. And so is Sprite," she said. He put down the remote on the carpet next to the toy he had bought because he was bored a few days ago, and ambled around the sofa to see what Oswin was up to.

"Since when did you know so much about children?"

"Since I have four younger brothers," she answered, getting back to her equations. He stood there for a few moments watching, his hands in his dressing gown pockets. He was trying to work out what she was drawing but didn't want to ask, in some odd test he had concocted all on his own for him to prove himself and his intelligence. Ultimately, he could not deduce it.

"Whatcha doodling?"

"I don't know, it's sort of like… if you have some clay, and you just know you want to sculpt something, but you don't really know what it is. It's kind of an… atmosphere controller. Or modifier. I'm worried that they don't have very good meteorological equipment on Eslilia, when I was wondering about the chemical content of the air. They _do_ want to study the planet, after all," she explained. Well, sort of explained. "I don't know. You said you'd help with it, I figured _you_ might want to tackle the whole water-purification problem. Water purifiers are way easier to build, anyway."

"Oh, so you assign me the easy task?"

"You can do whatever you like," she smiled, looking at her drawings, "But you made a commitment to my ex-girlfriend. And remember, the last two people who made commitments to Flek abandoned her and flew off into oblivion in stolen space shuttles and broke her tiny pink-haired heart." No pressure, then.

"Yeah…"

"It's a frontier colony, they need all the help they can get. It's a notoriously dangerous venture. That's why the first colony on Titan failed, they were just unprepared. Thought they'd be able to mine the planet for water but the drills weren't durable enough, and that's after centuries of in-depth scientific analysis. Can you imagine the problems they're facing on a completely unchartered planet?" she made some large strokes on her drawing, but it just looked like a lot of abstract shapes surrounded by scrawled, illegible strips of algebra. He really did often feel stupid around Oswin, which was no fault of hers because as long as he had known her she had never attempted to undermine somebody. Except the Doctor sometimes, but the Doctor could sometimes be very pompous and often needed taking down a peg or two.

"I've played _Mass Effect: Andromeda_. I know about colonising new places."

"Ooh, that's the one with the sexy blue ladies, isn't it? I _like_ the sexy blue ladies. And that Scottish one – oof, what a daydream. She sounds like Cohen," Oswin said, focusing on her schematics all the while. For a moment he thought she would wolf-whistle, but she rose above his low expectations and did nothing of the sort. "Is that the game where that hoodie I always steal from you is from?"

"Eh, sort of – the N7 one is from the original trilogy. You mean the one with the cowl neck?"

"In the future, all hoodies have cowl necks," she told him curtly. He wondered if this was true, but they so rarely went on trips to her century he couldn't really judge. Well, except to nose around Eslilia. _She_ went on trips to her century, when she paid visits to Fyn, but he often didn't go with her (though she did ask him to quite frequently.)

"I kind of love it when you mention being from the future."

She laughed, "Guess what?"

"What?"

" _I'm from the future_ ," she flashed a smile his way, a very valuable smile because she was doing her best to keep her eyes and her attention on her blueprints. Sprite scurried away and down her fake leg to perch on her foot, which drew Adam's eyes to her _other_ foot, with its deep, jagged scars and three toes.

"Is it weird not having a big toe?" he asked her, and she laughed again.

"You know, nobody else ever asks me this stuff. Even Clara never asks me weird questions about my legs."

"Do you mind?"

"Nah. Barely being able to walk doesn't bother me so much. I mean, sure it bothers me, but it's not like I was an athlete before, or like I ever even left my bedroom. Ultimately, having half a leg or thereabouts hasn't changed things for me _that much_. Although, it _is_ weird not having a big toe. Do you know how central they are to your balance? _Very_. Like when you have an inner ear infection and you keep banging into things. The not-having-any-sex-organs thing that comes with being a hologram is significantly _more_ debilitating. I was thinking about painting my toenails, though."

"Only the middle two even _have_ nails, the little one is all… skin," he said, squinting at it.

"Oh, yeah. They had to remove the nail about a year after they put my leg back together in the first place. Badly, I might add – and here Flek has the nerve to say _I'm_ bad at performing emergency surgery. I think I gouged Jenny's eyes out very effectively," she grumbled, "Anyway, the thing about the nail was – actually, this is gross. Are you _sure_ you want to hear it?"

"Uh… yep," he said, though in reality, he was not sure. If Oswin thought something was gross, the chances are it was horrific and certainly not fit for human consumption.

"Well it just sort of went all funny, and it was twisted and ingrowing – wasn't nice. And then Flek – the scoundrel – she wouldn't let me keep the nail after they removed it and cauterised the nail bed to stop it growing back. Not that it was very big, but still. Yet another part of me chipped away by the Dust War. Tell you what else I haven't got: a kneecap. My fibula is basically a metal rod, and half of my tibia is random bone segments all screwed together with titanium alloy. And then the femur – don't get me started on that, it's even worse. They put these metal plates over it to keep it together but it's made it go sort of bowed. Luckily for me, most of my right thigh has incredibly severe nerve damage so I can't feel any of that mess. Hooray."

"God, Oswin, I… shouldn't have asked about it."

"Why?" she frowned. She didn't seem all that harrowed about going into detail about what had been done to her messy, damaged leg. "Personally, I think they should have saved themselves the hassle and amputated both of them. But I didn't get much say in it because I was unconscious and slowly dying at the time. That's doctors for you, trying to 'save' it. _Is_ it saved, though? _Really_? It's a fifty-fifty shot every day of whether the entire limb is numb or if it hurts beyond belief. Whatever. I suppose it's my own fault for trying to blow myself up in the first place."

"Are you telling the truth?" he asked carefully. He had always heard her blame it on a malfunction or an accident. Now, she sighed, and finally looked easy, shutting her eyes for a second.

"That's the thing I don't like talking about. Ask me about the symptoms but not about the cause. Body and mind are separate entities and in my case they're about as broken as each other. _Moving on_ , you know your yacht that I… had an accident with?" The subject changed completely as she strained to escape the perils of discussing her mental health with him, and caught him by surprise. _Did_ he know his yacht that she had an accident with? It took him a good few seconds to remember all about that particular fiasco.

"The _Vinsomer_ , yeah." As far as he knew, his yacht was still wrecked in the TARDIS garage somewhere with the rest of his destroyed cars. He had to buy a new car, but a cheap one, one that he wouldn't mind getting destroyed quite as much as his Lamborghini (he was still upset about the loss of the Lamborghini, and his Hummer.) Then again, he'd always wanted a Bugatti Veyron…

"You know how I said I was going to build you a new one?"

"You really don't have to build me a new boat."

"The TARDIS does all the heavy lifting, Mitchell. It's okay. And you know I need projects. I got totally carried away, though. Here," she lifted up her tablet and held it above her head so that he, still standing behind her in his pyjamas, could see what she had just brought up.

"You've tried to design a boat and accidentally designed an all-terrain vehicle," he pointed out.

"I know! I'm working on how to make it fly. If it can fly, drive, go underwater, _and_ has a CD player, it's basically a masterpiece. Not that I'd go with you if you took it underwater, you can do that on your own. Doesn't it just seem like the sort of thing we need?"

"I have no idea. But don't let me stop you, if you're enjoying yourself with your drawings."

"Oh, _thank_ you, and if I do a really good one maybe you'll let me put it on the fridge. What a great boyfriend you-" A piercing shriek deafened them both and made Oswin drop her tablet on the floor to clamp her hands over hears; Adam did the same and staggered, his bad ankle then giving way and sending him onto the floor; Sprite jumped and curled into a ball in terror at Oswin's feet. The big screens they had lining the opposite wall flashed vivid purple and blasted out noise, a cackling skull visible there, a bloated computer glitch grinning from every screen in the room – including his computer in the corner.

" _ADAM ALOYSIUS MITCHELL_ ," it shouted in a synthesised voice, " _THERE IS A DEVASTATING FLAW IN CYBORG. IF WE CAN EXPLOIT IT, SO CAN THEY, AND THEY ARE COMING. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED. CATCH US IF YOU CAN_." And then the purple exploded in a haze of vivid pixels which fell away into nothing, the black background disappearing too until the screens re-established themselves. Then it was Oswin's favourite view again, that of the lower-deck windows of Titan Beta and the thollim-streaked horizon of the moon, with Saturn way off somewhere to the left. It was funny, they often alternated between Horizon and a grey-skied shale beach, such were the sights from Adam Mitchell's own modernist mansion on the southern coast of England. Home sweet home, and all that.

"What the fuck!? Are you okay, baby!?" Oswin exclaimed. Adam struggled back onto his feet, staring at the screens, at the Saturn's animated and distant asteroid belt. He was thinking the exact same thing she was – 'what the fuck' – and could come up with no good answer. It was a very serious question, _what the fuck_. It would take a lot of thought. "Mitchell!"

"Huh?"

"I said, are you okay?"

"I thought you were talking to Sprite."

" _Sprite_?" she exclaimed, and when she did Sprite beeped and ran across the top of the sofa towards them, "I said 'baby.'"

"Yeah. Are you calling me 'baby' now? Is that an upgrade?" he asked.

"I don't know! _Are you okay_?"

"I think so."

"Sprite, go fetch Helix," Oswin said aside, and the critter ran off to the other sofa to drag the white Helix handset back across. Oswin was struggling to try and sit up and twist to face him, which was tricky because of her leg problems.

"I'm fine."

"The big freaky skull was talking to _you_ , though," she said, "Get over here so I can scan you, see if your brain chip hasn't been messed with. But it's encrypted through Helix, so I can't see why it would be…" She sat up properly on the sofa with her feet on the floor, shuffling up to make room for him next to her, where she pointed for him to sit down. He wasn't one to argue with Oswin when she was worried about him, so he did sit down, and she took the Helix portable from Sprite's little metal pincers. "Helix, do a full scan of Adam."

" _I have detected a data breach in this vicinity, Miss Oswald_ ," Helix said.

"Yes, I know, we detected it too. It was very loud and scary. Were you affected?"

" _Negative, Miss Oswald_."

"Then scan Adam, please," she said. She was the only person who ever said 'please' to Helix. Blue light projected from the device and scanned him, which felt sort of tingly and hurt his eyes; as far as he could remember, he had never been scanned like this before.

" _I am sorry, Miss Oswald. Subject:: Adam Mitchell is clinically dead_."

"Apart from being clinically dead, though, is he alright?" Oswin asked, "The chip in his brain, has it been violated?"

"Did you have to say 'violated'?" he asked, cringing.

" _Negative, Miss Oswald. Subject:: Adam Mitchell has identical vital signs to all other recorded scans of his physiology. By my estimate, he has been dead for over sixty-seven days_."

"Well that's nice," Adam muttered.

"He's not dead, Helix, please don't say that. He's in cryostasis, he's frozen."

" _I apologise, Miss Oswald_."

"Tell me about the data breach, please," she requested.

" _It appears that Adam Mitchell's personal accounts have been hacked into remotely and a message was sent to the TARDIS systems by accessing the unique IP address of his on-board computer and games consoles. If I may, I can track the transmission back to its original source. It will take a few moments_ ," Helix said smoothly in that strangely comforting way.

"Good, do it, please, thanks," Oswin said hastily. Helix went quiet and the handset began to hum.

"How have my personal accounts been hacked? Remotely? On the TARDIS? Aside from the fact we're _in space_ , all my stuff is encrypted with Cyborg. Cyborg's hackproof, you said it yourself. _Hackproof_."

"Uh-huh… that skull called you Adam 'Aloysius' Mitchell."

"I… suppose it did…"

"Is that your middle name? You have a middle name? And it's _Aloysius_?"

"Well _your_ middle names are 'Diane Rosalind' so I don't think you're winning any competitions."

"Okay, in the embarrassing middle names competition, you are the clear victor. _Aloysius_. Is that even a word?"

"Yes, it's a word, it's the name of some posh bloke's childhood teddy bear in this book. I don't know, Oswin, my mum likes it. It's nothing to do with me. I've never even read it." She smiled at him in a way that could be described as 'admiring.'

"You're named after a teddy bear?"

"My middle name," he mumbled.

"That's adorable."

"I don't want to be adorable."

"Why not? What's wrong with being adorable? What's wrong with being a teddy bear? Everyone likes those. I had this one when I was young, it looked like a robot bear," she said, and then she got distracted thinking about it.

"…What was it called?"

"He was called Exabyte," she admitted.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"You're _such_ a nerd.

"And _you're_ a teddy bear," she told him smugly, "That's your new name. My teddy-bear."

"Please don't call me that."

"It's too late," she said, "You can replace Exabyte."

"…What happened to him?"

"I took him with me when I ran away," she said after a moment, "I guess he was still in the wreck of the _SS Alaska_ somewhere, and that whole planet blew up, so…" She was more upset remembering the loss of a bear than she was about the loss of her leg.

" _I have completed my scan, Miss Oswald. The transmission was emitted on the evening of December 4_ _th_ _, 2013, from a building in Cambridge registered to the software development company, CyTech_ ," Helix said.

"Wait, it came from where? CyTech? That transmission came from CyTech in the year 2013?"

"No way," said Oswin, "That's way too advanced."

"That's _my_ company – someone hacked me from inside my own company? My own buildings?" Adam was actually angry, and he _never_ got angry.

"Adam, calm down, we'll sort it," Oswin told him softly.

"No – but – you said it was hackproof!"

"Well, hypothetically. I mean, _I_ could hack it, but I'm me, I can hack anything. Nobody in your century with your technology should be able to hack it. As for alien gadgetry, I can't possibly comment. I don't actually know everything in the universe. I'm not a supercomputer. I can't account for every single variable in history." He stayed quiet. "Look, get dressed, and then we'll just go to CyTech and see what's going on, yeah? The creepy message _did_ say 'catch us if you can', after all. It'd be rude to turn down the invitation."


	160. Cyber Space

**AN: Alright so I'm officially back at uni for my next term now, but I've got this whole storyline planned and I'm not gonna abandon it halfway through, and it's looking like I might have more free time this term so I really don't know if I'm going to stop writing this and do what I usually do and swap to writing** ** _Jenny Who?_** **and** ** _Spook Watch_** **or just carry on, but I'll definitely keep going until this Adwin is wrapped up. Also, despite obnoxious overuse of the word "cyber", there's no Cybermen or anything to do with Cybermen here.**

 _Cyber Space_

 _Adam_

"Why would you have the headquarters of your big, fancy tech company in Cambridge, then?" Oswin inquired as they drove towards the HQ building in his Porsche. He didn't want to take the TARDIS down too close because of the potential security breach, _and_ because of some very specific members of the company's staff. But also because he didn't want people on the TARDIS nosing around the place; after all, Oswin was his girlfriend, and it had still taken him three-and-a-half months to show _her_ around. If he had his way, she wouldn't have been shown it for years, as long as possible – he was still trying to put her off her desire to meet his parents, which he felt she was getting increasingly annoyed about. "Isn't everything in California?"

"Everything?"

"Yeah, like, everything."

"You think _everything_ is in California?" he glanced at her as he drove, approaching a security gate. She had brought Sprite with them and he was cowering in the foot well in front of her.

"Well that's where everyone always goes. They go to California or they go to New York."

"What about in _Calamity Jane_? She goes to Chicago in that."

"Oh, yeah…" she mused, like she was trying to develop a theory. A theory about where 'everything' was. But he had thrown a real spanner in the works and now she was trying to concoct a work around. He slowed down at the gate and stopped as the security guard peered at the car. Adam rolled down the window and fumbled in his pocket to try and find his ID card.

"Uh…" he patted his jeans down, checked his hoody, but found no ID. "I think I've forgotten my ID, sorry."

"That's fine, Mr Mitchell," the security guard was almost laughing, "Everyone knows who you are, sir."

"Don't call me sir, please, if that's okay," he said awkwardly. He felt Oswin watching him.

"You're free to go right in," said the guard, pushing a button to raise the barrier.

"What about her?" he indicated Oswin.

"If she's with you, isn't it alright?" he frowned.

"I haven't got any ID, what are you doing?" Oswin hissed at him.

"Yeah, she's fine, actually," he told the guard. What _was_ he doing? "So I can just drive in then, yeah?"

"…Yes," the guard nodded.

"Cool, thanks," Adam smiled. Then he stalled the car when he tried to drive off and had to start it again. For some reason, he apologised to the security guard for this.

"You okay there, Mr Billionaire Tech Mogul?" Oswin asked him once he had got the car going again and had rolled the window back up.

"It's just… _y'know_. It's nothing, it's nothing. What were you asking me? Why did I build my company HQ in Cambridge? Tons of tech companies do. They call it the Cambridge Cluster. Or Silicon Fen. You know, it's like Silicon Valley, but in the UK."

" _That's_ what I meant about everything being in California."

" _Oh_ ," he realised, "This is the building, by the way. It's just one building."

"Holy shit. That's a fuck-off building, babe," Oswin said, leaning forwards to look properly at CyTech HQ. It was practically shimmering underneath the sunlight, no clouds in the sky whatsoever. The day was blue and clear but very cold, frost covering the grass all around. The building was enormous and from the outside looked like it was entirely made of glass, one enormous mirror in the middle of the countryside. Across the closest face the CyTech logo glared back at them; he had always found it very intimidating. Probably because he had stolen the whole software. That logo was a pair of gigantic boots he had no chance of ever filling.

"Yeah, I mean, it's not super impressive. There's this big statue of the Android logo outside of Google headquarters, but we haven't got a mascot to build a statue of," he said, "I wanted to get a statue of Cyborg, though. You know, from the Justice League. But I wasn't allowed. Not without buying the rights to the character. And I would have, you know, but apparently that's a 'bad investment.'" He swung the Porsche around into the carpark and located the spot closest to the door, which was his personal CEO spot.

"It's definitely impressive!" she exclaimed, "I'm impressed, I'm way-impressed."

"How does that work? You come from space."

"Yeah, from a space station. And do you know what one person built up that space station from scratch using their blood, sweat, tears, and exploiting their eidetic memory to steal thousands of lines of unique security code?" she asked him, and he shrugged, "Nobody. It was a tax-funded Alliance venture. With allocated spaces and weird contraception laws to do with population control. Harsh class divides and insulated pockets of wealth, minimal living prospects and zero upwards social mobility. But I think your fancy headquarters is very cool. And you, I think you're cool, too. Come on, then, are you going to show me around inside?" she opened the door.

"Wait – do you have to bring Sprite?" he asked as the robot crawled up her leg and onto her shoulder again. He had a nasty tendency for hiding on her back, so that sometimes when she turned around Adam would be face-to-face with a gigantic insect-looking thing.

"Yes," she said, "I need him." He wasn't going to argue with that, and sighed, getting out of the car himself. He was quite uncomfortable about the whole situation, and had Oswin not been there when the 'data breach' had occurred, he may not have even mentioned it, all to try and avoid her seeing CyTech. "It's cold."

"It's December," he reminded her, getting out of the car, "December 5th. 2013. That's the real date, you know. To me, at least."

"It's May to me, I think," she said, waiting for him to lock the doors, "December 5th, though? My birthday in nine days. I'm going to be twenty-seven on my next one."

"So am I, how spooky," he joked.

"Maybe we're related."

"Don't say that."

"We could be related," she said, "A lot can happen to a family tree in three-thousand years. I think it would be way too distant to make a difference, though."

"I don't want to think about it," he mumbled.

"Don't walk so fast," she said, "Let me take your arm."

"…Okay," he said reluctantly, which perplexed her. He still let her, though, so she didn't question him too much as the large doors of CyTech opened to them automatically. And inside CyTech it was _very_ blue. Blue, grey, white, black, with some bits of silver. Everything had that colour scheme – the funny-shaped, novelty chairs and sofas, the enormous reception desk, the phones were bright blue, the floor was white and so highly-polished it was like a mirror; the company logo was fixed in metal high up on the wall. He hadn't been there for months. At the sight of him, the receptionist dropped her cup of tea on the desk and it spilled everywhere, all over her keyboard.

"Oh my god! Adam! I mean, Mr Mitchell!" He really hated being called 'Mr Mitchell' and often asked them to call him by his first name instead. "Nobody said you would be coming back from Japan today! I'm sorry about the spill, I'll pay for a new keyboard."

"No, you don't have to," he said, "I think that keyboard's worth about two-hundred quid. It'll probably be fine anyway, if you just wipe it – what was that about Japan, though, Angela?" He remembered more or less everybody's names who worked at CyTech, and especially the girl who greeted him every morning. He'd actually gotten into the habit of buying her a coffee on his way in every day, because Angela was quite pretty, but strangely he didn't feel so nervous around her anymore as he used to. Oswin held onto his arm, taking in their surroundings.

"Ms Goddard, she said you were in Japan, working on a confidential research project with Toshiba."

"Right. Toshiba. Confidential. Yeah." He definitely hadn't had any contact with Toshiba or anyone who worked for them. "Is Goddard here today, by any chance?"

"Of course she is."

"Great, can you tell her to meet me in my office in about fifteen minutes?"

"Shouldn't Lucy do that?"

"…Is Lucy here?"

"She called in sick. Ms Goddard stopped getting a temp in to cover for her in September, since you've been gone for so long," Angela said.

"Well then, you can fill in for Lucy and call Goddard, and we'll call it quits for the keyboard, yeah?" he said. She smiled.

"I'll do that right away."

"Awesome." He turned to steer himself and Oswin towards the executive lift which went to the CEO and CFO offices, a lift which required biometrics to use.

"I like your new glasses, by the way," Angela called after him, and he tripped on thin air, making Oswin let go of his arm so that she could regain her balance on her own. "I didn't know you need glasses."

"Yeah, I… kind of," he said. Oswin watched all this, and he thought it must be some sort of record for her in terms of how long she had gone without opening her mouth and making an inappropriate comment. He finally made it to the lift and jammed his thumb over the scanner, where it grew very confused and wouldn't accept him. "Did someone change how the locks work?"

"No," Angela said. The rest of the reception was empty. Normally there were a few people around, there for interviews and business meetings, but it was oddly quiet. He was definitely going to have a lot to discuss with Goddard.

"It's because you're too cold," Oswin whispered, "Biometrics won't work if they think you're dead. Probably thinks you're your own severed hand. Here." She held her cane towards it and the end lit up green for a moment, a little like a sonic screwdriver, and then the lift doors opened. She winked at him. He managed to smile at Angela again, this time without falling over, just as the doors closed. Oswin couldn't bite her tongue any longer. "Why did you never mention that your receptionist is in love with you?"

"There's quite a lot of receptionists here, there's usually three or four on the front desk."

"Not the important part of the question."

"She's not in love with me."

"She literally has the most obvious crush on you – why aren't you going out with her? She's sweet and cute," Oswin said, judging him.

"I'm going out with _you_. You're sweet and cute. Sometimes. And I don't think she has a crush on me. She's probably just being nice because I'm her boss."

"Babe, come on. She's into you."

"I'll dump you and go ask her out then, shall I?"

"Maybe you'd be better off with a normal girl. One who's not dead and insane."

"But I love your deadness and insanity," he said, right as the lift doors opened. It had been a very smooth ride, he'd barely noticed the thing moving. It had some very unnecessary hydraulics technology to make it feel like that. It opened onto a hallway with light pouring in from the outside through the window at one end. On the right was Lucy's empty desk and the door into the CEO office, on the left was an occupied desk with a secretary he had never seen before – Goddard really liked to fire her secretaries – and the CFO office. They turned right, and he opened the door to reveal the room he hadn't seen for months.

" _That's_ a fancy chair," Oswin pointed out, making a beeline for it as fast as her useless legs would carry her. It was enormous and blue, like all the soft furnishings, and ergonomic. Incredibly padded and _incredibly_ comfortable, he remembered, and now Oswin had claimed it for herself, while Sprite went crawling around the rest of the room, exploring. "What's your thing about windows?"

"Excuse me?"

"Your house is all windows, so is this building. Surely that makes it extra-cold in winter and extra-warm in summer?"

"We've got air conditioning and central heating. And actually, CyTech's offices run one-hundred percent using renewable energy sources," he said, "The company is carbon neutral. Well, it's carbon-negative, because we do fund research into renewable energy and carry out ocean clean-up operations."

"Ocean clean-up? That's a lost cause. Squidzilla's going to show up whether you like it or not," she said, reminding him of the Oxyves system from her century, the enormous, floating greenhouses there to generate oxygen because the planet's agriculture was so dead. "You and Flek would be perfect together if she wasn't a giant lesbian."

"I think you and I are perfect together."

"Aww, _babe_ ," she beamed, "Don't let Angela the receptionist hear you say that. So, who are we meeting with, and why?" She leant back in the chair and put her hands together, her fingers touching at their tips. Oswin looked like a better CEO than he ever had.

"My CFO, I've told you about her before. She's… right outside," he realised when he looked at the door and saw the fuming face of Diana Goddard about to force her way in. She was furious, and he regretted not having biometric locks on his office doors, too – but he'd never liked the idea of locking himself in his office. Goddard marched in and crossed her arms. He gave a tiny wave, "Hi there."

" _Hi there_!?" she demanded, "You up and leave your own company in the middle of the day without a word or any explanation, without assigning anyone to fill in for you, without telling me, and vanish without a trace for almost six months? Abandon all your assets and business deals, threaten all our tentative contracts because the face of the company isn't around to meet with them, force me to fire nearly a dozen secretaries because of the stress of having to act as your replacement, make me field calls from your parents asking why you haven't been in contact with them? Leave me to liaise with these green tech companies about pointless charitable ventures, oversee construction of that ridiculous wind farm, make _me_ find somebody to draw up blueprints for that revolutionary new tidal energy facility you keep promising in press conferences, have meetings with the CIA, MI5, Mossad, and this country's pathetic little administrative cabinet? And worst of all, think of new ways to continually update Cyborg even though I have no programming expertise, and host the interviews for your internship positions? You do all that, forget about every responsibility you have, and then you come back here and waltz right into your office, call for a meeting and then say ' _hi there_ '?"

"God, you've been naughty, haven't you? Maybe you really are a bad boy, after all," Oswin quipped, leaning on the desk.

"The thing is…" Adam began to explain to Goddard, "I met a girl."

"A girl!?" Oswin exclaimed, "Tell me all about her."

"What? _That_ girl?" Goddard pointed at Oswin, "You left your life for half a year because you met a girl?" He had done exactly that.

"You remember the TARDIS? And the Doctor? And the Dalek?"

"No, I've forgotten all about the time everyone I knew was murdered because of a falling out between two aliens which led to me taking over the biggest tech company in the world."

"I thought CyTech is the biggest tech company in the world?" Oswin interjected with what might actually be, miraculously enough, a legitimate question.

"It's complicated," said Adam, "Cyborg is the most widespread software in the world, but because we don't charge most of the people who use it, in terms of revenue we're still being beaten by Microsoft and Apple and Alphabet. And quite a lot of other companies, really. Anyway – I've been on the TARDIS."

"I thought you left?"

"He got kicked off," Oswin said, "But wait – she said _she's_ in charge of the biggest tech company in the world?"

"CyTech bought GeoComTex and merged with it," Adam explained, "So _technically_ all of their intellectual property became my property."

"Like the codes you stole from van Statten originally," Goddard reminded him.

"Yeah, well, after almost all the company's personnel died the share value went so low that they wouldn't have beaten me in court if they wanted to, after I founded CyTech," Adam said to Oswin, "And I very kindly kept on all the remaining staff and Goddard's been my CFO ever since."

"And who is the girl?" Goddard frowned at Oswin.

"I'm Oswin," she said, "I have an IQ of three-fifty-two and I'm his girlfriend."

"Three-fifty-two? That's impossible. That would make you the most intelligent human who's ever lived."

In the chair, Oswin did a kind of miniature bow, "At your service, milady. I'm from the future, and I'm also the Doctor's sister-in-law." At this point, Sprite scuttled across the floor to return to Oswin, done with his adventures around the room, a sight which made Diana Goddard shriek in terror as the robot returned to his usual perch on Oswin's shoulder.

"What is that thing!?"

"It's a robot," said Adam quickly, "Remote controlled. You know, like… Robosapien. Or Roboraptor. But… Robocentipede."

"Cyberpede," said Oswin, "Actually, no, 'cyberpede' sounds like someone who asks underage girls to take their clothes off on webcams."

"Why do you pick today to show up? Today of all days?" Goddard questioned, "The night after we have a break-in?"

"Because we got hacked into. The TARDIS got hacked into, through my personal accounts. Anything I had running Cyborg encryptions is compromised."

"What if they break into your iCloud and publish your nudes?" Oswin asked him.

"I've never taken a nude."

"What if they hack your internet history and find all that weird porn you watch?"

"I don't really watch… uh…"

"Well, what if they hack your internet history and find all that weird porn _I_ watch on your computer? They'll think you're a real sicko if they see any of that stuff. That's some a-grade filth." He had absolutely no idea if she was being serious. "Anyway, look, we really have to go to the server farm, yeah? Enough of this showing me around your fancy-schmancy office – I've got a major hard-on to see what kind of servers the biggest security software developer this side of the galaxy are working with."

"You seem different to his usual type," Goddard said, "Although, he usually doesn't manage to get girlfriends."

"I'm very different – the secret is being clinically insane," she tapped the side of her nose when she said this. "For me to seem 'usual' I'd have to be on so much medication I was practically a vegetable. And not the sexy kind of vegetable, either. The mushy kind."

"That's how you categorise vegetables?" Adam questioned her, "Sexy vegetables and mushy vegetables?"

"Potential dildos and not potential dildos, yes," she nodded. "Anyway. Servers?"

* * *

The executive elevator also went down to the server farm, one of two elevators which did, both of which needed very high security clearance to access. But, despite all her talk about being desperate to see the server farm, Oswin was wholly unimpressed. Unimpressed by rows upon rows of incredibly high-tech servers, stacked on top of each other with thin walkways and staircases, the room freezing cold in order to counteract the heat the equipment gave off to keep them working.

"It's kind of small," she remarked as the lift descended down and down and down. It was at least ten storeys of solid electronics. He used to come down there to clear his head for as long as he could cope with the cold, but now the cold didn't bother him, he could probably get lost down there in the mazes of data for hours. "I'll take you to see a server farm in my century. They build them in space stations, these _huge_ space stations, and eventually they moved to building them on the moon. Honestly, in three-thousand years Earth's moon is just one big data hub." Adam had managed to get rid of Diana Goddard before they descended into the server farm to look for the data breach.

"You know, that would actually be really cool."

"Yeah? It's a date, then. You've shown me yours, I'll show you mine." She took her phone out of her coat pocket and connected to the Helix app, which was a million times more convenient than carrying the big handset around since that thing didn't even fit in anyone's pocket. Oswin's phone wasn't using Cyborg to encrypt it, either, so it was the most secure option. "Helix – any more information on the data breach and the source of the signal? In amidst these ancient ruins?"

" _The source of the rogue transmission is nearby, Miss Oswald. I am detecting a physical transponder somewhere in the vicinity_."

"Brilliant – talk to Sprite, Sprite go fetch," she said as the lift touched down at the bottom of the farm and the doors slid open. There was some indiscernible beeping, and then Sprite jumped down onto the ground and scurried away, looking exactly like a monstrous insect only found in the darkest recesses of the rainforest. Just shinier.

"Do you think you rely too much on AIs?" Adam asked her, putting his hands in his pockets and stepping out of the lift as well.

"I've never thought about it. Do _you_ think I rely too much on AIs?"

"I mean, we probably could have gone and found this transponder, or whatever, ourselves."

"No, what if it's high up somewhere? All those walkways? My legs and your ankle? Sprite needs to go out more, develop himself, grow as an entity. You can't force a personality onto something, you have to watch them grow. That's the best way to learn about AI."

"You do rely on Nios as well, though," he pointed out.

"Well, Nios is… amazing. Don't tell her I called her this, but she's really the most remarkable machine I've ever seen. So remarkable you forget that she _is_ a machine. It's like, you know she's a synthetic, but when you stop to think about what that _means_ , that she's all code and batteries and wires and robotics? And now there's Dr Cohen in the equation? It's fascinating. Not that I'm using her as a guinea pig, or I'm stalking her, or refusing to accept her status as a conscious and independent being, but she _is_ amazing. You've heard that Jenny's teaching her to cook? Where does _that_ come from? She can't even eat, she's never tasted food, but she wants to cook. It's borderline insanity. You should talk to her more."

"I talk to her. Sometimes. She scares me."

"Everyone scares you. Angela who spilled tea everywhere probably scares you."

"She _does_ scare me. And the thought of having to totally revamp Cyborg to deal with this breach _really_ scares me."

"You might not need to, look," she nodded, and there was Sprite crawling back to them along the wall carrying something in his claws. Adam didn't know what it was, some sort of device – the transponder, he assumed. It didn't look like anything he'd ever seen before. Oswin took it from Sprite and Sprite jumped back onto her arm. Then she gave it to Adam so that she could use her phone again. "Helix, what is this thing?"

"See?" Adam said, "Reliant." She hit him in the leg with her cane.

" _A transponder, Miss Oswald_."

"From where? Or – when?"

" _My best estimates place this transponder as being from the Fiftieth Century. It appears to be of Chula origin, and was used to hijack CyTech and send a message to the TARDIS_."

"How weird," she said, "Right, then. Is there anywhere we can go so that I can analyse this thing? And so you can get something to eat – it's lunch time, you must be starving." He _was_ starving.

"I know just the place."


	161. Ghost Signals

_Ghost Signals_

 _Adam_

"Time to crack you open, big boy, and see how sexy you are on the inside."

"Excuse me?" he asked Oswin, standing next to a small table and holding an assortment of products in his arms, "Were you just talking to that transponder?" She was eyeing the transponder, holding it up to the light poring through the solid wall of windows. It was blinking, and every few minutes it beeped. She glanced at him.

"Did you say something?" She definitely _had_ been talking to the transponder. Sprite was hanging onto her arm and peering closely at the device too. "What's all that stuff?"

"My lunch and a notebook and a pen," he said.

"A notebook? Perfect. Can I borrow some paper?" she asked. "I don't want to use my computer here, it's quite conspicuous." Her computer was basically a silver Toblerone that projected a hologramatic green keyboard and screen.

"What are _you_ going to do with _paper_?" he said, passing her the notebook. She tore out a few sheets, commenting on the strange feeling of real paper made from trees compared with the synthetic paper of the future, then took a pen from him, too.

"Thanks, babe. I'm just going to draw something while I wait for Helix to get me this code." He realised he'd forgotten to get himself some crisps, and stood up to return to the vendor in the large CyTech cafeteria, taking this opportunity to find himself a second CyTech-logo-emblazoned pen to replace the one stolen by Oswin. While he was there, about to pay with his card on the automated system, he looked over at Oswin sitting at that table in front of the window, the view of the countryside behind her, in his own company offices. It was quite possibly the most poignant moment of his life for whatever bizarre reason, and he was compelled to take out his phone – no longer caring if his iCloud was hacked and his files were put online – and took a photo of her and the outside. She didn't notice because his phone was on silent and the flash was turned off. He took his pen and his crisps and returned to her, after paying.

"Do you think I've been acting weird?" he asked her when he was halfway through his BLT and his bottle of Pepsi. She was drawing something again, scribbling equations at the edges of the paper.

"Yeah, a bit. Like you're embarrassed by me, or something," she shrugged. She was smiling a little and she had her eyes fixed to her page. "Wouldn't surprise me if you were, the stuff I say."

"I'm not embarrassed by you, I'm embarrassed by this," he said, indicating the room around them. There were other people in there, members off staff, all eating, but they kept their distance from their CEO. He never usually ate down there, he ate in his office because he was a loner like that. In fact, he often used to send Lucy, his secretary, to fetch his food for him. "It was all so important to me, and now it feels ridiculous."

"That's cute, that you look at your entire life collectively and you think your business is the weird part of it. Not the cryokinesis, not the doorway in your head, not your hologram girlfriend, but _this_ security software company. You do good things with it, baby. Renewable energy, tidal facilities – you're the most warm-hearted, best person I've ever met."

"But I just abandoned it. I barely even thought about it. I was here when I got brought onto the TARDIS, you know. I was in my office thinking about the CyTech mobile I was supposed to be developing, and then I was just pulled away, and… I saw you. Every thought went out of my head and it was just _you_. From then until now."

"Well, you've got me, so you can stop being so obsessive. It's kind of creepy," she joked, "I mean – it's a mutual thing, yeah?"

"It is?"

"Sure it is. The only reason I haven't gone crazy yet is because of you. Like, really crazy, I mean. Completely broken, can't function crazy. It would be like when I have one of 'episodes', but permanent," she said, "I had you to pay attention to, so I wasn't paying as much attention to myself. And I suppose the repressed memories also helped… you can make up for leaving, you know. You could still run things from the TARDIS. I still manage to maintain relationships on the TARDIS. I still talk to two and a half of my brothers, and I'm more involved in the Spore Remnants than I'd like to be."

"I sort of want things to be separate. Do you know what I mean? There's you and the TARDIS, then there's CyTech and my family."

"I think that's unrealistic, honestly," she said, "And I know _I_ keep pushing for you to let me meet your parents, and for you to meet my dad, but I also know that it's a big step. I'll wait until you're ready, but these are things that have to happen someday. _I_ want them to happen someday. I don't know why you compartmentalise everything."

"I've just never had a proper girlfriend before," he admitted.

"And there's nothing wrong with that, Mitchell. _I've_ never had a proper boyfriend before. Just one guy I hooked up with, like, twice, eleven years ago. And it was literally just to piss off Dret. But look, if you want me to be a part of your life then you have to let me be a part of your life, you know? I _want_ to be, after all. Although, this is all a bit heavy for a lunch date, don't you think? It's like pillow talk. We need to be in bed somewhere about to go to sleep before we can continue this conversation," she said. She was saying a lot of important things, 'heavy' things, but she had been smiling quite warmly the entire time. Adam went back to his sandwich. "But, speaking of family, Reker called me yesterday."

"Which one is he?"

"Second-youngest. He's the one with the twins, Azili and Iosis. They're named after me. Their middle names. Still not names as cool as Aloysius-"

"Stop that."

"He wants me to babysit."

"Babysit the twins?"

"No, Nalyt. Nalyt's my nephew, the baby, he's one. The girls have a school play, or something, Reker has to go see it and they don't want to take the baby because babies cry and pee in public. He used to ask Fyn to babysit, but since Fyn's moved to Venus now… and Dret's stopped talking to him because Reker hasn't stopped talking to _me_. They asked me to babysit. Later this week."

"Why are you telling me and not, like, the Doctor?"

"So that you don't get freaked out when I randomly acquire a baby. Anyway, I like babies. They're interesting, you know? Like, who will they be? They don't know anything, and they don't expect stuff of me. Little, empty people," she grew distracted. "Do you like babies?"

"I don't know. I guess I liked Ellie, when she was a baby, but I was only ten so I didn't look after her too much," he said, "Is this why you care so much about the AIs?"

"The AIs are alive and they deserve to have someone who understands them _and_ cares about them as autonomous individuals," she said firmly, "And they're so young! They need to be shaped. Even Nios. Who knows what she'll be like in ten years? Anyway, enough about me. Why did you never mention that Diana Goddard is totally scary-hot in any of your stories?"

"I think she's just scary."

"You must have really boring taste in women, then."

He laughed, "Thanks."

"Why'd you tell her about the TARDIS and the Doctor?"

"I couldn't avoid it. She clicked her fingers once and, you know. My head opened. Once a woman sees your brain, there's no going back. Had to tell her. I don't have any way to erase people's memories, no Retcon. She doesn't care, though, she only really cares about money, and power," he shrugged.

"She must be _really_ kinky," Oswin said, then she held up her paper to show him, "What do you think?"

"That's a very nice object you've drawn."

"It's a massive dildo." He shook his head. " _Kidding_. I told you about my trip out with Clara the day before last?" He definitely didn't want to hear a story which involved both Oswin's sister and a dildo, or worse, dildo _s_ , plural. He braced himself.

"Some stuff."

"Well, they had these atmosphere generators, because the atmosphere there was so thin and borderline toxic. Eslilia isn't _as bad_ but there's a lot of potentially dangerous pollen and chemicals in the air. After all, Time Lords can't go there because they're allergic to the environment. That's what this is, a generator. You set a bunch of them up in a perimeter and they create a microclimate. What do you think, though?"

"I think it's a great idea. But, won't they want their offspring to adapt to the toxic environment?"

"Offspring can't adapt if they die in the womb because of horrible mutations."

"The babies on Eslilia have mutations?"

"I have no idea, they're not properly monitoring the atmosphere. It's better to be safe than sorry. If it turns out to be fine, they can just switch off the generators, no big deal. They'll take measurements too, and automatically formulate some _gorgeous_ graphs for me to look at. Nothing turns me on more than sinking my teeth into a nice graph. Well, nothing except for-"

" _Miss Oswald, I have finished downloading the software of the transponder_ ," Helix announced.

"Nothing except for that, actually," she finished her sentence, then she lowered her voice, "I'm so excited that I'm touching cloth."

"Uh-huh…" She picked up her phone and began to scroll through the code, skimming it impossibly quickly.

"Are you sure you're not embarrassed by me? I feel like I'm majorly embarrassing."

"Oh, you are, but it's funny. Makes things exciting. I'm always wondering how you're going to out-do yourself the next time you open your mouth and say something disgusting."

"I think in a past life, I was a court jester," she said, and he kind of thought it was amazing how quickly she was skimming through all the code while still holding a conversation with him.

"I think you're a court jester in your current life, if the TARDIS is a court. In _King Lear_ the fool is the one who gives all the good advice."

"I'll get one of the hats with the bells on it."

"Here I thought you'd reached the peak of your annoyingness."

"Pfft," she scoffed, "You're way off the mark. I have so many more annoying things I could do."

"Like what?"

"Start saying 'hella.' Or I'll start making smoothies."

"Why would you make smoothies when you can't drink them?"

" _Exactly_. That's what's so annoying. Also, this code is really basic. Or – hella basic."

"You're right, it is annoying, can you stop? And how is it basic?"

"Look at it," she held her phone out to him, and he had to make do trying to deduce what she had deduced from that one snippet, unable to read as fast as her. And to think he used to be the fastest reader he knew.

"It's sort of advanced. About as advanced as my Cyborg encryptions."

"But Cyborg encryptions aren't advanced. No offence, I just mean that this is a device closer to me than to you, by a _lot_ , it's from the year five-thousand. And it's running code from three millennia earlier. Doesn't that seem odd to you? This transponder's been hacked. Or modified. By people from your century, I'm guessing. And not very well, they needed to use the CyTech servers to boost it enough to get into the TARDIS, but I could use this thing to hack the TARDIS without having to modify it, bearing in mind that technically the TARDIS wasn't hacked; _your_ stuff was hacked, and the tricky part is getting it to jump across distances. Longwave communication like this is way old-school. Pre-teleportation."

"How does it work?"

"Like sonar, you just send a message out into space and somewhere a receiver will pick it up if it's tuned correctly. No coordinates or direction. Like radio waves. And in fairness, radio waves are a reliable form of communication, we still use radio telescopes in the future, but they're slow. They've almost broken this thing through a fundamental misunderstanding of its core principals, which isn't surprising considering it's sort of like explaining how x-rays work to a Viking. Ultimately, transponders just bounce back and forth from each other, their connection is what makes communication easier. They just send basic encoded signals back and forth between two specific points."

"That's how communication usually works."

"No, because of the _link_. Like, you take two mobile phones, sure you're sending signals between two points, but there's cell towers and all kinds of obstacles in between throwing these signals around. And it's not so much the _phone_ , as the _number_ , which is way more abstract. I mean, you can be anywhere in the world and still receive an email to a dozen different devices, there's no core link between one network hub and another. But a relationship like _that_ is how transponders work, to avoid dangerous signal interference. Like how you have to turn your plane off on a phone, I guess."

"So what are you saying? That transponder is still connected to a spaceship?"

" _Yes_ , that's _precisely_ what I'm saying. It's been jury-rigged and strapped into your servers to boost the signal enough to reach us out in space, by people who didn't know what they were doing with the technology. But it's still beeping, so it's still connected to whatever ship it's supposed to be from. You use them for navigation – 'last known coordinates' and all that jazz."

"Then, why isn't it in the ship anymore?" a third voice intervened, making Adam Mitchell jump. He had been completely absorbed in listening to Oswin try to explain how the transponder worked, in a very overly-complex and roundabout way (but she was never good at slowing down her thoughts enough to explain them, and was clearly going to considerable effort in this case.) A young man was standing next to their table; Adam hadn't even seen him approach.

"I guess whoever's in the spaceship ripped it out because they didn't want to be tracked. Some idiot who didn't know you can just turn the things off," she said, answering the question regardless of the stranger who was asking it, "But I'll tell you what the best part is. The best part is that transponders are so vital that your basic Chula ship of any class is going to be carrying two of them. And this one is still transmitting. All you have to do is make it talk to the other transponder and you've got an exact location, which isn't too hard because they'll had the same serial number. Provided you know all the formulas and you measure the beeps to within a nanosecond. It's the kind of maths you usually get a supercomputer to do."

"Yeah, yeah, cool," Adam cut her off to speak to the newcomer, "Who are you, exactly?"

"I'm Chris, Christopher Kowalczyk, I'm one of the new interns here. I heard you looked over my application, Mr Mitchell, sir, but I've never met you. It was Ms Goddard who did my interview. Do you mind if I pull up a chair? It's just that – _I'm_ the one who sent you that message. And also, that thing you were saying about communication being solely between two fixed points? It sounds a bit like when you have two cans attached by a piece of string."

"Sounds like…?" Oswin gawked, " _Two cans_!? And a _piece of string_!? You've got some nerve, Kowalczyk. Could two cans and a piece of string reach for lightyears across space?"

"Depends, how long is a piece of string?"

"Wow," she shook her head, "You're a real jumped-up shitbag, you know that? But I'm into it. I wish people would prove me wrong about things more often – and not just for a powerful sense of submissive, sexual gratification, though that _is_ very prominent." She was grinning.

"Who are you?"

"Good question, I've been wondering that myself for a long time. I'm the brains behind this company. He's the face, because he's the cutest," she nodded at Adam.

"That's not true," he said.

"Babe!" she exclaimed, "You are _totally_ cute!"

"I didn't mean about… I mean that you don't work here, you don't have anything to do with CyTech. Look, Chris, just ignore her, okay? Try to forget she's here."

"I wish I wasn't here. By which I mean I wish I was dead, am I right?" she beamed at Adam and looked like she was angling for a high-five.

"She's my girlfriend, but don't pay her any attention – what do you mean, _you_ sent the message? You hacked all of my personal accounts?"

"It was the only way to contact you, nobody else knew how. I knew you weren't in Japan meeting with Toshiba, we hacked into Toshiba's internal correspondence and couldn't find anything. And we couldn't get a trace on your phone anywhere on the planet," Kowalczyk explained, "You've been completely off-grid, this was the only way we could think of to get your attention. Sorry about the middle name thing – it's just that you went to such lengths to keep it off any official documentation, we thought it would spook you enough to get you here, sir."

"Don't call me sir."

"It properly shit him up," Oswin added, then copied the booming voice of the purple skull, " _Adam Aloysius Mitchell_ , AKA teddy-bear. Although, it did scare me too, but didn't you try to call him?"

"Loads of times."

Oswin turned a cool gaze on Adam, "Have you not been answering your phone?"

"I just don't like answering when it's a number I don't know," he mumbled.

"Just give to me, I'll answer."

"I'm not letting you answer the phone."

"Why not?" she asked innocently.

"You know why not. Because you're mental. You'll say something like – 'You're through to Adam Mitchell's salty cream-pie emporium, how salty and/or creamy do you want your pie to be today?'" he said, and Oswin snorted with laughter.

"That's comedy gold."

"Only if you're a fourteen-year-old boy."

"In my soul, I think I probably am," she said, then addressed Kowalczyk in a very serious tone of voice, "We're sorry that your calls to Adam Mitchell's Salty Cream-Pie Emporium haven't been getting through. The truth is, he's had a lot of trouble getting it up lately, and-" Adam lunged across the table to cover her mouth with his hand, but clearly the damage was already done.

"I am so sorry about her," he apologised, "Really – she's always like this. Sometimes she's worse. She's insane. Like, she should be committed. Please be good, Oswin." He moved his hand.

"He's right, I am insane," she just agreed with him.

"Sir – Adam – you're one of the only really moral people in the entire tech industry. And I've read all about the exploit you pulled when you were eight, hacking into the United States defence system – it's legendary. Not to mention the trick with Cyborg Premium, I worked that out when I was examining the code and the algorithms to transfer them to the new CyTech mobile device."

"What trick with Cyborg Premium?" Oswin asked.

"Well, normally, Cyborg is free," Adam explained, "But Cyborg Premium we sell to big companies and institutions. That's where the money comes from, the contracts with the CIA and Microsoft and the Bank of America. They think the Premium has extra security features the normal version doesn't have, because of some… nonspecific tricks in the wording," he lowered his voice significantly, "Technically, it's false advertising and if anyone found out about it we'd be made to refund every sale of Cyborg Premium. It also comes in a different colour, the pop-up windows and stuff. Normally, they're blue. But if you pay for _Premium_ , they're silver. And Premium says the word 'premium' on it."

"Wow, robbing the rich to give to the poor. Like that guy. Whatshisname. Dick Turpin."

"You mean Robin Hood."

"Do I?"

"Dick Turpin was a highwayman."

"Yeah, he stole from the rich, and-"

"And he just kept all the money, babe. He was hanged eventually."

"Oh…"

"But, what do you mean, 'we'?" Adam questioned Kowalczyk, "And, how _did_ you break into Cyborg? It's supposed to be unhackable."

"It's not unhackable," Oswin muttered.

"We couldn't do it without using this, uh…"

"Transponder," Oswin supplied.

"We needed it to break in. Are you saying you _could_ hack it?" he asked Oswin.

"I could hack hacking it, if you catch my drift," she smirked, "But, yes, I could hack it. Very easily. In fact, I hack it all the time and mess up the settings on his _World of Warcraft_ account. Sorry – let me introduce myself properly, as something other than a very gorgeous extension of Adam Mitchell: I'm Oswin, Oswin Oswald, I'm the smartest girl in the universe. In all of human history. And I've been _dying_ to hear all about who's trying to exploit the vulnerabilities in Mitchell's 99.9% unhackable code."


	162. Hacker's Delight

_Hacker's Delight_

 _Adam_

"So, who exactly are you, Christopher Kowalczyk?" Oswin asked as Kowalczyk drove them, in his car, to a mysterious and as-yet unspecified destination. He said they _had_ to meet his friends, his team, that they would explain _everything_ , and for some reason Adam Mitchell went along with it. And if that turned out to be a mistake, he _did_ still have cryokinesis and could probably get himself and Oswin out of any scrape. Plus, her cane contained all kinds of secret extras. He deemed that it wasn't a particularly big risk they were taking, in the end. Kowalczyk's car was a 2003 Volkswagen Polo that wasn't really in good nick at all; one of the headlights was smashed and the silver paint was chipping away, a decade of mud caked thickly around the wheel arches. Perhaps he was getting too used to his sports cars, but unfortunately, his sports cars only had two seats. Gone was his enormous Hummer…

"I'm just an intern, really," Chris said, driving them actually into Cambridge, which was slow-going because of all the cyclists. It was a town full of cyclists, cyclists and tiny smart cars and eco-conscious, electric mopeds. Everyone in Cambridge had bikes. It was a point of shame for him, but he couldn't actually ride a bike, he'd never learnt, similar to how Oswin had never learnt how to swim* (though slightly more embarrassing, because at least Oswin had the excuse of coming from somewhere without any bodies of water whatsoever.)

"An intern with a bit of illicit dabbling on the side?" Oswin teased him. She was sitting in the front to make more room for her legs, while Adam was stuck in the back behind her, watching them both carefully in case Chris made any sudden movements. He so rarely got to play the overprotective-boyfriend role, he ought to put his whole heart into it. "What do you do, skim credit cards?" He didn't answer. "Don't worry about compromising your integrity. Adam won't fire you for a few illegal hobbies. Will you, babe?"

"I mean, I'm not sure it would look good for the company if-"

"See? Definitely won't fire you, Mitchell's a good boy," Oswin interrupted him when he was about to say that he _would_ have just-cause to let Kowalczyk go if he found out he was up to no good, which he had suspected from the get-go. Most up-and-coming programmers had done things they weren't proud of – like when he had so famously hacked the US defence system, or when Mark Zuckerberg had (much less impressively, Adam thought) created FaceMash and overloaded the Harvard servers.

"Sure…" he mumbled.

"We're a group," Kowalczyk began, "Called D-Kay. Like _decay_. We're trying to expose the ways worldwide technology corporations are causing a decay in independency and agency."

"Yeah, fuck the corporations. Isn't that right, baby?" Oswin jibed from the passenger seat, craning her neck to look back at him in all of her smugness.

"You sound like your brother."

"I _do_ sound like my brother…" she mused, "Maybe I'll call him, tell him what I'm up to. Dismantling the capitalist overlords, or whatever it is Fynny cares about these days." She didn't really have a personal stake, or any stake, in these 'politics,' at all. She couldn't care less, he knew, just wanted to irritate him. "So you're a gang of young, upstart hacktivists? How refreshing. Mitchell's old and boring now, he doesn't care about effecting social change at all, do you?"

"I care a lot about it," he said.

"Only if it benefits you."

"Oswin…" he sighed, and she looked at him again, and realised eventually that she was saying things that were perhaps even less tasteful than usual.

"Oh. Sorry…"

"I'll tell you who else you sound like – Thirteen," he said, "You remember when she was staying on our sofa and it was, like, two in the morning and she was watching _Snowden_ and then she wouldn't shut up about the NSA and you had to lock her out?" Oswin laughed.

"I do remember that. Woman is an absolute nightmare."

"I thought you fancy her?"

"She's my sister-in-law," Oswin reminded him, " _But_ the whole forbidden aspect _does_ make her extra-hot. She's like Jenny, but mature. I mean, not _mature_ , but… you know how they categorise cheese? She's practically blue. Or that Italian cheese with all the maggots in it. Casu marzu."

"Since when did you care about cheese?"

"I don't, Sally was texting me about it at four AM, a few weeks ago. We're all lucky that Esther's finally convinced her to start taking her pills again," Oswin sighed. What a bizarre conversation this must be that Kowalczyk was overhearing, but the scenery outside cut it short. Chris was now pulling into the carpark of a storage lot, and Sprite scrambled around in the foot well in front of Adam; he'd been trying to hide ever since Chris interrupted their lunch date, and had so far remained quite anonymous. It was impressive, Adam had to admit.

"Yeah. Wait, what does she need pills for?" he had not really taken in what she had said fully, preoccupied by having to clamber out of the car over the back of the driver's seat to escape the three-door prison. Sprite clung onto his leg and then dropped to the floor, scurrying underneath the car to return to Oswin, on the other side.

"Insomnia. So, uh, your super-cool lair is in a storage unit somewhere?"

"It's actually not so bad. It's a good base of operations. Where would you have it?" Kowalczyk queried as they began to walk, Adam hovering close enough to Oswin so that she could grab him if she were about to fall. Sprite was on her back again.

"Me? Just in my house. Work out better security protocols," she shrugged, "I was locked in an attic all my life, never had to think much about what sort of place is good for what I'm up to."

"Locked in an attic?"

"Babe, are you sure you should be saying all this?" Adam asked as Chris led them past the storage containers.

"You worry too much," she told him, "Trust me, and my new friend Chris. He's _your_ employee."

"Yeah – Chris – when you say you and this 'D-Kay' are attacking tech corporations… were you planning to attack CyTech?"

"I'll be straight with you, it was a possibility."

"So," and here Adam laughed awkwardly, "Why should I trust you? Maybe this is an elaborate hoax, a scheme? Maybe we're in danger? You're actually going to kidnap me and hold me for ransom?"

"We're not going to do that," Chris said, surprised, "You don't trust me? I've told you the truth about everything. And we didn't do anything to CyTech, that's because of you – I said, you're a legend. _You_ inspired me to get into computers. It's this one here." They were outside a storage locker which didn't have a padlock on it, and Kowalczyk dragged open the door to reveal two people sitting in there at computers, a glowing, orange electric heater in the middle of the room, and three servers somehow all wedged in there. The walls were decorated with neon colours and splashes of UV paint, anarchy symbols and the Union Flag hanging upside down at the back of the room, half burned to pieces and soiled with more paint and dirt.

"Chris! What the fuck!?" It was a girl and another boy, and the girl was the one who had just released this exclamation, staring at them, "That's Adam Mitchell! You can't bring him here without any warning!"

"He got our message," Chris said, closing the door of the storage unit tightly behind him. Adam doubted they were as wanted as they seemed to think they were – he had certainly never heard of them, and it was most certainly his business to know about any potential cyber terrorists. "You wanted him to get our message and not show up?"

"It was _your_ idea to send the message," the girl pointed out.

"Sorry," Chris apologised to Adam and Oswin, "This is Frankie. She's paranoid, to say the least. And this is-"

"8-Bit," the other boy spoke for himself.

"That's your name?" Adam asked.

"No," he said.

"Doesn't want you knowing who he is," Chris explained.

"We've both got photographic memories and access to every police database in the world, so I'm sure we can piece your identity together eventually," Oswin said.

" _8-Bit_ ," he reiterated. They were kind of extra, as Adam's younger sister would probably say.

"Awesome," Oswin nodded, "Can we, like, get to the bottom of this whole thing, then?"

"Who the fuck are you? We sent _him_ the fucking message," Frankie said sharply.

"Ah, but you didn't bank on him finding a girlfriend, did you?" Oswin said, "I was right there at the time."

"This is Oswin," said Chris, "She says she's a genius."

"I'm _the_ genius," she reiterated, "Basically ever." It was this moment where Sprite chose to make his debut, crawling onto Oswin's shoulder. As expected, he terrified all three of the hackers, and then hid again.

"What the fuck is that thing!?" Frankie exclaimed.

"Has anyone ever told you you swear too much?" Oswin said.

"Fuck you," she said. Adam wondered why she was so angry, but he hoped she didn't get _too_ angry and hit Oswin, or something.

"Seriously, has that been in my car? That centipede-monster?" Chris backed away

"This is my Synthetically Programmed Robotic Insectoid Terrestrial Explorer," Oswin said, reaching around lifting Sprite onto her arm. He was awfully timid. "Or Sprite, as I call him. He's an AI."

"AIs are incredibly dangerous and unstable," 8-Bit said.

"Some of them," Oswin shrugged, "But I think _I'm_ the most dangerous and unstable person I know, and I'm not artificial. Well, actually that's debatable… most of me isn't artificial. Or maybe a tiny part of me. The crazy part, the crazy part is real."

"What is she, your fucking mouth piece? Is she the brains behind CyTech? Do you just stand there?" Frankie turned her harsh questions on Adam, who never really noticed the amount of time he spent standing around and listening and just letting Oswin talk. She did _love_ the sound of her own voice, after all – why else would she be best friends with her own duplicate?

"I, uh… no, she..."

"Hey, don't talk to him like that," Oswin came to his immediate defence, "So what if he's quiet? I love that he's quiet. It makes everything he says even more important. I haven't got anything to do with CyTech, I'm from the future, just like your stupid transponder. We came here to help, but we can always leave."

"Be nice, Frankie," Chris hissed.

"An AI, Chris," 8-Bit repeated anxiously.

"There's nothing wrong with AIs if you respect them," Oswin said.

"They could become all-powerful," 8-Bit argued.

"Anyone can become all-powerful if they lose their restraints," she said coolly.

"Tell them about the transponder," Chris said, taking the device out of his backpack where he had put it. He held it out to Oswin, but it was Sprite who took it in his claws and held it, balancing on her shoulder.

"Sure, if I could just get a chair," Oswin said, "Technically I'm disabled. Or crippled. Or both, I don't know – whatever's politically correct in this delicate decade. I've only got the one leg."

"You can have my chair," Chris obligingly went to wheel it over.

"I like this one, you should give him a promotion," Oswin told Adam.

"Whatever you want," Adam just agreed.

"You're the great Adam Mitchell? The one Chris never shuts up about? The boy-genius? Do you just do whatever she tells you?" Frankie kept on.

"Would you kindly shut the fuck up, please?" Oswin said very loudly. Adam _loved_ that she had said 'would you kindly.'

"So whipped…" Frankie muttered.

"Yeah, so, anyway, the transponder – it's from a spaceship. From the future. A Chula ship. Used to sending messages across space to other transponders, and you've hijacked it and made it send a message across space to Mitchell's private accounts. Where did you find it?"

"In a field," said 8-Bit, "Not far from here. It was interfering with our equipment, and with the phone lines in the area."

"Yeah, they'll do that. Then what? You messed about with it?"

"We used it to break into CyTech, to get a message to Adam Mitchell, because someone came to steal it back," Chris finally revealed.

"Ooh, now things are getting _sexy_. Someone who?" Oswin was intrigued. She was always at her most inappropriate when she was intrigued.

"Some guy, he took responsibility for this ransomware attack on Silicon Valley two months ago," said 8-Bit, "A very poorly-executed attack, it barely broke the news, the only thing he managed to do was doxx Elon Musk. He thought the signal was something else, he said… 'time agent.'"

"Uh-huh."

"Which we thought sounded stupid," Frankie added.

"Yeah, I always thought it sounded kind of stupid, too. Time _Sluts_ , that's what I think they should have been called. Because all they do is screw time. Screw it right up," Oswin said, which Adam laughed at involuntarily, knowing she was talking specifically about Captain Jack Harkness. Sprite still held the transponder, and Oswin had all eyes on her, like she usually did. Did she crave attention, or just fall right into its arms? He was never quite sure. He wished he could take another photo of her on his phone, like in the canteen, in this moment when she seemed most in her element, almost happy. Beautiful. Frankie was right about him being whipped.

"He came looking for his own transponder _he_ got rid of?" Adam asked, thinking about what was being said.

"It looks that way," said Oswin.

"So he's… stupid?"

"He did seem quite stupid," Frankie nodded, "Said he wanted to shut down Silicon Valley."

"Uh-huh."

"And CyTech," added Chris, "That's what the message meant. If we can exploit Cyborg, so can this guy. And if he did it, if he took down the number one security software in the world? It could be down for only ten minutes and we'd be thrown into total chaos."

"Wouldn't you guys like that?" Oswin asked, "Anarchy?"

"We're not anarchists," said 8-Bit, "We had an anarchist before, but we had to get rid of him."

"Stars!" Oswin suddenly shouted, "I knew I recognised you, you shit-heel. You're name's Jacob Lowe. We've met. We will meet." He looked harrowed by this. Adam knew the name from somewhere distant, but couldn't place it. "Crazy how things work out. I think you'll meet me in three years. When you do, careful not to mention we've met before, though I'm not actually sure I've ever said a word to you. Much too focused on your resident fuckable pathologist, Dr Cohen, to pay attention to the keyboard pigs." Adam realised – Jacob Lowe worked for Undercoll in 2016, he did their computers. Adam had heard Esther mention him before because he wasn't very good at maintaining Undercoll's security algorithms whenever she had to break in, usually at Sally Sparrow's request. "Right, whatever. Babe – tell me what we're going to do next."

"Uh, what?" Adam was surprised, "How should I know?"

"Have a guess, make a suggestion," she shrugged.

"You said most ships have backup transponders because they're important. And this one's still emitting a signal because it keeps beeping…"

"Exactly, we'll just measure the distance between the beeps and do some maths and hey presto. I'm sure I could cobble together a basic teleport relay out of some of this junk – that's Chula ships for you, full of teleports. Teleports and om-comm. Get me a radio and I could probably berate him through the speakers. Given the fact that the Time Agency is meant to be clandestine, their ships have always been very easy to mess with. Maybe that's why they got abolished."

"What _is_ the 'Time Agency'?" Chris asked.

"Nosey gits, that's what. They just travel through time and try to fix mistakes, it never goes well," she sighed, "But this guy obviously _isn't_ a time agent because I don't think he knows how his own ship works. It'll be easy, I'll just get Helix to work it out." She went for her phone.

"You'll get who?" asked 8-Bit.

"Another AI," she answered.

"Another? You said you're the smartest human being who's ever existed. That you could hack into Cyborg without extra technology. And you're getting an AI to do all the hard work for you?" Chris questioned her. She paused.

"I could do it myself," she said, "This is just quicker."

"I said you're too reliant on AI," Adam said quietly next to her.

"What? So now you don't think I could do it either?" she turned on him, "I could easily work that out. All I need is an incredibly precise stop watch. I know all the equations for working out intergalactic distances and orbital coordinates. I could easily work out where this ship is."

"We can get a stop watch," 8-Bit said.

"Time to prove yourself, genius," said Frankie. Adam was just glad that _his_ intelligence wasn't being called into question by these adolescents.

"Fine," Oswin said, "I'll do it. I'm the smartest girl in the universe, after all. Who cares if you're asking me to do something that would take this century's Nasa super computers literally days to work out, in a matter of minutes?"

"You kind of sound scared," Adam teased. Of course he believed in her, he's seen her do much more complicated things than work out space coordinates.

"Me? Scared? I'm not scared of anything. Except myself. And goats."

"Goats?" Frankie asked.

"Multiple traumatic experiences to do with goats, don't ask." Adam hated goats as well. "But fine. I will prove myself to you _children_ , even though I really don't need to and I could just ask the robot, and then you'll see. And then you'll all owe me. You'll owe me blowjobs, every last one of you. Except Mitchell because he's the only person in this room I'm not attracted to. I'll do all that and _then_ … I'll call in a favour, an infinitely more impressive and decidedly _shadowy_ favour. A favour which has got me the most sexually excited I've been in _at least_ ten minutes. Mark my words."


	163. Hack the Planet

_Hack the Planet_

 _Adam_

Oswin had told him in the past that it wasn't dying and getting shoved inside a Dalek that made her so damaged, the entire process had begun years before that, when she was around seventeen to be specific, and that it was rather a side-effect of her intelligence than anything else. She wasn't even allowed to live for two decades before the cracks began to show, and she wasn't allowed to live for three decades at all, dying before she reached that next stage of life. And yet, he could not tell if it was a good thing or a bad thing that as her state of mind had gradually become a husk of insecurity and self-deprecation, her genius had not been diminished. Because here was a girl with a home-grown AI on her shoulder doing equations as quickly as a supercomputer would to work out space coordinates, using a pen and paper to create the arithmetic in illegible scribbles, while at the same time explaining to Adam Mitchell what to do to break the lock on the TARDIS emergency teleporters and wire them up with a Chula transponder from three-thousand years in the future.

"So, wait, you're _from_ the future?" Kowalczyk questioned them. The members of D-Kay kept offering to help, but Oswin wasn't letting them for whatever reason, preferring instead to opt for Adam and Sprite's assistance. Sometimes they lent her a tool, like the micro-screwdriver she was currently using to tinker with the transponder, while Adam 'checked over' her equations (which was proving difficult because her handwriting was terrible.)

"Oh, Adam's not, but I am," Oswin said, "My brother-in-law has a time machine."

"And _he's_ from the future?"

"He's an alien, I don't know when he's from, exactly," Oswin shrugged, "He probably doesn't know himself. I don't think he even knows when his birthday is, if they even have birthdays on that planet in the same way." Adam still didn't think it was wise to tell these strangers so many things, but he had a knack for secrecy. After all, he hadn't really told Oswin he was rich until after they'd started dating, and she hadn't known he had a sister for weeks. The fact that she still hadn't met his parents was evidence enough. If he had it his way, he wouldn't tell them a thing, it wasn't like they _needed_ these hackers at all, and he remained suspicious of Chris Kowalczyk's motivations for coming to work at CyTech.

Oswin put the transponder down and took out her phone, which was not any kind of phone Adam had ever seen before and he often saw her do some unusual things with it, including right then. He didn't really know what she was doing, but it looked a little bit like she was writing quite a great deal of code with her thumbs in a black-and-blue app.

"What are you doing?"

"Calling in a favour," she answered cryptically. Of course she was an open book except when _he_ wanted to know something, then she kept stuff to herself and smiled at him so that he wouldn't be inclined to ask any more questions. He wanted to know what she was doing quite desperately, but that smile told him that no matter how hard he tried to ply her she wasn't going to take the bait. He would have to wait and see what trick she was pulling, just like everybody always had to, in a strand of showmanship she no doubt absorbed from being around the Doctor for too long. Or Jenny, Jenny was always keeping things to herself until one final, crucial moment.

"Who?"

"You'll see," was all she said. He believed her.

"What next, then?" he pressed.

"Hmm? Oh, nothing."

"Nothing?"

"No, it's done. I've done it. Programmed in the coordinates. You did double check them, didn't you?"

"I, uh… you know, you really need to fix your handwriting…" She scowled at him, and then snatched the notebook full of her newest calculations back out of his hands. "And these shorthand languages you have – I don't know how to decipher them."

"Shorthand languages?" asked 8-Bit, or Jacob Lowe, who had previously tried to get Oswin to explain to him the fundamentals of how time travel worked, though she wasn't having it.

"He's just making excuses, like he doesn't speak five languages himself."

"Six," said Adam.

"Pardon?" Oswin asked.

"I can speak six languages."

She smiled, "I can speak nine." He pouted. "I should learn some more. _Twelve_ languages has a better ring to it."

"I'm sure your maths is good enough," Adam told her.

"'Good enough' isn't… well, _good enough_. It has to be perfect or we'll end up getting teleported into the middle of space. And in case you haven't worked it out yet in your backwards century, that's _bad_ because there's no air in space, and you need air to breathe," she patronised him, but he thought this was directed more at the other people in the room. Then she took out her phone again.

"Hey – we said no talking to the AI," Chris argued.

"I've already worked it out, I'm sorry that I want to make doubly-sure that I'm not catapulting the pair of us into oblivion. I don't actually need to prove myself to a bunch of nerds who spend their time trying to break Google from inside a storage unit." Adam thought that that was legitimately _mean_ , and she proceeded to get Helix to do the same calculations she had just done. Unsurprisingly, Helix gave the exact same long string of coordinates. Oswin did not boast about getting the answer correct, she was only relieved.

"How does it work?" asked Jacob. He wanted to know how everything worked, every little thing.

"Well," Oswin began, picking up the transponder, passing to Adam the notebook, "You just hold it in your hands," she held it in her hand, and then reached over to grab Adam's hand and place that one the device as well, pressing down tightly so that he would hold on, "And then you flick this little toggle I just screwed on, and-" And she flicked the toggle, but it was a very uncomfortable teleport, like using a vortex manipulator. What was it the Doctor always said? _Time travel without a capsule_. Nasty.

He landed with a thud somewhere else entirely, somewhere much warmer and darker, and something hard and heavy landed on top of him and winded him even more than being wrenched across space had winded him already. It took a few moments to get his bearings, or even begin to _try_ to get his bearings, and he realised he was holding a leg. A big, metal, fake leg. Somebody cleared their throat, and he saw Oswin sitting up nearby holding her Sphere in her lap; the transponder was on the floor in front of her.

"The teleport shut me off for a second," she explained, "Lost my leg. It's strange just how many times you can lose an appendage you only have two of to begin with."

"Yeah…" he looked around in the dark, "Where are we?"

"Spaceship. Engine room." That was why it was so warm. "Those three talked a lot, didn't they?"

"I think _you_ talk a lot," he pointed out.

"Too much?"

"No, just a lot," he crawled over to her to give her the leg back, at the same time Sprite appeared from a shadowy corner dragging Oswin's cane behind him. "I told you your maths was good enough."

"So you did," she said, rolling up the left leg of her jeans so that her scarred stump was revealed, and she could reattach the prosthetic. He'd seen her do this dozens of times. "Should've brought Nios, she would have loved all their questions, might've even murdered one of them because she loves questions so much. I can't believe that's what Jacob Lowe was doing before Darling picked him up. Maybe this is why he never talks to me, because he doesn't want to reveal anything about the future, and _not_ because he's incredibly boring."

"This future? Doesn't seem like there's much to tell."

"You never know. Maybe we're going to die, or something."

"Thanks for that," he said, watching her closely. It was just when she had fixed her leg back on that he decide to act on a sudden impulse – and he was probably the least impulsive person he had ever met – and gently touched her chin, turning her face towards him, so that he could kiss her. Oswin kissed him back without hesitation, like she had been waiting for him to show some initiative.

"What was that for?" she asked eventually when he stopped, smiling, still leaning towards him. He touched her face lightly.

"You said we might die," he pointed out.

"I was joking."

"Yeah, but… just in case.

"We'll be okay. I only had to dismantle the one teleporter keyring, after all; we've still got yours," she said. That was true, "And my special friend."

"Uh-huh."

"Come on, help me up, let's take a look around," she said. He got to his feet and lifted her too, steadying her carefully as she regained her balance.

"What _do_ you think's going on? Like, really? What's all this about?" he queried, letting her take his arm as they proceeded towards the exit of the engine room. He couldn't help but think that her personal battle with herself that had led to her letting both her legs re-deteriorate was maybe not so helpful, given their day-to-day activities.

"Some idiot's stolen a Time Agency ship and is, for an unknown reason, trying to destroy Facebook. I mean, you come back from the future with access to so much technology and then all you do is try to attack Silicon Valley with ransomware? Your hacker protégés are probably completely wrong, this person doesn't know how to hack a transponder like that to exploit Cyborg. Even if he got in, he wouldn't know what to do," Oswin said, then she lowered her voice, " _I don't even think they know how to turn the lights on_. It's so dark in here. This thing is a troop transport vehicle."

"There are that many Time Agents?"

"Sort of. The Time Agents are like Time Lords, they can really be any species."

"Time Lords can be any species? I thought they _were_ a species…?"

"It's complicated. It's exposure to the time vortex that creates Time Lords, Mitchell – that's how River was born. She's biologically human, just the one heart, but she's a Time Lord. Gallifreyans hoard it to themselves – honestly, when you've read as much as I have, it becomes pretty clear that they're generally just a bunch of uppity, self-appointed, intergalactic, aristocratic arseholes. The Doctor's really the best of the bunch, he ran away, after all. And then killed the rest of them. Anyway, the Time Agents recruit from all over, any species, the Chula are just one of them, and they build good ships. So the Time Agency use mainly Chula ships. And then Jack stole one of them and, uh – did that happen before or after you left?"

"After. Immediately after," he said resentfully.

" _Ah_ ," a wry smile crept onto her face, "So, what you're saying is that Jack is second-best to you?"

"I don't think so."

"Sloppy seconds, I'll bet."

"Gross."

"They left Jack behind, too, and without the courtesy of taking him home first," Oswin pointed out, "Clearly, the evidence proves that you're, like, _miles_ better than he is."

"You see?"

"See what?"

"I _told_ you you're sweet and cute." She looked away, going red.

" _Masquerade!_ " A man's voice suddenly shouted over the ship's tannoy, making Adam jump, " _That's what I'm thinking. It'll all happen in a masquerade. The whole thing. That way, everyone's on even footing, there's none of that, uh, classism. Are you getting all this down?_ " A pause. " _You better be. It's genius. The main focus will be the cake. It'll take centre-stage, the whole time, and they're like – 'when is somebody going to cut this cake?' and they're preparing to eat it, but the audience don't know why the cake is there. And nobody ever eats the cake. It symbolises… impotence. Yeah? Are you definitely writing this down? A genius can't be held accountable for a loss of his ideas_."

"I told you," said Oswin, "He's an idiot. What's he talking about? Impotent cake?"

"But we don't know who he's talking to," Adam pointed out, "Whoever he's talking to might _not_ be an idiot."

" _You damn robot! Why isn't the picture-box turned on!? I'm missing my videos!_ " the man shouted suddenly, and there was another pause in the place of somebody else's response, " _I don't care that I said 'no interruptions.' Do you think Kim, Kourtney and Khloé have to put up with this kind of crap!? No! Turn on the damn thing! And why didn't you tell me I accidentally kicked the button to turn the PA system on!? We're trying to preserve energy here you useless_ -" the comms died when he noticed what he'd done.

"He's talking to a computer," Oswin pointed out.

"An AI?"

"Doubtful. Chula ships generally have automated computers in them. It's basically Siri but it can make your food. There was one on the _Alaska_ , actually, but it didn't really translate into my hallucination. But it's really nothing more than a voice in a box."

"A voice in a box, you say? Then what does that make me?" yet another voice emanated out of the shadows, and quite literally from _the shadows_ , Adam realised, when he saw who it was and finally Oswin's comments about 'calling in a favour' all made sense. It was _the_ Shadow, the dark cloud of microscopic alien piranhas himself. Adam had to squint to even see the outline of his transparent suit.

"My best friend in the world right now," Oswin said, "We should get friendship bracelets." The Shadow said nothing for a while, then changed the subject.

"You're lucky he already has a bounty on his head. The Time Agency are desperate to get their ship back. Thanks for the tip-off."

"You're my favourite morally-grey shapeless creature," Oswin grinned.

"I've got a question," Adam began, "What do you do with the money you earn from being a bounty hunter?"

"I collect antique motorcycles," the Shadow said.

"Uh… are you telling the truth…?" Adam asked slowly. The Shadow did not speak. "Okay, then…"

"I'm going to go grab this moron now, if that's alright with you two geniuses." It didn't sound like the Shadow cared whether they were alright with it or not, but Oswin smiled toothily and gave the shape a thumbs-up.

The Shadow only became clear when the door to the cockpit was opened and the light from within illuminated his outline, where he looked like a void of light, a black hole shaped like a person.

"Did you see that!" the man in the cockpit shouted to nobody in particular as Adam and Oswin followed in the Shadow's wake, "She's getting arrested and Kim's just taking selfies! This is what I'm saying about the corruption of technology. I mean, it's funny, but corrupt. It's what I aim to capture in my play, my masterpiece, plays don't need technology."

"Now, now," said the Shadow loudly, "Without technology, there wouldn't have been any time-ship for you to steal." The guy screamed – literally, _screamed_ – and fell out of his chair, where they saw he was only wearing a vest and a pair of boxers and looked like he hadn't had a wash for a good few days. His hair shone with grease and he was eating something out of a bowl.

"Are you eating dry spaghetti?" Adam asked, staring at him.

"What do you mean, 'dry'?" he asked, then he took a bite out of a handful of dry sticks of spaghetti.

"Eating dry spaghetti in your pants and watching _Keeping Up with the Kardashians_?" Adam questioned.

"What? No! Computer – turn off the picture-box."

"It's a TV," corrected Adam.

"I think some introductions are in order," the Shadow began.

"No need," snapped the man, who was actually more of a boy than a man, he looked to be scarcely older than eighteen, "I know who he is. Adam Mitchell. The golden boy of technical innovation – in twenty years everyone in this hellish century is going to have forgotten Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison and Leonardo Da Vinci and it'll be this one's name on their lips. He's going to put Elon Musk to shame with his contributions to the digital era – and he's cuter than Elon Musk, too."

"Yeah, he's definitely cute…" Oswin agreed, then stopped, "I didn't mean to say that out loud…"

"Who are you?"

"His boyfriend. I mean – girlfriend, he's _my_ boyfriend. I'm from your century, actually, I'm a hologram."

"This is what I mean. It's an affront to everything logical in the world – science gone mad. _Holograms_? The dead should stay dead. That's what I aim to do. And now you've delivered _him_ , right to me, the boy who starts it all. If I killed him, do you know how much human progress would be stalled? Thrown right back into the dark ages."

"And how are you going to kill him?" the Shadow challenged, and the boy looked around the room for anything that could be weaponised. Unfortunately, all he had was his spaghetti and a carton of almond milk dripping onto the floor.

"Use my natural strength," he said eventually. Then he bit off more spaghetti.

"You're supposed to boil it before you eat it," Adam said, "And have it with sauce."

"It wouldn't be crunchy if you boiled it."

"It's not supposed to be crunchy!" he exclaimed.

"Careful, babe. Don't get too stressed," Oswin told him, "Nobody's forcing _you_ to eat the spaghetti. This crazy luddite probably doesn't know how to boil a kettle, and even my sister knows how to boil a kettle and she's shit, so that's saying something."

"His name is Landon Briggs," said the Shadow eventually, "He's wanted for assault."

"Whose assault!?" the boy shouted in anger.

"The assault of the Time Agent whose ship this was. I heard you gave her a nasty scratch. Maybe some bruises," the Shadow sounded bored. Then again, Adam had never heard the Shadow _not_ sound bored. Maybe it was hard for a swarm in a suit to show much emotion.

"She was a criminal herself. An agent of technology."

"You need to use your computer to turn your TV on and off," Oswin pointed out, "It's got buttons on it, and a remote."

"I'm going to write a play about this. You can't stop me."

"Nobody's going to care about your play," the Shadow told him. "In fact, nobody really cares about you. The Time Agency are more bothered about their transport ship being returned to them than about the boy who stole it. But I'm sure the guards at Stormcage will like your company very much."

"Stormcage!? You can't take me there!"

"What are you going to do about it?" the Shadow challenged, stepping closer.

"I'll… fly us into the sun! Computer, set a course for the sun! The centre of the sun."

" _It is against my programming to do anything that may cause damage to the ship or its registered crew_ ," the computer said in a stiff, female voice. Landon Briggs kicked the wall, then gasped in pain when he stubbed his big toe and he dropped his handful of spaghetti. Adam Mitchell never liked to talk ill of people, but this boy _was_ kind of pathetic.

"Then I'll pilot the ship myself!" he shouted in anguish. Oswin quickly took out her phone.

"Helix, would you kindly tap into this Chula ship and lock the steering so that it's immobile?" she requested, "Please and thanks."

" _Affirmative, Miss Oswald_." Sure enough, when Landon tried to mess with the controls, absolutely nothing happened. He couldn't even get his precious 'picture box' to turn back on. Adam wondered if they had the Kardashians in Stormcage.

"You'll never catch me," he said.

"You've already been caught," the Shadow told him.

"Why _do_ you hate technology?" Adam questioned, "Out of interest."

"It makes everything futile, and meaningless. In the future, I'm nobody. At least here people are scared of me, and what I might do."

"They're really not…"

"There's no privacy of information. Everything about everyone, from birth to death and even _post-death_ in some obscene cases, is just… there. You can find everything. Nothing gets deleted forever. And people – they find out things about _me_ , things from, you know – these – it's girls, see. They _talk to each other_. Through technology. And then they don't talk to me!"

"Probably ought to just, you know, not be a dickhead, I suppose," Oswin shrugged, "If you're nice to girls, then they'll talk to you. Mitchell's nice to everybody, and that's why I love him."

"It's an illusion. Girls don't want people to be nice to them. _I'm_ nice to them."

"Babe," Oswin stage-whispered to Adam, "He sounds like some of those boys you play _World of Warcraft_ with."

"You can't just generalise the entire _WOW_ community like that," he told her, "I mean, sure, _some_ of them are like that, but people in every walk of life are like that. Not just people who play _WOW_."

"Don't call it 'wow', you're such a dork."

"You'll regret this," Landon declared as the Shadow went over and grabbed him. He struggled a little but was no match for a gang of irritated Vashta Nerada.

"Be quiet, or I might get hungry during our trip back to the future."

"You'll see," he said, "You'll all see. When I write my play. You'll all be in it, I'll draw attention to these injustices, and then everyone will know my name. Landon Biggs. I mean – shit – _Briggs_."

"You don't even know your own name, mate," said Adam. By now, the Shadow had Landon in a pair of glowing, spacey-looking handcuffs and had pushed him away into a corner.

"They'll shock you if you wander too far away from me," he warned.

"This is inhuman."

"I'm not human, so I don't really care," said the Shadow monotonously, then he turned back to Oswin, "If you care to have your AI unlock the controls, I'll fly the ship now. And then if you tell me where you'd like me to drop you off, since I assume you don't want to come to Stormcage, where you'd both be incarcerated immediately."

"What? Both of us? Why?" Oswin asked.

"You for mass murder."

She shrugged, "Understandable."

"Him for stealing sensitive information about the future and taking it back to the past."

"Fair enough…" Adam mumbled. He really hadn't thought about the repercussions of his actions that day in the year 200,000. "Could you just drop us off at CyTech HQ? I've got some business to take care of…"

 **AN: Tell you what's scary – last week Facebook and Instagram went down mysteriously for a few hours, so maybe Landon Briggs has struck again in his quest to get revenge on all of humankind because he can't get a girlfriend.**


	164. Nerd Flirts XII

_Nerd Flirts XII_

 _Adam_

"Check it out!"

"Wow, babe, that's…" He paused and looked at her, and then his face fell.

"You don't like it."

"No, it's just – you know, it's a car. Another one."

"Yeah, but… I mean, if you don't like it-"

"Mitchell, it's your car. You know me, I don't really have any opinion whatsoever on cars," she shrugged, "You get a new car if you want a new car."

"I traded in the Ferrari," he explained, standing next to it, "The 458."

"I didn't think you liked that Ferrari particularly much anyway," she said, and she was right, he didn't – he much preferred the Porsche 911. He was waiting for her to say something nice, or constructive, and she eventually realised this as she stood in the TARDIS garage next to the dilapidated ruin of his yacht. "I… like the colour?" she suggested, "The, um… I don't really know anything about it."

"It's a Tesla Roadster, from 2020," he explained, "It's electric, runs on a lithium battery." It was also white, a limited-edition colour he had paid quite a bit extra for in spite of his colour-blindness, and gorgeous. The second most gorgeous thing in the room, after Oswin.

" _Oh_ ," she realised, "Well, that is cool, now you've told me that. I do always think it's funny how you have so many petrol cars but you put so much money into helping the environment. And you get that weird recycled toilet paper that isn't even soft."

"What have you been touching the toilet paper for? You don't use the toilet."

"Literally because I wanted to see if it was soft," she said.

"It's got four seats," he nodded at the car, "And it can do nought-to-sixty in one-point-nine seconds. Although, that's probably not impressive to you, you did build that spaceship..."

"Mmm, _Georgia_ can reach light-speed in half a second."

"Did you…? Name it?"

"Did I name the amazing spaceship I built from scratch? Of course I did. Christened by my own fine hands using industrial lubricant and engine grease. Don't tell Jenny, she has no idea, she'll find out if she ever has to take a look at the warp drive for general maintenance," Oswin explained, "Wrote her name in there. And you're one to talk, Mr I-Named-My-Yacht-After-A-Dragon."

"Who's it named after?"

"Nobody, I just like the name. Anyway, carry on telling me about your big, sexy car," she nodded at the Roadster.

"Oh. Well. It's no spaceship."

"Is it not? I hadn't noticed," she said dryly, "Four seats, electric, very fast, anything else?"

"Heated seats, actually. And what they call a 'biological warfare mode.' Which is where it activates a HEPA filter, really. But if the car's not doing it for you, I've got something else."

"It's not very hard to find stuff that does it for me, to be fair," she pointed out jokingly, watching him open the passenger door of the Roadster, "Anything phallic and I'm there." He pulled a plastic bag out of the car, where it had been sitting on the chair.

"I would have, uh, wrapped it, but, um… it's just that, earlier you were saying it was May to you, and… I think I missed Valentine's Day for you."

"I'm not too big on Valentine's Day," she said.

"It's just an excuse because I wanted to do something nice," he said, holding out the bag to her. She limped the step or two closer to bridge the gap and took it from him, giving him a suspicious look. He, on the other hand, could feel his cheeks burning. This sensation was psychosomatic, he was quite sure, since he was frozen, but that didn't make it less uncomfortable. And after sleeping next to Oswin for so many weeks – who frequently awoke experiencing sharp, phantom pain in her left leg which was no longer there – he didn't brush off 'imaginary' feelings so easily.

"Is this…?"

"Yeah," he said as she pulled a pretty basic, nondescript teddy bear out of the plastic bag, "I hope I didn't, I don't know, overstep or something. It's just that you were saying this morning about losing… are you crying? Oh my god, I didn't mean to make you cry!" Adam Mitchell was immediately horrified and regretted what he had done. What had he been thinking, getting her a teddy bear? What a truly abominable idea… When he stepped closer to try and do something to mitigate his grave error, she surprised him by hugging him tightly, throwing her arms around his neck. He couldn't work out if he had done something good or bad, but heard her sniff, and hugged her back.

"Thank you," she mumbled, then she let him go and wiped one of her eyes, wobbling with only her cane for balance. "This is one of the sweetest things anyone's ever…" she couldn't finish her sentence. "Sorry, sorry…" she shook her head, "I'm being stupid."

"You're not."

"It's just that… my dad got me Exabyte," she confessed, "It was the only thing I had to remember when he, you know… and I know he's… and I saw him, just… and the voxo…" she was in such a state she forgot to automatically replace the future-word 'voxo' for 'phone', which she always did the rest of the time. But now he knew why the bear had meant so much to her.

"Oh. Well…"

"I'll call him Zettabyte," she decided, still with damp eyes. "He's sharing the bed with us from now on, so you better get used to it."

"I'm fine with that. Just don't bring Sprite to bed, I've had enough nightmares about centipedes in my life…" And he had had _multiple_ bad dreams about centipedes; he really didn't like them. Oswin looked at the bear she held in her hands, smiling, thinking. "So, you… you do like it?"

"I love it," she said, staring at it. Then she looked at him. "And I love you. I need to sit down – how about those heated seats?"

"Oh, um, sure," he said, fumbling with the keys in his pocket and unlocking the car, "And I was thinking, by the way, if you don't mind, maybe working out some biometric locks for this car? I just really don't want anyone taking it and driving it and crashing it. _Or_ having sex in it, like Amy and Rory were doing in my Hudson Commodore…" he glared at the bright red Commodore he no longer wanted anything to do with. Maybe he should sell that, too… in retrospect, buying it was a terrible mistake. It was gaudy and awful to drive. He opened the door for Oswin before going and sitting down in the driver's side himself.

"I could do you biometrics," she offered, "In exchange for something."

"For what…?" he asked guardedly, starting the car so that the heated seats would turn on. It was _very_ quiet.

"I just want you to meet my dad. Soon. After all this wedding chaos is over. I'm serious. And I'm not saying that you have to introduce me to _your_ parents too, because you don't, not if you don't want to – I know you don't speak to them and about everything with Ellie. But I just want you to meet him, and him to meet you, he'd think you're great. And he's nowhere near as intimidating as Fyn. He's nearly as tall as Fyn, but he's not sarcastic and dry-humoured and pretentious. And Fyn likes you, anyway, so…"

"Okay," he said finally, "Since it's so important to you. But after the wedding, I need time to prepare. Mentally."

"You'll be fine, I promise. It'll be good, and you can see the Venusian colonies, they're gorgeous. I wouldn't make you do something that would turn out horrible, baby. I would never do that. I wouldn't do that to anyone."

"What about last week? When you got Clara that water and you told her it was cold water, but it was actually boiling water, and then you watched her drink it?" he said, and she laughed involuntarily and then pretended she was just coughing. Holograms didn't cough, though.

"…That was a mistake," she blatantly lied, "And anyway, that's Clara, she doesn't count."

"Why not?"

"Because, you know… she was fine. It was hilarious. Forget about that. I wouldn't do anything like that to you, you're an angel. When am I ever mean to you?" she challenged him, and he genuinely couldn't think of a response. Contrary to popular belief, Oswin was nowhere near as horrid as she seemed to want people to think. Not that he had ever thought that.

"So, um… Landon Briggs… he was from your century." Adam changed the subject.

"Yep."

"And he knew who I was."

"I guess."

"…Did you know who I was when you met me? I mean, I had no idea that I might be _famous_ , or something. Or have a legacy, but – if _he_ knew – and I'm really that important – then-?"

"Yeah, you're right, I've been a gold-digger all along, after your money," she said, then sighed, "No, I didn't know who you were. I had no idea, you know that, I didn't know until you started going on about the architect who built your fancy glass mansion. I think we'd been together for three days, give or take. I honestly… well, first of all, you have quite a boring name, I hate to point out. Apart from the 'Aloysius' part I didn't know about until this morning-"

"Yeah, yeah."

"If I knew who you were then I wouldn't have pretended not to. And besides, these achievements of yours he was talking about? I don't know a thing about that. I've never looked you up, and you lived three-thousand years ago. _You_ don't know any key innovators from three-thousand years before _you_ were born. And I'm not very interested in, you know, ancient history. Fossils. You're a fossil."

"Thanks."

"Why are you fussed?" she questioned, frowning, "You want to know if I've been a groupie all along?"

" _No_ …" he said, unconvincingly. She raised her eyebrows.

"Well I think you're great, so you can consider me a groupie if you want. Though personally, I think a girlfriend is better than a groupie," she shrugged and smiled at him, still holding the bear. Then she looked out of the front window of the car as though they were actually driving anywhere. He wouldn't drive around in that garage though, it was cramped, there were all kinds of cars in there, and spaceships, and motorbikes. Even two or three mopeds. He wondered how many of them the Doctor had actually stolen.

"You never looked me up?"

"I don't want to know about your future," she said, "Not until we're together for long enough that I'm there to see it happen myself. Y'know, _spoilers_ and all. And don't you go getting tempted to look stuff up about yourself. I know all about your nasty track record of breaking the laws of time travel; I'm keeping an eye on you, Mitchell." He thought she was actually being serious, and truthfully, he _did_ have the desire to run an intertemporal search of himself. "You can make your own history, you don't need a guide."

"I'd feel better with a guide."

"Life's not as simple as that," she advised him, "If you're that excited to see what kind of amazing leaps forward in technology you're going to make, you'd better just get to making them. If you throw enough shit at the wall, some of it will stick."

"Mud."

"Excuse me?"

"It's 'mud.' If you throw enough _mud_ at the wall, some of it will stick. Not shit."

"I'm pretty sure it's the same principle," she said, indifferent, "As substances, they're both plenty sticky."

"They're… okay…"

"And hard to wash out from underneath your fingernails."

"I could write a book of all the disgusting things you say. And I doubt there was a lot of mud on a spacestation."

"There wasn't. That's why I mentioned shit."

"This is not a conversation I want to have…" he did not want to know if she was being serious.

"Look, I've changed a lot of nappies. I've got five little brothers. I haven't been fisting anyone."

"You really don't have to-"

"I've literally never fisted _anyone_ , my whole life," she continued to speak even though he would very much like if she would close her mouth and never speak again. In a bid to combat this he started fidgeting with the car radio, which was connected wirelessly to his phone and his iTunes library (the wonders of technology from seven years in his own personal future – cars with wifi becoming standard) and put on some music to drown her out. She thought that was funny. "You're so adorable," she said loudly, and he turned it down enough to hear her properly. Adam was looking at the speaker. "What's up?"

"I have a mini-fantasy about one day making out with a girl while this song played*." She laughed.

"God, if only there was a girl here who loved kissing you."

"If only," he said, looking at her lips.

"Tell you what _I_ have a fantasy about. Having a boyfriend who sees himself as the amazing, wonderful person I've always seen him as, that would be good," she said.

"Pretty vanilla."

" _Vanilla_? You dirty little hypocrite, I can't believe I'm hearing this," she said as he laughed. "I'll tell you about Clara's sexual fantasies, that'd show you. Or worse, Jenny's."

"How do you know what Jenny's sexual fantasies are?"

"She butt-dialled me once in a compromising situation. But given your reaction to my one stray remark about fisting, I really don't think you want to hear about anything Jenny asks Other Clara for. What's hilarious is Other Clara flat-out told her to fuck off. Wants nothing to do with it. Clara's a big fan of nurses, though."

"Brilliant. More answers to questions I wouldn't ever ask. I'm never going to look at Jenny the same way again."

"I hate to reveal anything personal about Jenny, but I did once see quite a _lot_ of handcuffs and ropes in her room over her shoulder."

"Right… are you being serious?" She didn't answer, just smirked. He didn't want to know if she was being serious, and he also knew he was never going to be able to hold a conversation with Jenny ever again for as long as they knew each other. From what he had just heard, she was a surprisingly misleading girl. Deceptive. Pretty much the opposite of Oswin in terms of her relationship with utter filth, considering Oswin talked a big game but was actually lying for shock value ninety-nine percent of the time. Then again, what did he really expect from the ex-wife of Captain Jack Harkness? People reported hearing all _kinds_ of noises coming from their room when they were actually together... "Can I put the song back to the beginning?"

Oswin laughed, "Sure. And then you can change it to something else because I'm not really a fan, but – it's your car. Your car, your exciting day, so sure. Whatever you want. Make out with a girl in a car. Maybe later you can find a girl to make out with you in a _bed_ , and wouldn't that be thrilling. Careful not to blow it too early."

"Just a few minutes ago you said you were never mean to me."

"Whatever. You love it really." And he kind of did, he thought, as he leant over to kiss her, thinking that this could well be the best moment of his entire life so far _ever_. It was hard to imagine it getting any better.

* _I didn't want to put in the actual narrative, but if anybody's interested the song he put on is "Henrietta" by The Fratellis. Although feel free to imagine whatever song, that's just the one I was thinking of._

 **AN: SO you knew this was coming, but it's time for me to go on term break. Probably around a month and a half before I can come back, but I'm writing** ** _Spook Watch_** **, and it's an interesting storyline which involves Ravenwood in a big way, and more specifically her status as a vampire. And Jenny will probably be in it too. It's really all four of them, because I think their little group is fun to write about.**


	165. If You Like Piña Coladas

**DAY 158**

 _If You Like Piña Coladas_

 _Amy_

"Hey there."

"Oh – hi. Didn't realise you were awake," mumbled Rory, halfway through flossing his teeth in the bathroom mirror. Amy was leaning on the doorframe with her arms crossed, watching him, in her pyjamas with her hair a mess – she hadn't bothered to brush it yet.

"I just woke up a minute ago," she began, approaching him slowly, "Thought I might have a shower, but _then_ I thought maybe my husband might want to spend the morning with me, you know, _catching up_." She put her hand on the sink next to him and smiled her most tantalising smile with bedroom-eyes to match, and he paused mid-floss, looking at her. "God, _how_ am I attracted to you even when you're making all these weird, flossing faces?"

"I… well, you've sort of… it's a bit late."

"What do you mean?"

"The Doctor, he kind of, stopped by. Wants to go have a boy's day. Look for medical supplies."

"Right, but the Doctor can definitely wait half an hour," she said, touching his cheek, making him meet her eyes. He could never normally say no to her when he looked into her eyes.

" _Yeah_ , but… he's desperate, he keeps shouting through the wall. It might be fun, he wants to go to a restaurant."

"What? Just the two of you? Like a date? Is he having a fight with his wife?"

" _No_ – why do you always look for bad reasons for good things? It's like you want them to be fighting."

"Excuse me?" she dropped her hand, and he hastened to make things up to her and put his floss down next to the sink.

"I didn't – I'm sorry. I'll tell you what – _I_ will refuse to go to any even remotely date-like restaurant with him. Strictly medical supplies. _And_ … I'll make dinner. For us. Tonight. You're right, we need to catch up. Actually, scratch that," he put his hands on her shoulders, " _We'll_ go to a restaurant. Have a real date."

"Mmm, if we're having a _real_ date then _I_ get to pick the destination," she said, "Because you're brushing me off this morning."

"If you woke up a bit earlier-" He cut himself off when he saw her expression, her raised eyebrows, just begging him to continue. "It's almost noon."

"It's a time machine, Rory."

"I'm already dressed."

"Then get _un_ dressed and you can get dressed again in a bit," she persisted.

" _Tonight,_ I will. Promise. We'll do a whole thing."

"I'll hold you that."

"I want you to," he said, then he kissed her good morning for a second or two, which annoyed Amy considerably because she wanted _more_ than a kiss. And how often did that happen? Not as often as either of them might like. Sometimes she felt desperate for the privacy that not being on the TARDIS afforded them. "Why don't you go and see what Donna's doing? Have a girly day?"

"A-? Eurgh. You're _such_ a man. Go away, go have your man-date, get out of my sight." He grinned at her and walked past, leaving the bathroom. "I love you, by the way," she called after him.

"I love you, too!"

"Don't forget your keys." She heard a rattling, metallic sound, meaning that Rory had just picked his keys up when prompted. She listened out until she heard the door open and then close, and then she had to work out what she was going to do with her day.

As patronising as Rory's suggestion she go see Donna was (well, it wasn't particularly patronising, she was just in a bad mood), it was really her best and only option. It was that or go see what River was doing, since Martha had been so busy with Mickey recently rekindling their marriage – or whatever was taking up so much of their time – Rose was preoccupied planning her wedding to Ten, Jack was busy boning Ianto at every opportunity, Jenny was elusive as always, and she refused to entertain the possibility of speaking to either of the Twins. As for the remaining two, Nios and Adam Mitchell, Nios freaked her out and Adam… well, he was boring. So, Donna, her TARDIS-best-friend, it was – their friendship was a little like having a favourite co-worker. Though she did have to shower first and get dressed.

All in all, it took her at _least_ an hour to do all that and then fix her hair and do her makeup, and an hour was pretty much record time for her. When she had been travelling with the Doctor, just the two of them, had had become incredibly irritated at how late she always was. That was why it was a good thing she had married Rory – he was _never_ late. He was one of those people who lived their every moment in a perpetual fear of running out of time to do anything – catch the bus, brush his teeth, stop aliens from taking over the world. The usual.

After showering and getting dressed she found herself hungry, and decided to go wander into Nerve Centre at one o'clock in the afternoon to find something to eat. It was empty, to her surprise. Especially considering it was lunch time. No one there. They were all away doing their individual things, and Amy got herself a bowl of Weetabix and covered them in milk, loitering in the kitchen and idly mashing up the wheat with the back of her spoon. Nerve Centre was so rarely empty, especially when – to her knowledge – most people were actually on board the ship. Amy sighed, wondering if maybe she should have asked Eleven if she could tag along with him and Rory and just put up with the complaints about her being late.

In the end, Amy took out her phone and texted Donna asking if she was about. It was much easier to do that than actually go look for her, since if she wasn't in her room she could be anywhere, and Donna didn't really spend much time in her room. Especially since tapping into her dimensional powers; she meandered around the TARDIS interior a lot more than she used to, and Amy was sure made secret portals to visit Shaun whenever she could steal a few spare moments (which was often.)

Donna replied: _I'm in the library_. Then, a moment later: _Why?_

Amy didn't answer, she put her phone back in her bra where she was having to keep it because of the lack of pockets on girls' clothes and took her bowl of Weetabix to go find Donna Noble. What was she doing in the library, Amy wondered? Reading books? She'd never known Donna to read books. Usually when she herself mentioned books Donna didn't care what she was talking about, and she hadn't even heard of her pen-name, _Amelia Williams_ – though that was technically her real, married name, and it was only the Doctor who ever forgot and kept calling them 'the Ponds.' Then again, _she_ read, but also didn't spend time in the TARDIS library. She took a fair few books at once and switched them every so often, like it was a real library, but she didn't stay in there. It was too big and too empty.

When she arrived, it still appeared big and empty. She ate a spoonful of her very late breakfast and looked around for a moment, but to no avail. There were maybe a dozen floors in there, all of them the size of a football pitch or larger, incredibly high shelves and ladders and multiple fires burning away in the hundred or so fireplaces.

"Donna?" she called loudly, walking in circles, looking all around, through the ornate old library. " _Dooonna_?"

" _What_?" came a distant shout. She was on the next floor. Amy had to go find a spiral staircase to follow the sound of Donna's voice, climbing quickly and eventually spying Donna looking over one of the balconies, trying to see Amy.

"Oi," Amy called. Donna looked at her. "Morning." But Donna was not happy to see her. She continued to eat her Weetabix.

"I came in here because I didn't want to be disturbed," she said.

"Oh, really?" Amy frowned, "Why? You could have just stayed in the living room, it's empty. Is there something weird going on nobody's told me about?"

"I don't think so," Donna said, leaving the balcony and going back to a table she had been sitting at, one covered in books and sheets of paper. Amy sat on the table next to her with her cereal. "What's the matter with you?"

"I'm bored. Rory's gone out with the Doctor. Man stuff. Something to do with medical supplies, I don't know."

"Bet they've gone to the pub," said Donna.

" _I_ want to go to the pub…" she muttered.

"You just woke up. You haven't even finished your breakfast."

" _It's a time machine_ ," Amy said, shrugging, "I could really go for a drink. Seriously, why are you in here? What are these books?" she picked up the closest one and read out the title, " _Wuthering Heights_. Why are you reading _Wuthering Heights_?"

"It's a love story, isn't it?"

"Not a healthy one. What else have you got?" Amy scanned the collection. Many things by Jane Austen, Nicholas Sparks, _even_ Stephanie Meyer. It was a hoard of romance novels. "Are you trying to write the next _Fifty Shades_?"

" _No_ , I'm _trying_ to write this speech," Donna admitted, picking up a pen and going back to a piece of notebook paper with many lines of crossed-out writing on it. "It's not going well. I only barely passed my English O-Level." Amy nearly choked on her Weetabix.

" _Excuse me_? Did you just say _O-Level_? You took O-Levels? Oh my god."

"Go on. Say one more thing, I dare you."

"I didn't say anything!" Amy protested, trying to hold in her laughter, "Didn't they replace those with GCSEs in the 60s?"

"No, they stopped them in the 80s. 1987, I think."

"I was born in 1987." Donna glared at her. She smiled, continued munching her Weetabix. "What year did you take these O-Levels?"

"I'm not telling you that."

"Were you born in the 50s?"

"No, I bloody well wasn't."

"…Do you want some help?" she offered. Donna looked at her with a look of death, fury – she absolutely despised people bringing up her age. So did most women her age – _older_ women. Women some twenty years older than Amy was. "What? I'm a published writer. Why do you need to make a speech, anyway?"

"Because I'm the Doctor's best woman, so I have to make a speech. I don't like public speaking."

"Give over, you love attention," Amy snorted. Donna continued to glare at her. "I'm serious, I'll help you. Why are you stressed about it? You've got ages to write it."

"The wedding is in five days. I'm making a speech to a bunch of Rose's family I've never met in _five days_. No one will remember it anyway, Jack's doing a speech right after me."

"Oh, god, I can't _wait_ for that. It's gonna be great. Is there a free bar?"

"Yes," said Donna.

"What, really? A _free bar_?"

"They're paying for it all with a hacked credit card, so I said there'd better be a free bar."

"Awesome… can't wait for it now. Seriously, speech, come on. Let me have a go. What do you have so far? I am _all_ ears." She had just about finished her mushy Weetabix and so set the bowl down while Donna, in her desperation lifted one of her other notebook sheets and began to read. "'Firstly, I'd just like to say that I'm very nervous about this speech. In fact, this must be the fourth time today I've risen from a warm seat holding a piece of paper-'"

" _What_? That's you're opening joke?"

"…One of them. Do you not like it?"

"Instead of saying that, maybe you should stand up and tell a room of over fifty people that you can't stop shitting yourself. _Oh wait_ , that's _literally_ what you just did. Why would you think that's a good idea?"

"Well, what about: 'I did ask for a mic but was told there wasn't one available. So for those of you who can't hear me at the back, the silence from the people at the front should reassure you that you're not missing out on anything.'" Amy stared at her. "What?"

"Have you been on the internet?"

Donna paused for a long moment before, with an air of desperation, admitting that she _had_. "I couldn't think of anything to say to open it!"

"I've never been more ashamed of anyone. You don't need the internet, you're hilarious. You keep all of us on our toes, including the Doctor. Can't believe you resorted to looking up Buzzfeed's top best man one-liners, or something."

"Look, it's just… I mean, what can you really say about the Doctor?"

"The Doctor? The thousand-year-old, time-travelling alien? _What can you say about him_? You are the first person in the history of basically the entire universe who's said that. If you can say that, you can say anything. Maybe you and Jack, yeah, should join forces, and do like, a song."

"A song?"

"Yeah! You could… do a duet. You could do _Islands in the Stream_."

"You want me to sing _Islands in the Stream_ in front of dozens of people?" Donna asked her incredulously.

"You could switch so that Jack does the Dolly Parton bit and you be Kenny Rogers."

"How is that a better idea than getting a speech off the internet?"

"Because, unlike either of those openers you read out, it would be hilarious. Or you could sing Abba. Do _SOS_. Everyone likes Abba."

"I'm sure there will be plenty of Abba afterwards. They always play Abba at weddings."

"I want the entire Abba discography."

"Well, Rose is taking song requests, so. Keeps meaning to ask people what they want to hear."

"The entire Abba discography," repeated Amy firmly, "Or at least the soundtrack to _Mamma Mia_." She was serious about Abba.

" _SOS_ isn't even originally a duet."

"They all sing in it, though," Amy pointed out.

"They all sing in _every_ Abba song."

"So sing every Abba song!"

"Why don't _you_ do that, Amy? Since you love Abba so much?"

"I literally would – I mean, you can't name one single bad Abba song – but nobody's asked me to make a speech. I know what your problem is. You've got writer's block. And I have the perfect solution for writer's bock. Three words: sea, sun, and cocktails. I promise, when you're on the beach sipping a frozen daiquiri, you'll thank me. You'll be awash with amazing, hilarious ideas about how the Doctor is your best friend and Rose is… well, she's alright. Trust me. I'm literally a professional."

"…Fine. But if I don't have a best man speech, or at least the beginnings of a best man speech, by the end of today, then I will personally make sure that there is absolutely no Abba at their wedding whatsoever," Donna threatened.

"I _promise_."

 **AN: Crazy story, there's a bunch of stuff going on in the UK right now. First of all, one of the major unions of university lecturers, UCU (University and College Union) is striking over pensions so a LOT of my stuff this term has ended up being cancelled. Second of all, we're in the middle of what the tabloids call the "Beast from the East" and there's some of the most severe weather warnings in British history in effect right now in some parts of the country so there's tons of snow outside – they've literally got the RAF and the army out and nearly a dozen people have died, the coldest March day since records began. Along with that, I have less assessments this term than I did last term, I've got a different job, and I'm not being forced to move. So all that combines so that now I've got a lot more downtime than I usually do so I'm coming off break early! And because I have this whole storyline planned and it's gonna be a good one. Never done just Donna and Amy before so I hope it's good.**


	166. Twist and Shout

_Twist and Shout_

 _Amy_

Turquoise sea, white sand, emerald jungle glistening with rainbow foliage, humidity and driftwood and a burning hot sun – it was everything she could have wished for when she suggested to Donna they have a relaxing excursion to cure her writer's block. A tropical island so picture-perfect it could be a default laptop screensaver, and that truly _was_ the mark of a high-quality graphic. It was gorgeous with palm trees and clear skies, completely isolated. There was only one thing missing from their getaway location.

"I thought you said there would be cocktails?" Donna asked, wandering around on the island, both of them dressed for the climate. Every time Amy dressed to go somewhere hot she was reminded of when the Doctor had promised they were going to Rio and she had found herself stuck in cold, wet Wales in the shortest short-shorts possible. At least her gamble had paid of this time, though – it was a primo destination and she fell in love with it as soon as she stepped onto the beach in the cool breeze, with her open-toed sandals and her sunglasses.

"Yeah… I thought there'd be people everywhere," Amy mused, but the island appeared to be empty. When she strained her ears to listen, she couldn't hear any tell-tale, human sounds, just the waves lapping at the shores and the wind rustling the leaves of the trees behind them. "Honestly, I swear this is a proper destination. Maybe they do that thing where they close the beach sometimes?"

"Do places do that?" Donna frowned.

"I think so. I don't know. You're rich, you must go on holidays to fancy places."

"I don't need to, I have a villa, in the Maldives," Donna said. Amy gawked; she had never heard that before.

"You're not serious? How is that fair?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, the Doctor leaves you, but he gives you a winning lottery ticket. The Doctor leaves Rory and I when we were taken by Weeping Angels, and we're forced to live the rest of our lives in New York in the 1930s during the Great Depression and back when all the food was boiled and there was no vaccine for tuberculosis."

"Invest in the stock market?" Donna suggested.

"The stock market that just crashed? That's your plan?"

"By shares in… I don't know, ammunition manufacturers. You'll get rich when World War Two happens."

"Somehow I'm not morally okay with exploiting war for profit," Amy said.

"No, fair enough," Donna sighed. Amy had made up her mind – if and when she and Rory actually left the TARDIS and returned to their squalid lives in mid-20th Century New York City, she was going to make sure he left them with some way to get money. A way that didn't involve capitalising on all the millions of people who were doomed to die in World War Two. Maybe they would pull a _Back to the Future_ and find a guide to make big money gambling on sporting events. Or maybe they should cut their losses and just become gangsters.

"We've got basically all the ingredients for cocktails right here," she changed the subject.

"What?" Donna frowned, staring around, "Listen, I've drunk some _very_ disgusting and highly alcoholic concoctions in my lifetime, but I'm not sure you have _any_ of the ingredients for any alcohol whatsoever here. It's deserted. It's a proper _deserted_ island."

"No, look, there are palm trees. If there are palm trees, there are coconuts. If there are coconuts, then we can make piña coladas."

"You also need pineapples and rum," Donna reminded her, "And something to mix it in. And ice."

"There are probably pineapples somewhere around here – it's a tropical island."

"And what about rum?" Donna challenged.

"Maybe there are pirates."

" _What_?"

"Pirates always have rum. I think. It's their thing. Anyway, I'm sure there's a bar here somewhere, this is definitely a resort. There's probably a hotel right through those trees, or around the beach. Let's go see," Amy said, marching purposefully towards the treeline. Donna met her by the brush and they stepped into the forest and its dense foliage. Within minutes of leaving the beach they were packed in by trees and plants and vines and flowers, strange plants Amy had never seen before. Though that didn't particularly surprise her, it was a desert island after all, and she was no botanist. "It's like _Lord of the Flies_ out here." Donna stared at her. "Before they start killing each other, I mean."

"Lot of nice flowers," Donna observed after a minute. It was slow-going in that jungle, dragging their feet through the roots and foliage which just seemed to get thicker as they progressed.

"I was just thinking the same thing."

"The Doctor and Rose haven't even picked flowers for the wedding yet," said Donna.

"Really? We had a lot of sunflowers."

"Sunflowers? Weird choice," said Donna.

"What did you have? You and Shaun?"

"Hydrangeas, mainly, blue ones – and avalanche roses. We got married in December, the colours looked nice. Couldn't afford anything too fancy, we didn't have much money at all. And then the Doctor got us that lottery ticket as a wedding gift. He was there, actually. I saw the TARDIS in the background of one of the photos. Didn't know what it was – with the memory wipe – asked somebody to edit it out but I changed my mind at the last minute. Suppose something in me recognised it," Donna explained.

"Sounds nice," Amy said, "Similar thing with the sunflowers, actually – bunch of weird stuff with my memory. I totally forgot who the Doctor was until halfway through the wedding reception, and I stood up and made a speech demanding into thin air that he show up. Everybody thought I'd lost it, even Rory. But he showed up though, like always."

"What's that to do with sunflowers?"

"We met Van Gogh," she said, "Few weeks, or maybe months, earlier. I kept trying to get him to paint sunflowers, I filled the whole garden with sunflowers. It's my favourite painting. But I forgot about that, too. It was these cracks in time, sucking everything up, I don't know. It's complicated and it was a while ago, years. But I insisted on us having sunflowers at our wedding. Rory doesn't have many opinions about flowers anyway. He was more worried about if I was going to jilt him at the altar."

"Why did he think you would jilt him?"

"I don't know. I wouldn't. Well, I did run off with the Doctor the night before my wedding, and maybe I did also try to kiss him, but he wasn't having it," said Amy, "Very awkward around women."

"Yeah, he does seem like he doesn't know _anything_ about girls."

"I suppose I was speaking to a Doctor before he'd been married to River for three-hundred years, though," Amy shrugged, "My daughter has clearly done a number on him. She does have a tendency to be a bit psychotic sometimes." Donna laughed. "Anyway, how is Shaun? You _never_ talk about him. Like, ever."

"Oh, he's fine. Nobody ever asks. I see him a fair bit."

"You do? When?"

"I've been having dinner with him at home most evenings," Donna said. Amy paused, dragging her feet through the leaves.

"Have you?"

"Ever since I unlocked this new 'power' with the portals," she said, "I can pop home, pop back again without anyone asking me what I'm doing. It's the questions I hate more than anything, people are so nosey. 'Specially you, bothering me when I'm in the library, forcing me to come out here – I don't see any bars or hotels yet, Amy."

"I am _sure_ that there's going to be some alcohol out here somewhere, okay?" Amy argued, though she was getting increasingly _less_ sure that there was any alcohol. But she couldn't show weakness. "We should have dinner, or something. You, me, Rory, Shaun. I'm dying to see your villa."

"There are cocktails at my villa…" Donna muttered, "But we're not staying in the villa at the moment, we've got this flat that overlooks Hyde Park."

"Blimey, that must have cost you a fortune."

"It did. _What_ a cliché, though – all the married people hanging around with each other."

"Eurgh, I know. It's gross. We should invite Mickey and Martha. Speaking of, do you think those two have been acting strange recently?" Amy asked, peering at Donna over the frames of her sunglasses, which were sliding down her nose because she was sweating in the heat. _She_ certainly thought Mickey and Martha had been acting strange. They didn't actually used to spend too much time together, Martha was always at Rose's heels while Mickey and Rory had conjured up quite the 'bromance' since they had met. But in recent weeks they had been completely absorbed with one another, whispering together and sneaking out of rooms.

"Maybe a bit. I reckon they've just rekindled their relationship a bit, or something," Donna shrugged, "You hear about it all the time. Woman reads an article in _Heat_ magazine about adding excitement to the bedroom and then they're-" Donna was, at this point, a step or two ahead of Amy, with Amy following the path she was making in the underbrush. But Amy froze while walking, froze and saw something – something deadly. While Donna was still mid-sentence, she acted on impulse.

"Watch out!" she shouted, grabbing Donna's arms and dragging her backwards. Donna tripped and fell into a tree, loudly objecting to what Amy was doing, but then they saw something shoot through the air in front of them, half a dozen tiny objects.

"What the _hell_ was that?" Donna hissed, Amy letting go of her arm.

"I don't know. Looked like blow-darts, or something. I had a premonition," she explained, edging forwards to get past Donna and investigate. If Rory was there he would tell her to turn around and run in the opposite direction from something that was shooting at her, but she had never been in the habit of trying to escape from danger.

Tentatively she approached, through the grass and branches, looking to see if the darts had found a nearby tree trunk to latch onto as Donna had been rescued. Luckily, they had, and she carefully picked one out of the bark. That was when she realised it was not a dart, it was a thorn, like a rose thorn only larger and glistening with what appeared to be some kind of secretion. It glistened in the light as she held it.

"Is that a thorn?" Donna stared at it.

"Looks like one," said Amy.

"It looks wet, you should put it down. It could be poisonous."

"Good point…" Amy stuck it back in the tree trunk she had pulled it from, wedging it into the slit it had made, and wiped her hand on a leaf. She would have to keep an eye on that, because she highly suspected it _was_ poisonous, and hopefully it was only the type of poison that had to be ingested rather than any kind which could be absorbed through the skin.

Unfortunately, the mysterious thorns were the least of Amy Pond's problems. She tried to continue walking, to find herself impeded. Something was caught around her ankle, keeping her stuck fast – quite literally _rooted_ to the spot – and it smarted when she tried to walk and pull herself free. As she paused and tried to twist so that she could see what her foot was stuck in, her whole leg was wrenched. It was she had been grabbed by someone and she was being dragged, and in one painful instant she was suspended, upside-down, by her ankle.

"Oh my god!" Donna shouted.

"What!? What's going on!?" Amy flailed in the air, struggling to get eyes on what was tugging at her. She lifted herself up as best she could and saw that it appeared to be a vine, thick and green, and that wasn't all – it was moving. It was wrapping itself around her leg tightly, snaking along her like a python. Maybe it _was_ a python, but she was sure pythons bit their pray before constricting them, and she was not being bitten. Just having the bones in her left leg slightly crushed. She screamed. "Do something!" she yelled at Donna, swinging as she tried to claw and grab at the vine, but she only seemed to be succeeding at scratching her own bare skin to pieces. _Why_ had she dressed for the beach? Her sunglasses fell to the floor underneath her.

"Like what!?" Donna demanded.

"I don't know! Grab it!"

"How the bloody hell do you expect me to do that!?"

"What's the point of being so tall if you can't do anything about this!?"

" _You're_ taller than me!"

"AND I'M HANGING UPSIDE DOWN!"

"I can't do anything!" Donna continued to protest, shouting so loud that the sonic soundwaves made Amy swing even more violently as the vine crawled up her thigh, moving from one leg to the other and tying them together, "Why don't you do your persuasion thing!? Order it to move!?"

"Right – yeah – plant: I _order_ _you to let me go_ ," she said. But the plant just continued to wrap itself around her, squeezing and squeezing, getting to her pelvis and her hips – soon enough her stomach, squashing her internal organs into a long, thin, pâté.

"Did it work!?"

"No, it didn't bloody work!"

"Well how should I know!?"

"Because you've got eyes! Can't you make a portal somewhere and get something!?"

"They don't work like that!"

"Oh, of course they don't work like that! Because _that_ would be too bloody-" she screamed again and dropped, crashing to the ground in a bed of leaves and foliage. The grip on her leg and body relaxed but didn't vanish. She saw part of the vine, severed and secreting something semi-translucent, sliding away back into the undergrowth. A shadow loomed over Amy and she glanced up to see a woman, hardly visible in the darkness against what little sun could breach the leafy canopy above.

"You're lucky I heard you shouting in here," she said. Amy squinted at her. She appeared to be holding a sword, dropping in the almost-clear, slightly-yellow fluid Amy had seen dripping from the vine. She realised what had happened when she looked at the vines still left on her legs as she tugged herself free, aching all over; this stranger had rescued her, she had chopped the vine in half with a large sword. And yet, despite the sword, Amy was confused, because she was also wearing a pair of flight goggles. Flight goggles and sword were certainly not from the same era.

When she had freed herself, Donna helped her to her feet, her picking up her sunglasses from the ground at the same time, reminded because of this stranger's get-up.

"Thanks," she said, "For saving me from the… what was that? Did I get attacked by a plant?"

"Afraid so. Plants on this island – nasty things. Learned that the hard way. Where are my manners," she sheathed her sword in an old-fashioned belt and held out her hand for them to shake, "Amelia Earhart, at your service."


	167. Mayday Mayday Mayday

_Mayday Mayday Mayday_

 _Amy_

The list of famous people the Doctor had met was infinite, and the list of famous people the Doctor had introduced Amy to personally was just as long. Richard Nixon, Winston Churchill, Vincent van Gogh – but now she had well and truly one-upped him. She and Donna had found Amelia Earhart, which was even more exciting than finding a free cocktail bar, deep in the jungles of a desolate Pacific island. She was covered in mud and dirt, had a bandage over a portion of her face, and was a complete mess in every sense of the word. But she had a sword, and nobody could ever _truly_ look like they'd given up when they were carrying a sword. It was quite possibly the single most exciting experience of her life, including marrying Rory and being a professional model. And all the other stuff with the Doctor.

"This is amazing," said Amy.

"How did you get here?" Earhart asked, looking between them, "You don't look like you've flown here – what are you wearing?"

"Me?" Amy asked, "You know, just a bikini, and this towel as a skirt – it's such a hassle having to carry a towel and sun cream. Like, what am I supposed to do? Bring a bag? To the beach?"

"What? You mean like everybody else?" Donna questioned her.

"I'm not going to carry something, it will ruin my look."

"It's already ruined by being hung upside down by a tree."

"But, really," Earhart interrupted, "How did you get here? This is an unchartered island in the middle of the ocean with no signs of human habitation, and I haven't seen any planes _or_ ships. And trust me, I've been watching, trying to achieve radio contact."

"Oh, well, we just sort of, uh…" Amy faltered.

"You know, we just…" Donna mumbled.

"And the, um…"

"There's, you know…"

"We're castaways," said Amy finally, "We just washed up. In a boat."

"You've got a boat?" Earhart asked.

"No, it was a… I've got amnesia," Amy declared, "Who are you?"

" _What?_ " Donna hissed.

"What? No, sorry, I haven't got amnesia."

"How did you get here?" Earhart persisted.

"We came here by mistake," said Donna.

"You didn't get my distress calls? I know you don't look like pilots, but you should never judge a book by its cover. Where would I be if people did that, eh? Chronic sinusitis and I still flew solo across the Atlantic." When she mentioned the sinusitis she indicated the dirty bandage on the side of her face that looked like it had been there for quite some time.

"Damn right you did," said Amy, "I'm named after you – _Amelia_." She couldn't help it, she was star-struck, and it was the truth. She _was_ named after Amelia Earhart, because she came from a family who enjoyed strong female role models. Earhart, however, was confused by this. "But everybody calls me 'Amy.' And this is Donna."

"How old are you?" Earhart asked, "You look at least twenty-five."

" _Twenty-five_?" Amy exclaimed, then added to Donna, "Did you hear that? She said I look twenty-five. I can't wait to tell Rory."

"How old _are_ you?" Donna asked her.

"I genuinely don't know. We worked it out once. At least mid-thirties. Maybe even _late_ -thirties. But if Amelia Earhart thinks I'm twenty-five, then I'm twenty-five." She grinned.

"If you're in your late thirties that would make us almost the same age," said Earhart, "So how could you be named after me?"

"Well, I was born in 1989," said Amy, "I feel like we can trust you with this information because, you know…" she looked at Donna for an explanation.

" _I'm_ half the Doctor," she decided, "So I can basically do what I want."

"Exactly," Amy nodded, "She's half an alien. For that reason. We're from the future. Like I said, I was born in 1989, and Donna was-"

"Also born in 1989," Donna interrupted, flicking her hair as though this would somehow make that more believable. Amy stared at her.

"Really."

"Yes."

"Would you swear to that on a Bible?"

"If it came down to it. Same age as Taylor Swift."

"If Taylor Swift was lying about her age," Amy muttered. Donna shushed her very aggressively, and Amy rolled her eyes. They had completely forgotten about the killer plants slithering around through the jungle.

"Sometimes people say Amy and I practically twins," Donna told Earhart.

"Hadn't heard that one," Amy quipped.

"Well, I've heard it."

"Maybe it's early on-set dementia. Or just regular dementia, don't know about the 'early'."

"How could you be twins when she's Scottish?" Earhart asked, looking between them.

"…That's what gives it away," said Donna, "Sometimes even we get confused."

"Yes, the web of lies gets very complicated, I can't hardly keep track of my genealogy sometimes," Amy said dryly.

"Are you going to be straight with me or not? I've been stuck on this island for nearing on three weeks. Now, given all the horrors I've witnessed on this island so far I'm truly inclined to believe that you're from the future, but I'd like a real answer. I've got a sword."

"Too right you've got a sword," Amy said, ogling it. She loved swords, but every time she got her hands on one the Doctor or Rory tried to confiscate it from her. Honestly, you tried to chop potatoes with a sword _one time_ and suddenly you're a 'liability' because you accidentally launched one of them across the room.

"We're time travellers," Donna began to explain, "We came here through a portal I made, one in space and time, but we have a ship. A time machine. We were supposed to come here in the future when there's apparently a cocktail bar, but I suppose I was wrong. The thing is… you're a bit of a mystery."

"A mystery?" Earhart asked.

"You're… not supposed to be rescued," Donna confessed to her uneasily. Didn't seem like it was worth their time to try and pull the wool over Amelia Earhart's eyes, especially not when she had such a sharp, threatening sword. Amy was growing increasingly conscious of their dangerous jungle surroundings, however – though hopefully the sword would go some way to protecting them. She was consciously making an effort to try and tap into her premonition power, too, which rarely worked but she would rather do everything possible to try and get a heads up if she were to be snared by a viney assailant again.

"What do you mean…?"

"You're not even meant to be found. It's one of history's great mysteries," said Amy, "'What happened to Amelia Earhart? Why did she vanish over the Pacific?'"

"What about Fred?"

"…Who's Fred?" Donna frowned.

"Fred Noonan, my navigator, a real fly boy, don't they talk about him? That's his legacy? Being forgotten?"

"I, uh… well, where is he now?" Donna asked. Earhart sighed, looking unhappy. The bandage on her face made Amy uneasy because it looked as though it was about to peel off at any moment. Perhaps it would have been more worth her time to go with Rory and Eleven and look for first aid supplies. Should she and Donna ring them? She herself didn't have any medical equipment and wouldn't know the first thing about how to alleviate chronic sinusitis – maybe she _should_ have brought a beach bag, could've brought the ingredients for piña coladas, after all…

"And where _did_ you get the sword from?" she inquired. Earhart glanced between them.

"Listen here," she began, "I consider myself to be pretty swell at telling the applesauce from the goods, but you two bearcats seem like the Real McCoy, so I'll tell you what I know."

"…Sorry, are you being ironic?" Amy asked her.

"Am I what?"

"You know, like… never mind."

"I'll show you where the sword came from," Earhart said, "C'mon, ankle over this way." She indicated the direction by jerking her head, which made the precarious bandage almost fall off. Amy would just love to get out more masking tape and seal it on there properly and could imagine that if her husband were present he'd be losing his mind seeing the dirty, sweaty thing flap about so much. It could hardly be hygienic. But then, it was probably quite difficult to care about hygiene when one had been stranded on a desert island for near on a month.

They set off walking through the jungle, single-file through a pathway previously hacked to pieces by Earhart, presumably while trying to make easier passage across the island. There was less danger of them tripping up at any rate, but the heat was really getting to Amy, along with the lack of any water. _Why_ hadn't she brought water? Why couldn't Donna have checked where they had ended up instead of assuming it was the correct year? It was _her_ portal...

"What happened to you, then?" Amy asked Earhart, both because she was she was genuinely interested and because she wanted a distraction.

"We were attacked, Fred and I," Earhart began to explain, hacking through the plants, "Got confused by the map, thought this might be our destination, flew too low – by the time we realised we were wrong, the fiends were upon us."

"By which you mean…?"

"The plants," Earhart explained, "Hostile, monstrous, all of them. Shot us down with thorns the size of your thumb." Just like the ones which had almost struck Donna, had Amy not pulled her out of the way. "Completely ripped the fuel tank apart, made it into a hayburner; we had to do a crash landing. Lucky the radio still works, it's sending out a distress call on a loop – not that it's done me a jot of good."

"Well, we're here now," said Donna, "We can get you off this island, no problem."

"Yeah, we can take you to a cocktail bar," Amy added. Donna glared at her, but wasn't a crime to be thinking about something relaxing when their situation appeared to be getting increasingly more stressful. Plants shooting down planes? Missing navigators? Swords? What was next?

"Fred and I were on the prowl looking for firewood, when we… it's hard to explain, see."

"Try us," challenged Amy, "Like she said, we're time travellers. You wouldn't believe the things we've seen."

"I've seen those plants from deep in the jungles, Venus Flytraps, capable of digesting meat. The creature at the heart of this island – I call it the Green Beast – it's like that, but colossal." She slashed at a vine which had reared its ugly, green head at her like a serpent about to strike, chopping it into pieces and leaving it to writhe around in the brush. Amy hadn't even noticed that one. Why were her superpowers always so random and useless? She was desperately envious of the others on the TARDIS with _cool_ powers; she was even jealous of Rory's invisibility, despite the fact he never used it.

"Very similar thing happened to us a few months ago in Cardiff," Amy mused.

"Did it?" Donna asked.

"Yeah – you know how Adam Mitchell is always falling over?"

"He's clumsy."

"No, it's his ankle," Amy explained, "He got stung by a big walking plant thing. You know, like in _Day of the Triffids_. Literally a Triffid. And he can't heal because he's frozen. There was a massive leader-plant in charge of all the little plants, the Doctor and I killed it."

"Does sound remarkably similar to what I've observed on this island," Earhart said, "I suppose it's just as well you came along when you did, despite not being dressed for our activities."

"Yeah, well, I thought I was going to be sunbathing. I've really got start taking a change of clothes out with me," Amy muttered. It would certainly be a plan. "So, you're saying there's a giant monster plant on this island? That's what's trying to kill us? Some mindless weed? _Bill & Ben _Gone Wild?"

"Oh, no. I daresay it isn't mindless. It spoke to us."

"Well _that's_ definitely different…" Amy muttered, "The one we found didn't talk. Or shoot poison thorns. There's probably multiple different species of monster plants out there in the universe. There's more than one genus of carnivorous plant just on Earth, after all."

"What did the talking plant say to you?" Donna asked Earhart.

"Did it ask you to feed it?" Amy joked.

"You're all about musical theatre today, aren't you?" Donna snapped at her.

"How did you know?" Earhart asked Amy, pausing as she slashed the leaves and branches around them to pieces. "It told us it was desperate for food, and then it… we were collecting firewood, like I said, perhaps scrounging any fruit we may find, and we happened across it. Poor Fred, he didn't stand a chance. The Green Beast has these ghastly teeth, and the smell around it – like rotting meat."

"Hold on, it… _ate_ your navigator?"

"Alive. I've hardly had time to mourn I've been too busy trying to survive, Fred would never forgive me if I were to get myself killed grieving over him. Plenty of time for that once I'm rescued. I suppose it's better people think he and I died at sea, as you say in the future, than he was devoured by this monster from – what did you say? 'Out there in the universe'? What, exactly, does that mean?"

"There's life on other planets, as well as our own," Donna said, "Millions upon billions of intelligent species and inhabited worlds, a lot of them with plants. Lots of them end up on Earth, it has a fragile position in the space-time continuum, multiple rifts in time – sort of like a beacon. Things get pulled here, they wash up here, sometimes they come here on purpose. Lots of them are friendly."

"Don't get all hung up on that, though," Amy interrupted Donna doing her whole 'DoctorDonna' thing, which was an incredibly rare occurrence, a bit like watching an eclipse or a blood moon. "We'll take you to all kinds of places when we leave. We don't _just_ travel in time." Perhaps it was a little presumptuous of her to just go offering places on the TARDIS to strangers, but it was _Amelia Earhart_ , for god's sake – they couldn't really be expected to leave her behind. Besides, she was meant to disappear. Perhaps what that _actually_ meant was that she would join them on the TARDIS. The lure of adventure was certainly potent enough in her that she could spend the rest of her life aboard that ship with the Doctor. Donna didn't object, at least – she was probably thinking the same thing.

"How did you escape from this 'Green Beast'?" Donna tried to get them back on topic.

"Ah – using nothing but my wits," Earhart sighed, "Happened to have a gun on the _Electra_ , a few well-aimed shots kept it at bay. Out of bullets now, of course. I've been spending most of my time sheltered on the beach otherwise, where it's easy to see the vines approaching."

Sunlight glared at them through cracks in the tree trunks and the leaves ahead, illuminating the jungle's gloom and making the sweat on Amy's skin glisten. She was so hot trekking through the tropical forest she was sure she was going to start hallucinating dancing cocktail umbrellas and mojitos, mojitos drenched in as much icy condensation as she was in sticky perspiration… she felt faint just thinking about it, and the bits of sand which touched her foot through her flip flops burned her skin as much as the sunlight. She certainly should have put on a higher factor of sun cream; after all, she was both Scottish _and_ ginger, making her the most prone to sunburn than any other kind of person. A tragedy.

When she glimpsed a jagged shadow just barely blotting out the sun on the horizon, however, her desire for ice-cold refreshment was overcome by the urge to boast.

"Ha!" she exclaimed triumphantly, directly at Donna, pointing at the old, wooden husk Earhart was leading them towards, "I _told you_ there would be pirates!"

 **AN: Two questions, first of all – who do you prefer and/or think is funnier, Oswin or Sally Sparrow?**

 **Second of all, spoilers incoming: Ten & Rose's stag & hen parties were going to be, at one point, another Prank War. And I know I promised Prank War Three, but I've changed my mind – INSTEAD I'm gonna have it be a scavenger hunt where they have to complete tasks/challenges on a list for points with the bridal party going against the groomsmen (i.e., all the girls + Jack and all the boys + Donna, minus Nios, so the teams will end up being 8 vs 8). So it would be a big help if you guys could suggest crazy stuff to be on the challenge list which, yes, can involve the use of time travel and anything else they have at their disposal, funnier the better. Little to no alcohol involved because at this point maybe half of them can't even get drunk.**


	168. Join Me in Paradise

_Join Me in Paradise_

 _Amy_

When she was younger she used to love adventure novels. She adored them, their simplicities and intricacies, the fact they always seemed to end the same way, with the heroes surviving and finding lost treasure or rescuing a kidnapped damsel or escaping a shadowy villain. And yet throughout all her travels with the Doctor, through journeys to the future; finding the truth about the pyramids; run-ins with Weeping Angels; going to World War Two – none of it quite matched up to the sense of delayed, juvenile excitement within her when she saw a shipwreck on the beach of a desert island. Even being on an actual pirate ship and meeting a 'mermaid' didn't strike the same nostalgic chord.

It was a large ship, too, a Galleon, centuries old, splintered apart on some jagged rocks which had once, perhaps, been deeper underwater. That or there had been a rough storm at the time it had crashed on the shore, she supposed either could be true. But it was gigantic, made to look even bigger because it didn't have its barnacle-covered belly submerged in the ocean. The decrepit masts made it appear skeletal, like the protruding ribcage of a rotting animal carcass, yellow shreds of sails rippling gently in the calm, sea breeze.

" _Wow_ ," Donna stared at it, "This is brilliant."

"It's where I've been hunkered down these last few weeks," Earhart explained, leading them towards it. It rested on a precarious angle on the beach, torn to pieces by the jagged rocks lining the bay, so when they ducked inside via a craggy, gaping hole blasted in the hull everything within was wonky. Amy had to stoop to get around parts of it, and lifted her sunglasses so they perched on the top of her head; it was direly gloomy, but free of plants for the moment at least. Even without the sunglasses, though, she could hardly see a thing.

"It's a bit dark, isn't it?" Amy said, squinting.

"Yes, 'fraid so," said Earhart.

"Hang on," Donna murmured. Amy turned towards her shadowy outline and the sound her voice and thought she saw Donna examining a wall very closely. Then she held up her hands as though ripping something apart and pulled. Pale blue light shimmered around the outline of a ghostly lantern hanging on a rusty wall-bracket, lit and glowing though the quality of this image itself was strangely fuzzy. Amy had never seen anything like it. As Donna lifted the phantom lamp from where it hung, the glow disappeared, replaced by the soft, orange light of the flame.

"Did you just create that!? Out of thin air!?" Amy exclaimed.

"No, I brought it here from the past," Donna explained. But the lantern wasn't even the most remarkable thing; it illuminated the glittering contents of the ships old, broken hold, barrels and boxes overflowing with treasures of the most astonishing order. It definitely _was_ a pirate ship, a pirate ship with all of its prizes still intact and preserved. "Oh my god… this must be worth millions… billions, even."

"I think I deserve the lion's share," Amy said.

"Excuse me?"

"You're already rich since you won the lotto," Amy reminded her for maybe the dozenth time that day, "Rory and I live in a tiny little flat in New York. You know the economy is completely broken in the 1930s, don't you?"

"You live in the 1930s?" Earhart questioned. Of course, at the moment they were _in_ the 30s, 1937.

"Yeah," Amy said, "It's complicated. We'll explain it later, there's bigger mysteries afoot right now."

"Like what?" Donna asked sardonically, "What ratio to split up the treasure?"

"I've been too preoccupied thinking about how to escape to think much about what to do with these gems," Earhart said, "Suppose the best course of action would be to return them to whatever country they were originally stolen from." Of course she had to go being the moral one, when Amy would quite like to nick a few handfuls of doubloons to give she and Rory a nice little safety net when they inevitably returned to life in the midst of the Great Depression.

"Yeah…" Amy said quietly, being noncommittal. But then she got an idea. "Hold on, where's the wreck of your plane?"

"The _Electra_?"

"If that's what your plane's called. I'm no Earhart scholar," she said, "Didn't you say it was broadcasting an SOS?"

"Yes, Fred and I managed to fix up the radio and set it on a loop before discovering the plants and before they got him. It's stuck in the trees, I barely managed to get the emergency supplies and the rations before coming to the beach. Haven't been back, I assume it's what the Green Beast will expect."

"Right…"

"You said it talked to you?" Donna asked Earhart now as they walked carefully through the crooked shipwreck, past the treasure hoard. "And asked for food?"

"Food was the main point."

"But it spoke English?"

"Pretty good English."

"There's a ladder here," Amy said, mostly to Donna since she assumed Earhart already knew where things were on the ship if she had been living there for the last few weeks. She went up it first onto the next level, which was where there were more barrels and crates, a lot of them empty of whatever their original contents had been. Donna passed the lantern up to Amy (which felt oddly tingly in her hand) as she climbed, Earhart coming last: She really _was_ the Doctor's usual type, Amy noted, not questioning them about time travel and their strange abilities. It was just the kind of thing she, too, would ignore with the Doctor around. Anything remotely sensational became arbitrary, sad as that was.

"It's oddly intact," Earhart said, following them third of all, sword on her hip. She was clearly enjoying having human company; maybe that was the real reason she wasn't questioning anything odd.

There was a very small amount of light getting into that floor, which she realised was coming through the portholes where the mouths of the cannons were supposed to be pointed. The cannons had rolled about it, but they were certainly all there, at least six of them, and probably more deeper into the wreckage and out of her line of sight.

"Tell me about it, this thing could be in a museum," said Donna, "It doesn't look like there's anything missing. Except for the hole in the side.

"What have you been living off while you've been here?" Amy asked Earhart as Donna tried to open one of the barrels to see what was in it – maybe it was more treasure.

"Mostly fruit and my own rations. I've managed to catch a fair few fish, use driftwood to make a fire without going too deep into the jungle. Supplies are scarce, though."

"Fish?" Amy asked, "Is that the only meat?"

"I suppose so. Haven't seen any animals, or even any traces of any animals. Not even birds or lizards."

"Neither did we," Amy said Donna.

"So?" she said, "You probably wouldn't see many birds or lizards in Antarctica, either," Donna pointed out, "Doesn't make it completely unusual."

"A tropical island without any birds? Or monkeys? Or snakes? Just evil plants?" Amy asked her.

"Maybe we just haven't seen any. Nobody's seen the Loch Ness Monster for hundreds of years, or Bigfoot."

"The difference being that the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot don't exist."

"I'm sure they exist," Donna said, "Somewhere."

"Have you met them?"

"No, but I met a giant wasp, and that's weirder."

"Haven't seen any giant wasps on this island, either."

"So what's your point?"

"My point is that the island is empty, despite that plant dragging a plane out of the sky. And this pirate ship is also empty," Amy said, as Donna managed to pull the lid off a crusty old barrel. It gave off quite the stench when she did, and Amy found herself having to resist the urge to be sick. "Oh my _god_ , what is that?" Donna was trying to force the lid back on top. Even Earhart was holding her nose, and could she even breathe well with her sinusitis?

"Fruit," she said, " _Very_ old fruit. It's sort of pickled."

"Eurgh."

"That's why they called you lot 'Limeys,'" said Earhart, "British sailors drinking lemon juice with their grog. Prevented scurvy*."

"Right," said Amy, unsure, "Well, if that's a barrel full of limes, it stinks."

"It was too far gone to see what they were," said Donna. The smell lingered in the air despite the barrel being sealed again. "Bloody stank. Barrel mustn't have been opened since they crashed. Except…" She looked around, thinking. She had picked up on the same thing Amy had picked up on, something which Earhart had not had the time nor the inclination to try and work out because she was so distracted trying not to die. Donna went to attack another, separate barrel.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Earhart asked, "There's a reason I haven't looked in this ship for anything edible."

"Maybe you should have done," said Amy.

The next barrel Donna opened was empty, however. Well, almost. The one lone occupant made Donna scream when she opened it and almost drop the lantern. Both Amelias went to investigate and saw a skeleton lying in the bottom, one of a rather large rat. Not particularly surprising. There was still a kind of residue on the inside of the barrel, however, and a salty smell a little different to that of seawater.

"Looks like this was used to store meat," she said, "I wonder where the meat went. If nobody ate the fruit."

"Maybe the rat got it all? Ate itself to death?" Earhart suggested.

"I know that it's a bit of a chore trying to eat your five a day sometimes, but you'd have to think that even a crew of starving pirates would go for the lemons eventually, on an island with no other animals," said Amy, "And here's what I'm thinking – where's the crew?"

"Mmm, there's no bodies, no skeletons," realised Donna, "It's not a proper pirate shipwreck without a spooky skeleton. There's just this rat."

"Maybe they were rescued?" Earhart suggested.

"And they left what was left of their provisions and all their treasure?"

"Doesn't make sense," Donna added.

"We've got an intelligent, carnivorous plant monster overrunning this island, and a pirate ship where the only thing missing is any meat," said Amy.

"A carnivorous plant monster _you_ said spoke English," Donna told Earhart, "How do you suggest it did that other than by meeting other people who spoke English before? And there's probably not many of those on this abandoned island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Except the pirates."

"So you're saying that this plant has been on this island for centuries, and that these pirates taught it to speak English, and then it ate them?" Earhart questioned Amy, "Sounds farfetched."

"But you said you saw it eat Fred _and_ heard it speak enough to ask for food," Amy persisted, "Where else is it going to have learned to talk, and what other explanation do you have for the entire crew of this ship vanishing? This isn't the _Mary Celeste_. There must be some kind of captain's log around here – where's the grand cabin?"

"At the back," Earhart said, "Where I've been sleeping. Full of papers I don't have time to read."

"Brilliant, let's go there."

"I find this wholly ridiculous, though," Earhart persisted as Amy and Donna took off towards the back of the ship, Donna holding the lantern aloft as they passed more barrels and eventually hammocks and gunpowder kegs and a basket full of cannonballs. Through the thin galley, the crew quarters, and then up a half-broken staircase which led to the deck and the sunlight again. "Why would they _all_ be dead?"

They had quite the view from up there, standing at a very awkward angle to avoid falling over onto the sand of the beach. Amy thought she saw the tide starting to come in but grew more unnerved when she looked back at the jungle. She could have sworn the trees and the leaves were moving, bristling with energy not caused by the wind. The whole island was alive, one gigantic monster. The Green Beast. Watching them like a predator.

"What do you mean?" Donna asked Earhart as Amy paused to take in the horizon.

" _I've_ been absolutely safe out here for weeks," Earhart said, "They had plentiful supplies of fruit and could easily have fished – any pirate worth his salt would know how to fish. Yet you mean to tell me every last one of them walked to their death?" Donna didn't have an answer, because Earhart was making a good point. They were avoiding the trees as much as possible, and two of them had barely been there an hour. Pirates, with all their superstitions, would certainly not have been fooled so easily. "The ship has no signs of being attacked, either."

"Maybe it tricked them?" Amy suggested, though she wasn't sure how much she believed her own words, "Like, an intelligent monster like that might have to resort to trickery to get dinner, especially if it wants to eat humans. Hannibal Lecter was always very polite, after all. Vampires rely on trickery to get food because they needed to be invited in. I think. Does Other Clara need to be invited into places?"

"The Great Vampires do," Donna said.

Amy scoffed, " _Great Vampires_ , _Time Lords_ – whatever happened to modesty?"

"My point is that a crew of two-dozen men wouldn't calmly walk to their deaths, and especially not when it isn't necessary," Earhart persisted.

"You've been up here with the logs this whole time," Amy pointed out.

"Let's look around and see if they wrote anything down," said Donna, approaching the door into the great cabin, which was ajar and creaking slightly in the wind. Amy followed, glancing again at the bristling forest before ducking underneath the doorway.

The cabin was strewn with whatever supplies Earhart had managed to reclaim from her ship, and a meagre food supply of fish and coconuts. If only there was some rum – what good was a pirate ship without any rum? Maybe they had drunk it all. There was makeshift bedding on a cleared patch on the floor, and even more treasure piled high, treasure which looked even more valuable than that in the hold. It was the captain's quarters, after all. Now they set about searching for anything important among all the old pieces of paper.

"Are you _sure_ about not taking any of this treasure?" Amy asked Donna, "I'm sure your lottery money must run out someday."

"We've invested," Donna said, "Turning a profit in the property market."

"You? Investing? In property?"

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"Just…"

"I'm _brilliant_ with numbers and money, I'll have you know. Although it was Shaun's idea."

"So, he takes care of all that while you're away with us?"

"No, he still works," Donna said.

"Really?" Amy was surprised, "Why's that?"

"Wants to stay down to Earth. Not like those mental people you hear about on the news who get a bit of money, so they buy a monkey made of diamond, or something." They could probably find a monkey made of diamond on that ship if they tried hard enough. "He's good like that."

"Yeah…" Amy faded out, not listening as much, picking up a large leather-bound journal from inside of a desk. She didn't even think she'd ever met Shaun. Donna was far better at compartmentalising everything than anybody else on the TARDIS, and she and Rory had _never_ been particularly good at it. "I've found something." She thought it was a manifest, but upon opening it found it was the travel log, with short entries detailing their pirating escapades.

"What does it say?" Earhart implored.

"It says," and here Amy paused to clear her throat, "' _Arr, mateys! Ahoy! Ye will come with I to become the scourge of the seven seas_ -"

"It doesn't really say that," said Donna. Amy gave her a flat stare.

"What gave it away?"

"What does it _really_ say?" Earhart asked.

"Nothing so interesting," Amy said, skimming it, struggling to decipher the handwriting, "Most of them just say, 'At sea, no land,' or they have details about their plunder. Captain keeping a note of it, so nobody can screw anybody over, I assume." Flipping through the droll pages she stumbled across an entry significantly longer than any of the others, which caught her attention. "'May 28th, 1672. Deep into the evening ex-Left Tenant Jameson spied something of a most extreme nature from the crow's nest of the _Hanged-Man_ , which he described as a stupendous burning in the heavens nigh above. He called out to those of the men below deck and indicated to everyone a great blossom in the air, as if a star itself had come alive and journeyed towards us.

"'Despite the superstitions of one of the former slave boys, we went in pursuit of this omen, for seeing it as a sign of almighty God answering our prayers and directing us towards a friendly port in which we may weigh anchor so as to alleviate ourselves of the burden of our loot, before one of the more disloyal blackguards decides to help himself, at which point he would need to be alleviated of the burden of his fingers…'" Amy found somewhere to sit down, on top of a wooden crate, as she continued to read aloud the entry, putting on her sunglasses.

"Why are you wearing sunglasses to read?" Donna asked.

"…They're prescription."

"Since when did you need glasses?"

"Since the last few years," she shrugged, "The Doctor stole my reading glasses. Bring the lantern over here." Donna did, holding it next to Amy's head so that she could resumed. "Where did I get to? Fingers? Okay. 'The slave boy did explain his thinking that when the sky is seen to ignite it is nothing but a sign of ill-fortune, yet I say how can something so marvellous to the eyes be anything aside from a divine symbol, such as when Constantine saw a burning cross in the air which led the Romans by word of Greek to conquer our ancient home of Albion.' This is a very learned pirate."

"What do you think they saw?" Donna asked.

"People think they see all kinds of things in the sky," said Earhart, "But if my knowledge of aerial phenomenon is up-to-date – and it damn well should be – it sounds like they started to follow a shooting star."

"'I ordered the men to hoist the main sails and head off as quickly as possible in the direction of God's will, promising fortune much vaster than that which we have conquered in our trawls across the Oriental trade routes, and we have been following its course deep into the night and now into the following dawn.' That's the end of the entry, but there's more… 'May 30th, 1672. After two days of hard sailing where we have been blessed with strong winds and clear skies, we have traced the course of the Lord's providence to a remote island not present on any of my maps, even those particularly expensive we did steal from the Emperor's most valued navigators themselves, and I shall be updating our own charts as follows, perhaps the location can be sold for a penny to anybody else wishing to follow these divine pathways. The ship was briefly scuttled on a small reef beyond the coast and came slightly flooded, however we made land quickly enough that no man was lost and nearly all of the treasure remained secured, and I think highly of our chances at repairing the damage enough to set sail again…' He rambles a bit."

"They weren't even stranded…" said Earhart, "They could have left, with their treasure, but they stayed… Is there anything about the Green Beast?"

"Uh… in the entry for June 1st he says, 'I hereby forever mark this day as the day when I, Captain Cameron Stanwick of Plymouth, England, did discover his Lord's most valuable hidden treasure, the Garden of Eden itself, and an agent of God in the midst of it all who has requested nothing of us nor our treasure, nothing except our continued devotion and servants, which I determined by attempting to communicate with this great face myself…' You remember when you said that a bunch of pirates wouldn't have just walked to their deaths?"

"Seems like a bunch of pirates just walked to their deaths," Donna finished, both of them talking to Earhart, who crossed her arms and thought.

"Taught it to speak using passages from the Bible, and eventually it told them the others had reached 'divine enlightenment.' Here's the entry for June 11th, the last entry in the log, 'It is with great modesty and humble heart that I renounce all piracy and thieving endeavours, resigning myself to the eternal glory of God and returning to His bosom, which is where humanity in its infancy did spring from. In a choice between Dismas and Gestas, where I formerly would have chosen the latter, I now must say I am penitent, and as the only remaining member of my crew to not yet become one with the Lord's blessing and His heavenly domain, I will be the last to join them as we have all gone, one-by-one, into His arms. I pledge all of this treasure to whomsoever shall find it after me and bequeath it back to those whom it was stolen from, for I will have no need of it as I transgress into His love, though I pray that ye who finds it does not shirk the divinity of this island and that you, too, may find eternal solace in the words and heart of God.'"

"Did pirates care about god particularly?" Donna asked.

"Donna, this is the Seventeenth Century, everybody cared about god. They still believed that the monarchy was chosen by divine right and not just by who had the most swords."

"I can't believe they fell for it," sighed Earhart, "It's sometimes nice to think people are smarter than that."

"Well, they were pirates, they probably killed loads of people, can't get _too_ upset," Amy shrugged, "It must have crashed here in the meteor, or something. A meteor could easily carry a bunch of seeds ready for gestation."

"And then it ate them and every other living thing on this island it could get to, that's why there's nothing here but plants," Donna continued to deduce. Who needed the Doctor? They were just as good without him.

"But we have to stop it," said Earhart, "It's only a matter of time before it finds a way off this island, or before my broadcast brings people here investigating. The plant has to die."

"So how do we kill it?" Donna asked anyone who wanted to answer, glancing between them both.

"The same way you kill a rat," Amy said, remembering seeing the rat skeleton in the empty barrel downstairs, "Trick it into eating poison."

"We haven't got any poison," Donna said.

"No, we've got something much more effective than that…" Earhart snatched the lantern from Donna's hands and stole out of the cabin. Donna and Amy exchanged a confused glance before Amy dropped the captain's log back on the messy desk and pursued her, all the way back below deck and down to the room filled with cannons. This was where they found Earhart fumbling with a cannon, peering down the barrel with her lantern to see if it was loaded.

"I don't think a cannon is going to work after, like, five-hundred years," Amy commented, again removing her sunglasses.

"Two-hundred-and-sixty-five years," Donna corrected her, "If we're in 1937. And the log was from 1672. You know, when Jenny was born it was _me_ who worked out that their 'ancient war' had only been going on for seven days, and they were up in arms about some goddess-thing."

"It's just one creation myth after another today," Amy sighed and watching Earhart try to light the cannon's fuse with the flame from the candle inside the lantern. After a minute of struggling, however, she actually managed to do so.

"Cover your ears," Earhart warned, stepping back.

"I really don't think it's going to-"

 _BOOM_.

The noise was deafening. Despite the warning, Amy did not plug her ears, unlike Donna, and was rendered dazed with her head violently ringing. Earhart had sent a cannon ball straight out of the wooden wall of the ship, making an enormous, splintered hole in the hull and leaving a crater right at the edge of the treeline. Earhart was grinning, and it took all of Amy's strength to focus enough and actually hear what she subsequently declared.

"I've got a nifty idea."

* _That IS the reason the British are nicknamed "Limeys," though it actually dates back to the 1800s and the Royal Navy rather than as far back as pirates_


	169. Attack of the Killer Plant

_Attack of the Killer Plant_

 _Amy_

"Whose idea was this, again, exactly?" Amy grunted.

" _Hers_ ," said Donna coldly.

"I'm helping, aren't I?" Earhart argued, "Come on. Ahoy, avast, whatever pirates say."

Donna and Amy both groaned in annoyance at her chipper attitude. Something about having a plan and having company had put a spring back in Earhart's optimistic step – even stuck on a desert island and destined to rest as an eternal enigma in history books and wikipedia articles, her mood endured. She was a fast learner, too, and had put Donna's powers to work as soon as she realised what they were (a lot quicker than Amy had done, and Amy lived with her). Didn't take much to drag a big barrel of salted, preserved meat forward in time. It also didn't take much to cover another barrel, a barrel full to the brim with gunpowder, with the meat. Just like making pigs in blankets for Christmas dinner- that was, if the pigs in blankets were disgusting and exploded.

Now they were rolling their creation through the widest gaps in the trees possible, saying loudly at every opportunity how they were bringing a gift for their divine overlord, repeating the haunting journal entries of Captain Cameron Stanwick, an offering of a great amount of meat. Very stinky, slimy meat which was getting its grease all over their hands as they forced it with an enormous amount of difficulty through the jungle. At least the plant was making things easier for them, given the fact they were walking right into its arms. Or vines. Just like the pirates who had come before them; it probably thought every member of the human race was a moron.

"Are you sure you don't want to go-" Amy grunted mid-sentence while forcing the barrel over a nasty tree root, "-grab Rose? She could just pick this thing up and throw it like a rugby ball."

"Not sure that throwing our makeshift… _gift_ ," Donna corrected herself, "Is really the best course of action."

"I'd even take Martha's help at this point."

" _Martha_?" Donna exclaimed, staring at her as they pushed the barrel, "You want a girl keeps accidentally blowing things up with her mind to help us do this?" By which she meant, push a fully-loaded gunpowder key through a rainforest.

"We can have a barbecue."

"Cocktails, a barbecue-"

"I can't believe there wasn't any rum on that entire shipwreck."

"You've got your head in the clouds."

"Maybe Oswin will help us."

"Yeah, the limping girl who blew herself up. What a good plan," Donna grumbled. "Just focus. Keep pushing."

"…Thought anymore about your best man speech?" Amy asked after another minute of silence and nothing but heaving and pushing.

" _No_ ," said Donna angrily, "Funnily enough, I've been a bit preoccupied! At this rate I'm going to have to make good on my promise for there to be absolutely no Abba at this wedding, because you've been useless. 'Cure my writer's block' – is this what you usually do? Come out and spend the day almost getting killed and then go back and write a story?"

"You know what they say. Write what you know." Donna glared at her.

"How often _do_ you get into capers like this, then?" Earhart inquired. She was taking most of the weight of the barrel, in her defence, though Amy would like if she took _all_ the weight of the barrel. Or if Donna went and got Rose. Although, she could always just _tell_ them both to push it, and she could relax a bit and have a leisurely stroll. But she wasn't that kind of person, which was probably one of the reasons she never used her horridly manipulative power. Why couldn't _she_ be the one able to blow things up with her mind?

"It's something of a habit," Amy said.

"Gosh, I'd love to have a life like that. So much adventure – yet you seem obsessed with going after relaxation."

"It's times like this that make me think relaxation is highly underrated."

"Considering you lured me out here on a promise of relaxation…" Donna grumbled.

"Look, I'm sorry. I didn't know this would happen."

"And yet you can see into the future."

"I promise I'll help you with the speech until it's done," Amy said, giving the barrel another big push. "Properly help you. Just after, you know, we deal with this. These things have to take priority. Besides, if we die, you won't have to make a speech, will you?"

"Oh, brilliant. I'll just die then, shall I? That's your plan? That's your stroke of genius?"

"I'm just saying that every cloud has a silver lining."

"I really don't understand why anybody listens to you sometimes."

"Probably the accent," Earhart said.

"I often have very good ideas," Amy argued.

"Like trying to sleep with the Doctor the night before your wedding to Rory?"

" _Somebody's_ in a bad mood…" Amy muttered.

"Oh, _really_? Do you think? Out of curiosity, do you have absolutely any idea _why_ I might be in a bad mood?" Donna questioned her. She finally got the hint and decided to shut up, lest she get even more on Donna Noble's nerves than she already was. Besides, she meant it about the speech, she _would_ help, once this was all over.

"Where else do you go on your travels?" Earhart asked.

"All over, into space, see the stars, different planets, different species like us," Amy said, "Backwards in time, forwards in time, meet tons of famous people such as yourself. Such as van Gogh. Such as, uh… who've you met?" she asked Donna.

"Agatha Christie."

"Oh, really? Her mysteries are swell," said Earhart.

"Went to Pompeii, saw Vesuvius erupt," Donna said.

"And I was on a real pirate ship before, with a siren, luring sailors to their deaths and cursing them."

"And how does all this come about?"

"There's a man," said Amy.

"Called the Doctor," continued Donna.

"If you're lucky, you stumble across him, and he'll change your whole life."

"Or, you know, you stumble across people who know him, who may have very recently come into some superpowers and are therefore just as good as he is," Donna said.

"Though, despite his preoccupation with women at the moment, he's still the best man I've ever known. Well, second best, after my husband, who's rescued me from some sticky situations himself."

"It sounds incredible," said Earhart, "We're here."

"We're – what?" The barrel gave way underneath their hands. They had been approaching a steep drop, which was almost impossible to see through the solid green barricade of plants blocking their view, but they had just come up on the very edge of a crater at the centre of the island. The barrel rolled down and hit another tree at the bottom.

But it wasn't a tree, Amy soon realised when she had to squint through her sunglasses. It had looked like one because the visibility was so poor and the sun was setting high above them, making the sky burn red against the vivid greens of the forest, but it was in fact a vine. An enormous vine, glistening and rising at least three feet off ground. And it was not the only one, they were everywhere, she realised, all leading down a steep decline and towards one central point they could not quite see from their position. This must be where the meteor the pirates saw, the shooting star, originally crashed, and where the plant was spreading from, infecting the island.

"Do you really think I might come with you?" Earhart asked before they began to descend.

"Of course," said Amy.

"The Doctor will love you."

"I feel like I've met someone with that name before… I think he stole my old flight jacket."

"Sounds like him," Donna confirmed, "You can probably get it back."

"Nicked my bloody glasses…" Amy complained, for the second time that day. Who could blame her? Glasses were expensive. Earhart led the way down the side of the crater, Amy having to watch her feet very carefully so that she didn't trip. Unfortunately, it didn't work and she _did_ trip, but she grabbed hold of a tree trunk and managed to stay steady enough that the other two – who were also focused on where they were walking – did not notice. "Didn't he offer you a place on the ship before?"

"Not if it's a fixed point in time that she has to go missing," Donna said before Earhart could speak.

"He didn't offer me anything. Just took my jacket," Earhart said.

"Fixed point, told you," said Donna, "You'll be free to come with us now, though. As long as you keep a low profile."

"And we're great at keeping low profiles," said Amy, having absolutely no idea when she said it if she was being sarcastic or not. Earhart smiled and went about trying to push the barrel out of the way of the root-like vine it was wedged against, having to stand it on its end and then push it back over, which was not the easier thing to do.

They continued to roll it down the slope, but very quickly the jungle scene gave way to a swamp, a marshy lagoon flooded with saltwater and mud. The water itched Amy's bare legs and she grew worried that she was going to end up with a rash – which, to be honest, would be exactly what she deserved after forcing Donna out that morning and away from her speech; she was more than a little remorseful.

The water got deeper and deeper until eventually it was higher than Amy's knees, but the good thing about it was the barrel began to float in front of them. Earhart kept a long coil made of cannon fuses tied together elevated above the water, the fuses wrapped down her arm which she held aloft. If the fuses got damp, they wouldn't light properly, and if they didn't light properly, the barrel of gunpowder wouldn't explode, and they'd be at serious risk of being devoured. Instinctively they grew quiet, Earhart glancing around nervously, causing Amy and Donna to be put on edge, too. Who was to say it wouldn't just grab them, like it had grabbed Amy earlier? Who was to say they had any chance to light their fuse? Their only source of flame was a lighter belonging to Earhart, but Amy didn't like the idea of all their faith being in a lighter. _If only_ Martha was there, Martha would be able to blow up the plant without going anywhere near it. She would at least feel better with some kind of remote detonator rather than this risky business – they may as well be hiding being a bush with a bright red TNT plunger like they were in a _Loony Tunes_ cartoon.

It was when the barrel floated between some anomalous, plant-ish structures which could be part of the island or part of the monster, it was impossible to tell, that they finally saw it – and 'monster' was _definitely_ the right word. It was a great big green-coloured head, which towered above them taller than the roof of a double decker bus, with a horizontal gash across its middle filled to the brim with rows of yellow and pink, shark-like teeth, leering at them from an otherwise featureless 'face.' It was almost grinning, surrounded by a thin, greenish fog swirling above the surface of the dirty water. Petals blossomed around the head like a mane, shockingly beautiful to say that floating in the water around them were an array of bones, including one very obviously human skull. It bobbed along the surface in front of them, and Amy felt things slither around her legs in the murky water. Earhart kept the fuses hidden behind her back.

"Blimey," Donna stared at it.

"Do you think Ten and Rose might like a flower like _that_ for their wedding?" Amy asked, gawking at the monster. She sensed Donna glaring at her – but at least it would definitely make the wedding memorable. "How long until it starts singing?"

" _Singing_?"

"It looks like Audrey II." Donna was not amused. "Maybe it knows a sea shanty."

Then Donna hissed at her, "I'm going to kill you if we survive this." Amy believed her and was now thinking maybe she'd better take her chances with the planet and all its many, _many_ teeth. In response to this, the plant proved its intelligence. It lifted its enormous head out of the water, dripping at the bottom with filth dredged up from the bottom of the lagoon, and opened its mouth.

"' _Oh, we'd be alright if the wind was in our sails, we'd be alright if the wind was in our sails, we'd be alright was in our sails, and we'll all hang on behind… We'll roll the old chariot along, we'll roll the old chariot along, we'll roll the old chariot along, and we'll all hang on behind'_ ," it bellowed. A sea shanty if Amy had ever heard one. "… _Well_?" it asked them, " _Do I not deserve any appreciation_?" Amy began to clap, and the other two uneasily followed suit.

"Bravo," she said, "Good song."

" _Thank you_ ," its thick, yellow 'lips' curled in a sneer, showing off its fangs. A smell of rotting meat and bad breath drifted out of its mouth whenever it spoke, or even, sang.

"That's Fred's jacket," Earhart whispered next to them, looking at something floating in the water nearby, caught on a branch. She made to wade towards it, before realising she could not stray too far from their meat-covered keg because of the fuse behind her.

" _Chewy_ ," said the plant. Earhart's face contorted with anger at that, as if she hadn't _already_ been angry enough at Fred Noonan's premature death.

"We've brought you a present," Donna said, "Lots of meat."

" _I can smell it. It's not fresh. I would rather it be fresh_."

"And _I'd_ rather be drinking mimosas, but we don't always get what we want, do we?" Amy quipped, "We just thought, in exchange for us coming all the way here with an offering – since you're, you know, a divine entity – you might let us fix up the plane and fly away."

"Promise not to tell anyone you're here. Well, except for anyone who wants to know where the Garden of Eden is," Donna added, "And all about your divine properties."

"Think of it like we're… missionaries," Amy continued, "We'll leave and spread the word of god – _your_ word – and in exchange you'll get lots of… snacks."

" _I smell a few unsuspecting snacks already_." The plant was obviously talking about them. " _I've got a better idea_."

"Is your idea to sing some more shanties?" Amy suggested.

"We love a good shanty," Donna confirmed. Earhart was seething over Fred Noonan and the very visible reminder that he was dead and gone, devoured by this 'Green Beast', and didn't join in with any of their joking. Which was really just to try and alleviate some of the sheer terror they were both experiencing.

" _Charming idea. But I have one of my own, and I don't trust humans. They're meal worms_."

"Meal worms in a good way, though?" Donna asked. But nobody had ever been called a 'meal worm' in a good way.

Amy had been snared around her ankle and suspended upside-down once already that day, and she wasn't inclined for it to happen again; but life didn't work like that, and when you did insist on chasing after a carnivorous alien plant monster, you were going to get snared. She, along with both Earhart and Donna this time, was hoisted by the exact same leg into the air, by three thick, snake-like vines crawling up to her knee. It made her head swim and her sunglasses slipped down the sweat covering her face and landed in the water, where they almost instantly disappeared from sight.

"No!" she protested, catching a glimpse of Earhart's sword also falling from where it was slung around her body and vanishing into the lagoon.

"You can get new sunglasses!" Donna shouted at her.

"They were _prescription_! They're expensive!"

"Then I'll _buy you some more_!" Donna offered very angrily. It was really more than Amy thought she deserved, though.

Earhart, meanwhile, was struggling to hold onto the fuse and keep it where it would stay dry. She flailed in the air just like the other two, but it was no use, the plant laughed at them. Their only hope now rested with the gunpowder keg, or if maybe Rose would get an inkling through the time vortex that they were literally about to be devoured and showed up to punch the plant to death. Somehow, Amy doubted that. Perhaps they were _all_ supposed to perish on the island, eternally forgotten…

" _I'll eat your gift, then I'll eat the small one second. Insolent child has caused me enough trouble with that sword_." The sword which was now gone for good, sunken along with bones and corpses in the silt, " _I'll save the juiciest for last_." The vine lifted Donna higher when it said that.

"You bloody _what_!? _JUCIEST_!?" Donna yelled, making Amy wince. She could practically _see_ the sonic-soundwaves coming from Donna's mouth, which had enough force only to take the plant by surprise. Undoubtedly, Donna could not scream it to death, though she certainly had a good chance of rupturing everybody else's eardrums. Couldn't she make a bomb fall out of the sky with her portals, or something? Conjure a Second World War Navy Destroyer to attack the island?

The plant coiled another vine around the gunpowder barrel, gripping it and its slimy, salty meat-covering tightly, Earhart carefully unravelling the fuse as it did so that when the plant ate the barrel she wouldn't get tugged along with it.

"I'll show you who's _juiciest_ in a minute, you bloody weed!" Donna continued to shout at it, writhing around. It lifted the barrel up higher and then angled it overs its gaping jaws, the stench making Amy want to be sick – how long did it take the thing to digest its food? Considering it had been alive without feeding for more than two-hundred years, probably much longer than first thought, despite its enormous appetite.

And it dropped the barrel. But they had made a major error in thinking about how quickly it would eat it. They thought it would at least try to chew a bit, but no, it had gone straight down its gullet, which appeared to be much deeper than just to the base of its head – who knew how far underground its root network and digestive system went? Not them, clearly, because the fuse vanished like a string of spaghetti being sucked up, and within a second, they could only see a tiny sliver of it hanging out of the plant's mouth, much too far away for Earhart to grab it and light it.

"Shit," said Amy, "What do we do now?"

"Uh…"

"Donna?"

"Well…"

" _Please_ say you have an idea."

"I mean…"

"You're half the Doctor!" Donna continued to struggle with the vines holding her still, while Amy strained to try and see into the future and work out if they were going to die or not. It didn't work, so she resorted to even more desperate measures – her persuasion power, which she had not yet gotten to work on anyone who wasn't a human. "Why don't you just _put us down_?" she ordered the plant, " _Drop us back into the swamp and let us leave_." This didn't work either, and the plant was in the process of lifting Amelia Earhart over to its jaws just like it had done the gunpowder barrel.

"Don't fret!" Earhart called, and Amy saw she had retrieved her lighter and had it in her hand, flipped open, ready to light, hand outstretched to grab the fuse at the corner of the plant's jaws. "Everything's jake!"

"What the hell does that mean!?" Amy shouted at her.

"It's all dandy!" She tried to swing the vine to get to the fuse before she was dropped into the mouth of the killer plant.

What happened next felt like bullet time to Amy; a moment where everything slowed down yet she remained incapable of doing anything whatsoever to avert an unpleasant fate – this time, Amelia Earhart's unpleasant fate. Remarkably, she was successful in her attempt to grab the fuse, and held it in the palm of her hand as she was suspended over the plant's gaping, toothy jaws. She struggled with the lighter for a second but then Amy saw sparks, the fuse had lit. The issue was it was no short fuse, and Amy doubted that the inside of the plant's mouth was all that dry. Surely cannon fuses must work with some moisture, though? They were designed to go on boats, after all…

The plant only then seemed to realise it had been duped, and made a furious, roar-like noise, waving Earhart around by her ankle in its fury. The fuse burned down far enough that it was hidden from their view, disappeared into the mouth itself, and the plant began trying to retch, going as far as to try and fish the barrel out of its own mouth with more stringy, green 'arms.' Hopefully it didn't work, if it threw the barrel back at them they would be in grave danger. Not that they weren't already in grave danger, but it was certainly an incredible amount of gunpowder.

"That's for Fred, you green bastard!" Earhart yelled at the plant. "How's a box full of gunpowder for 'chewy'!?" The plant roared again, heightened its efforts to retrieve the barrel. And then it seemed to give up and decide that if it was going to die, it was going to do its damnedest to make sure Amelia Earhart didn't escape the island either, forgetting all about Amy and Donna where they were still strung up by their feet.

Earhart was dangled yet again over its mouth. The vine unravelled around her legs. She was dropped, her limbs flailed.

A cacophonous explosion tore through the forest. The immediate effect was that Amy and Donna were both dropped into the bog, the air filling with stinking, black smoke, and they splashed down into the foul water with the sound of the almighty bang ringing in their ears, unaware of the fate of their comrade…


	170. Holding Out for a Hero

_Holding Out for a Hero_

 _Amy_

She gasped, choked, coughed up a hefty mouthful of disgusting water from the plant's fetid lagoon, dragged herself over to the nearest tree or vine or anything so that she could grab hold of it to avoid sinking beneath the waves that had been made in the water by the explosion. Still coughing through dirt and mucus, she took gasping, desperate breaths, then rubbed some silt out of her eye (which stung) and tried to find Donna. The swamp was ravaged, smoke pouring out of what had once been the mouth of the great, monstrous weed, which was now quite clearly dead.

"Donna!?" she called, "Don-" She interrupted herself by coughing more, having accidentally swallowed some of the unclean liquid. Desperately she resumed, " _Donna!_ " A sloshing sound, and Donna emerged, wheezing and coughing just like Amy, rising out of the bog with bubbles all around her. "Shit!" The water wasn't so deep, but the waves and the flotsam of human bones was very disorientating, and Amy knew that people could drown in a body of water as small as a puddle. She let go of whatever she'd been clinging to and waded over to help Donna up, dragging her back to to the large, dying vine which had already begun to wither. Donna still choking, Amy slapped her on the back and forced her to hack up a wad of muck, but at least it cleared her airwaves.

"Did it work?" she asked.

"I think so," Amy panted.

"Where's Earhart?"

"Haven't seen her. Amelia?" she shouted, "Amelia!?" Donna joined in the shouting when she got her breath back, but initially got no response. That wasn't good. She could easily drown if she had sunk beneath the water level, or worse, if the plant had actually managed to get her. She had been hanging right above its mouth when the keg exploded…

It was only when they both went quiet that they managed to hear anything, in the form of a faint but very human noise of pain, just audible when the jungle went silent around them. It didn't sound good, and they both headed off in the general direction of the sounds.

"Look, about today," Amy began, "It was a bad idea."

"I don't know," said Donna, "Can't have been a good thing for the human race if nobody ever killed that plant."

"I swear, I'll do everything to help you with your speech to make up for this. If you still want my help. Proper help. Not just cocktails."

"We haven't even had any cocktails. You haven't kept a single promise."

"I have! I said there would be pirates," Amy argued, "And there were pirates." Donna didn't say anything else because neither of them were really in the mood for some pointless back-and-forth, not when they were both water-logged, aching, and in pursuit of the most elusive pilot in the planet's history. They began calling Earhart's name again as they forced their way through the marsh.

"Over here," they heard, weakly. It certainly did not sound good, but they approached nonetheless, and finally found Earhart slumped against one of the vines with only her neck above the water. Incredibly, the flapping, dirty bandage covering the sinus drain at the side of her face was still there, but she also looked burned and grazed. She was obviously injured.

"Oh, Christ," said Donna.

"Crap, let's get you out of the water," Amy said, trying to help Earhart to her feet, but she made a noise of extreme pain and Amy let her go. "What is it? What's wrong?"

"I'm afraid it got me – bastard."

"Got you? What do you mean?" Donna implored, both of them on either side of her. She was certainly shockingly pale, a miracle considering she'd been out in the baking hot tropical sun for the last three weeks since her plane crashed.

"The explosion, one of its teeth, I think. Wedged right in my gut." That wasn't good. It was anything but. Those teeth were six inches long each, at least, she may as well have been stabbed with a dagger or impaled.

"You'll be fine," said Amy, "People survive injuries to their guts all the time."

"Maybe in the future," said Earhart.

"You can come to the future," said Amy, "You _will_ come to the future, come with us, see how people still remember you. Make sure people remember Fred Noonan, too. Of course you will." Earhart said nothing. "We've got loads of medicine – Clara's been impaled before, she survived."

"With nanogenes," said Donna quietly.

"Then we can get nanogenes," Amy told her, firm, not taking no for an answer when it came to Amelia Earhart's survival, "Or Jack's blood, do something with that. Or Rose can heal people, she controls the universe. Martha's a brilliant Doctor, or we could turn you into a vampire. There's holograms, computers, all kinds of things, she doesn't have to… she'll be okay."

"I don't think I have long at all," Earhart said.

"Don't talk like that," Amy ordered her, "We'll call the TARDIS down. Even if – even – we can bring people back to life. Esther was brought back to life, Ianto was brought back to life. All we have to do is find the spaceship that affected them, and then-"

"That's not how history is supposed to happen," Earhart mumbled, "You said so yourself. I'm lost forever."

"You can go to the future, travel the stars, see all kinds of things."

"If that was how it was supposed to be, your Doctor would have taken me with him when he had the chance."

"But you're Amelia Earhart. You're the most famous aviator in history, you changed the world for women – you can't just _stop_. You'll never finish your solo flight around the world," Amy pleaded with her.

"I've seen things the rest of humanity can only dream of, I'm not sure I want to see anymore monsters like that plant."

"But the adventure-"

"I stopped the plant, didn't I?"

"Yeah… you stopped the plant."

"You're a hero," Donna, who wasn't saying much at all, added. The Doctor-y parts of her were showing again, _he_ always sat around quietly while people died, too. Like he knew something he wasn't telling anybody else. And Donna Noble had never been quiet in her life.

"I wouldn't know that I'd want to be brought back from the dead."

"But… you can't give up. You can't just _give up_. You could do so much more."

"More than save the world?" And it was true, Amy realised, she had saved the world. She had risked her own life to light that fuse and blow up the plant and was about to become another legendary martyr. Only, a martyr nobody would ever hear about. "I've avenged Fred. And in perspective… I'm just grateful that… nobody else will be eaten by that monster." She winced visibly. "But my family, my mother and my sister," she grew urgent again, "They need to know. They can't think I left them. I couldn't bear it."

"We won't leave you here," Donna told her, "We'll get you home. You won't have to stay on this island." Amy couldn't believe Donna was promising that.

The water around them was steadily darkening, darkening with an incredible outpour of blood; when Amy lifted her hands above the surface they came back wet and stained dark pink. How much blood did you have to lose before you lost consciousness? Before you died?

"Where did you take off from?" Donna implored quite suddenly, as though she had just had an idea. "When you first started. Where were you meant to finish?"

"Oakland," Earhart answered hoarsely, "Oakland International Airport." Donna nodded, thought, and then reached into the air as though she was going to throw open some curtains or tear something apart. And really, she did tear something apart, she teared apart their reality, ripping open a new, black-and-white, fuzzy image – like an old television set that had poor reception – a vivid blue glow cresting its shimmering edges. The portal grew larger and larger until they were enveloped in it. Donna forced it open completely and then they were surrounded, and the hazy qualities all vanished, and Amy was wet and cold and water they had brought with them sloshed down around them and trickled away, leaving a dirty puddle. With the vine behind Earhart gone she almost fell straight backwards, but Amy held her shoulders to keep her upright, only now – free of the lagoon – seeing the enormous tooth sticking right out of her side. She was drenched in blood.

They were on a rooftop, overlooking a city, filled with lights and cars and noise and people. She didn't recognise it herself, only the era – they were still in the 1930s, perched on top of an enormous building, runways snaking around below them with glowing landing strips and aeroplanes. Oakland International Airport, in the middle of the night, she was sure. Earhart actually laughed.

"You did it," Donna told her, "You went around the whole world. Made it back to California."

"Makes me want one of those cocktails you keep talking about. A martini. To celebrate."

"Can't pull one of those out of thin air here, I'm afraid," Donna told her. She continued to bleed heavily, getting paler and paler. "We'll have one later. For you. You and Fred."

"I could just call our ship down-" Amy persisted.

"You can't cheat death," said Earhart. Amy disagreed, she knew many people who seemed able to cheat death. A wholly unrealistic number of people, in fact. "That's the flight everyone embarks on solo. Hardest journey of all. Just sad I won't be the first to do it." Neither of them knew what to say; it was almost remarkable how quickly some people could adjust to the idea of death. Then again, stranded alone on a desert island with no food and no rescuers for weeks would put anyone in a dangerous headspace. "I was almost excited about seeing the universe with you... Maybe now, I can join the stars…"

"Yeah," agreed Donna.

And then there was nothing else. There was no swelling music, there was no death rattle, there was just a silence and Amelia Earhart's eyes became glassy and stared into nothing. Plane engines roared around them, and a cold wind blew in from the bay. Amy let go of her shoulders and moved to the side, tears in her eyes. Dying was never the same in real life as it was on TV or in films. One moment there was life, and the next it was gone, like blowing out a candle and just as quiet.

"You always forget about this side of it," Amy said eventually, after a long, _long_ while of thinking and watching tiny boats glide around in the distant harbour and inky-black sea later, "About the people dying around you. Me and Rory almost tried to choose once, a normal life or a life with the Doctor. It's so wonderful sometimes it's easy for the sacrifices to fade into the background."

"I almost left," Donna said after a moment, "We saw all these Ood being manipulated and used as slaves by humans, it was horrible. But she saved the world. Avenged those pirates, avenged her navigator. It's a more honourable death than lots of people get."

"You sound like him," said Amy.

"I've got half his DNA. There's a lot of him in his DNA, Jenny's proof enough of that. Can hardly tell them apart sometimes."

"Did you mean it? About her body? Taking it back to her family?"

Donna didn't say anything, not for a long time. Amy just watched her. Finally: "No."

"You _lied_?"

"I'm not going to upset a dying woman."

"But you'll go back on a promise to her?"

"It's a white lie," said Donna, "She won't know the difference. It's a fixed point in time. She has to vanish, no one can find out, not even her family."

"How can you know that?"

"Because I can see it. We were in Pompeii, and the Doctor tried to explain to me how he sees the fixed points in time and the fluctuating points in time, and how sometimes… you just have to follow history. You can't change it, no matter how much it hurts. If her family find out, it's going to change history, her body will be found. I have all these connections and I can tell you that for a fact."

"Great. That's great. Reminds me of something River always says – _the Doctor lies_. Now Donna lies, too."

"It was for the best."

"So, what's your plan?" Amy questioned, "What's your plan for her? Take her back to the island? Leave her in the swamp to rot?"

"You know, Jenny told me these stories about what happened to her after we left Messaline, when we thought she was dead – more than she's ever told her father. Well, more than she's ever told Ten. _Your_ Doctor seems like he's actually making an effort. She met a Time Agent who died a hero, called… I don't know, Edmund? Edward? The spike gun she has is named after him. She keeps his ashes. She's kept them for two-hundred years."

"That's… a little bit creepy."

"She can be a bit weird sometimes. Named the gun after him, after all."

"She still has the ashes?"

"As far as I know."

"God. And that's what you want to do? With Amelia Earhart?"

"…I don't see what else there is to do. No-one will find her. They _can't_ find her, that's how it has to be. It's this or she gets buried in some anonymous bit of land somewhere – how is that better? At least this way she still gets to travel." Again, they sat in silence for a while, not knowing what the next step was supposed to be. Amy had no desire to return to that island, even to claim the rest of the pirate gold. "Puts writing a speech into perspective."

"Maybe."

"I could say, 'The Doctor makes heroes of us all.'"

"And then what? Marries them?"

"They both make the stars above us shine even brighter."

"I suppose there's some potential. I'll help, I promise. Don't you think it's a bit messed up, though?"

"What is?"

"That we're just supposed to ignore the fact Rose was already married to a clone of him who she just threw out into space and never went after? We're just meant to forget that she did that? Is she even legally divorced? And where's he gone? He's vanished just like Amelia?" Amy questioned. Nobody ever seemed to remember about Tentoo, _including_ her. But Donna didn't speak. In fact, she began to look rather shifty. "…What?"

"I…"

"What's going on?"

"…You can't tell Rose."

"Tell Rose what?"

"Do you promise?"

"Sure, whatever, I promise. I don't talk to Rose that often anyway. What is it?"

"…The thing is, I've got half his DNA. And he's got half of mine. He's like my brother."

"So…?"

" _So_ , when I realised I had this new power, these _portals_ … I just had to check on him, alright? I had to find him. It wasn't that hard."

"Oh my god – when was this?" Amy stared at her, "You went and found Tentoo?"

"I can't abandon him!" Donna argued.

"I'm not saying you should have. Where was he? Where _is_ he?"

"Well, he's sort of… me and Shaun, most of the time, live in this big penthouse flat in London. _Very_ big. As in, has-two-guest-bedrooms-big." Certainly a lot of bedrooms for a flat in London. "He's been there for about a month."

"A _month_? You're been harbouring him!?"

"He's not a bloody fugitive!" Donna argued, "He hasn't gone anything wrong other than becoming an inconvenience for Rose."

"And you agreed to be their best man. That's ridiculous."

"I'm the Doctor's best man. Not hers. She's got Jack. He was heartbroken, do you know where she sent him? She dumped him in the middle of the jungle! I found him working as a fisherman in Saigon after he finally found his way there. No legal papers, documents, passport, driving license, absolutely nothing – he basically doesn't exist."

"And now he lives in your flat?"

"Yes. And I worry about him – he's a bit funny. You know like Thirteen could be a bit funny sometimes? With her memory?"

"He's forgetting things?"

"No, he's just… I don't know. Just a bit off sometimes."

"I suppose that's to be expected – I'd be a bit off if Rory dumped me in Saigon for no reason and never talked to me again because he wanted to marry an identical copy of me," Amy said. And then, as if he were psychic, her mobile began to ring. That in itself was a surprise because it had gotten so waterlogged, and it turned out the screen had somehow gotten cracked. She could still see his contact picture though, a picture of them, together, happy. "It's Rory," she told Donna, answering it. "Hi."

" _Hi – where are you? I just got back, I thought we were having dinner_?"

"Is it time for dinner?"

" _It's nearly six_."

"Is it? Shit… listen, will you answer a question for me?"

" _Always_."

"You'd never throw me out of the TARDIS into a Vietnamese jungle and force me to become a fisherman, would you?"

" _Would it be a fisherman? Or a fisherwoman? Or fisherperson_?"

"But would you?"

" _Why Vietnam_?"

"Rory, just answer the question."

" _Well, no, of course I wouldn't – what's going on_?"

"Have you started cooking yet?"

" _No, I don't know what you want, I was going to ask_."

"…Change of plans," she decided, "We're going to have a grown-up dinner. With Donna and Shaun." Donna was alarmed at hearing this. "In their flat. In London." Now Donna glared at her.

" _Erm, okay?_ " Amy didn't know if Rory had ever met Shaun. " _Is Donna alright with that_?"

"Donna's fine with it."

"She is not," Donna hissed at her.

" _What was that_?" Rory asked.

"Nothing, she said she's fine."

" _Is something going on_?"

"No. Yes. Sort of. We just… need to cremate a body, and then I'll see you in a bit."

" _You're_ cremating a body _? Whose body_?"

"Amelia Earhart."

" _Have you killed Amelia Earhart_?" Amy didn't even know how to answer that – she sort of thought they _had_ killed Amelia Earhart, in a way. She still lay, bloody and ghostly, on the roof of the airport in 1930s Oakland.

"…It's complicated. It's been a bad day. I'll explain everything later, promise."

" _Okay…_ "

"I have to go. I'll see you in a bit. I love you."

" _Love you, too_ …"

"Bye."

" _What_ was all that about!?" Donna demanded once the phone was hung up.

"It'll be nice, after today," Amy said, "We can just get pizza, or something. I sort of… want to see Tentoo. A Doctor who doesn't spend all his time following some girl around like a lost dog."

"No, he just spends his time crying over one, instead," said Donna.

"Please, Donna. I want to meet Shaun! See what he's like, properly. And get back to civilisation, _real_ civilisation, in the present, not a desert island, not the 1930s, and not on board the TARDIS. Now… let's put the mystery of Amelia Earhart to rest. It's been long enough."

 **AN: Originally, I really didn't want Earhart die, but while I was planning it just seemed like that was what the narrative needed – especially considering nobody ever dies in this fic. Them rescuing her brought up a ton of problems and I couldn't really work out where I'd want her to go if she didn't stay on the TARDIS and the whole thing would have gotten quite complicated. Plus, people do die in the show all the time.**


	171. You May Live on Earth

_You May Live on Earth_

 _Amy_

"I thought… I could have sworn someone said pancakes," Rory examined his dinner very closely. Amy had the exact same reaction to what was on her own plate. What they had been given looked more like an omelette, but it didn't smell like an omelette and didn't have the right texture to contain eggs. Donna and Shaun were equally confused, but Amy's suggestion of getting takeaway had been completely dismissed by Tentoo, who – in all of his boredom – had decided he was going to cook. And he had not chosen something normal, like pizza or stir fry or spaghetti, but something _else_. At first, she thought it must be alien.

"It's Banh Xeo," Tentoo declared proudly.

"You definitely said pancakes," Amy reminded him. He looked dishevelled, especially compared to his twin. She could have sworn she saw a few stands of grey hairs on his head, hardly any gel in it to achieve his usual, spiky style, and he'd been growing a beard. No longer would it be impossible to tell them apart, side-by-side – the last few months had treated them both very differently.

"Sizzling Pancakes," he explained, "Savoury pancake. It's got shrimp and pork in it. You're meant to wrap it in rice paper – but we haven't got any rice paper."

"How tragic…" said Donna, eyeing it. Amy certainly didn't know about combining pancakes, shrimp and pork all at once.

"Picked the recipe up when I was in Vietnam," said Tentoo, sitting down and tucking into his own 'sizzling pancake' immediately. Shaun, who was evidently starving, did the same thing. One of those men who would basically eat anything – Mickey Smith was the same. Amy once saw him pick chips off a plate that had been sitting, cold, next to the sink for at least two days. Obviously, Martha told him off, but it seemed like a fear of her wrath was the only think which kept him from stealing other people's leftovers, not basic hygiene. Shaun clearly didn't dislike these strange pancakes, though, because he kept eating, indifferent. "So, then! What's going on in the TARDIS, Amy and Rory? I love you two. Such good names. Both end in Ys. Am- _y_ , Ror- _y_. That's brilliant."

"Yeah, I suppose it is brilliant," said Amy, "Syllables. Exciting."

"Still, though. TARDIS? Anything? Donna's always saying there's nothing at all." Amy thought he must not know about Rose and Ten's looming wedding, which didn't surprise her in the slightest. Especially going by the warning look Donna was giving her, almost glaring.

"Not a lot that I can think of," she said. Rory had noticed Donna's expression, too – but he wasn't going to go upsetting anybody, he had no reason to. It wasn't like he thought what Rose was up to was all so great, either, and keeping the truth from Tentoo was probably for the best. And even if it wasn't, she definitely didn't want to be the one to break the news. How long had it been since she had last seen him? Almost three months? It felt like much longer. "Remind me, erm, what have you heard? About the TARDIS?" She looked between him and Donna.

"Next to nothing, I've only been here for a few weeks, and Donna spends most of her time with Shaun when she's here." Shaun continued to devour his pancakes.

"So, uh… do you know about… what about the cats? Did you hear about the cats? Did you even know we got a cat?" Amy asked.

"Cats? I used to hate cats, but then I warmed up to them," Tentoo said, "Rose always liked cats." He looked at his food, and Amy glimpsed Donna glaring at her. How was she supposed to know he associated cats with Rose? He probably associated everything with Rose.

"Adam can't work out what he wants to do with them," Rory continued, not catching Donna's eyes.

"Is Adam still there? Is he still with Oswin?"

"As far as I know."

"I always thought they'd break up."

"I doubt it," said Amy, "They never seem to have any problems. They don't even argue. Anyway, they're not normal cats, they're Time Cats. Born on the TARDIS. Really weird. One of them has tentacles and floats around."

" _Really_? That's ridiculous! Never heard anything like it. Time Cats, can you believe it, Donna?" Obviously, Donna _could_ believe it, because she saw the kittens all the time. "And you said he doesn't know what to do with them? I'd love one. How many are there?" Amy didn't actually know.

"Five," said Rory.

"How old are they?"

"Blimey, must be…" he stopped to think, "Around two weeks. Can't really walk, just waddle. They're tiny – they're so cute, I've seen them loads recently because Mickey keeps lurking around them. They live in the medibay, with their mother, this ginger cat we rescued from a space station. Didn't realise it was pregnant at the time."

"Crazy story about the pregnancy, though," said Amy, "Someone found this test in a bin in the bathroom and _oh my god_ , everybody went mental trying to work out which one of us was pregnant. Then Jenny shows up and says it's _hers_. It was honestly insane."

" _What!?_ " Tentoo exclaimed, "Jenny's _pregnant_!?"

"No, the cat was pregnant," said Donna, "Were you listening? I don't think girls can get each other pregnant usually."

"Girls?" Tentoo asked, "What do you mean?"

"Have you told him _anything_?" Amy asked Donna, "He doesn't even know about Jenny?"

"I… I never know where to start," Donna admitted.

"Bloody hell – Jenny's gay now. She's going out with the Clara from the other universe."

"I thought she had a boyfriend? I think I remember being there for that. In the school."

"He's dead," said Rory. "Now she's dead, too."

"She's a vampire," said Donna.

"Honestly, it's kind of sexy," Amy added.

"A vampire?" said Tentoo, "As in, one of the Great Vampires?" He was understandably alarmed, but Amy didn't know the answer to his question. She was very disengaged from anything that was going on with that side of the TARDIS crew, especially because Ravenwood didn't live with them and it was next to impossible to coax Jenny into talking about her personal life; Amy had never been particularly interested, either. "But they need human blood to survive."

"She gets a lot of it from Jack and our Clara," Donna explained.

"Jack gives his ex-girlfriend's new girlfriend his blood?"

"I must only ever understand ten percent of what you're talking about," said Shaun, still wolfing down his sizzling pancakes. Donna smiled at him, a smile which said not to worry about it.

"Ex- _wife_ ," Rory corrected Tentoo, "They got married. Sort of. Briefly." Tentoo now seemed to regret questioning them about what was going on on the TARDIS. Amy supposed it was a bit weird to get your head around if you were hearing it all at once and not living through all the changes as they happened.

"…You were saying about the cats?" he changed the subject, and Amy was glad of it. She was focusing more on her pancakes now, anyway – they weren't actually as bad as she thought they were going to be when she heard about the fatal combination of pork and shrimp.

"Well, I think Other Clara has claimed one of them," Rory went on to explain, "It hates everyone except her. This black Maine Coon."

"You're giving them away, then?" Tentoo asked, "What are the others like?" Donna looked at him suspiciously. She mustn't like the idea of him bringing a cat into her flat – maybe she wasn't too fond of animals. Amy herself wasn't _too_ fond of them. "Maine Coon, one with tentacles?"

"There's that freaky-looking bald one," said Amy, "I hate hairless cats, they're _so_ weird."

"And there's a Calico and an Abyssinian."

"That's a lot of different breeds," Shaun said.

"Time Cats," Amy reminded him.

"I don't know what that means."

"Well, a Time Lord can really change into any other species when we regenerate," said Tentoo, "Sort of. Change our whole appearance, and everything. Well, not me, obviously I'm not… anyway, different cat breeds isn't so weird. But this tentacle one…"

"I think Adam's trying to get it so they keep the tentacle one and give away the mother, instead," said Amy, "Oswin really _hates_ the cats, though."

"Jenny named it 'Princess Sparkle Tutu,'" Donna added. _She_ had set down her knife and fork after sort of mashing up her weird 'pancake' enough that it looked like she'd at least attempted to eat it, though Amy highly doubted that she had partaken in one single bite. "She's a ginger tabby and she just sleeps a lot. Never does much of anything."

"Brilliant. I'd love a cat. Do you think I might get a cat?" he looked around at all each of them in turn when he said that.

"Not in here," Donna said, "The owner says we're not allowed."

"Who's the owner?" Tentoo asked.

"I am." He made a sad face. Amy really wondered what was going to happen to the other kittens, who was going to take an unruly Time Cat off their hands. Maybe Tentoo would get one after all – it would probably do him some good. Seeing him now, though she hardly knew him, so obviously lonely, was not pleasant.

"What about Mickey and Martha? Are they alright?"

"Oh, god knows…" muttered Amy. Tentoo frowned, tearing off bits of his pancakes with his hands and eating them.

"What's that supposed to mean? Something wrong with them?"

"I don't know, they're just spending _loads_ of time together recently," Amy said, "I don't even know the last time I talked to Martha. And like Rory said, Mickey's just been sitting around with those kittens."

"I keep telling you they're probably just happy together," Rory shrugged, "It's not really our business."

"I like talking to Martha," Amy told him. And it was true, she did.

"…But Jenny's alright, though?" Tentoo asked. He was very fixated on finding out about Jenny. Amy looked at Donna to prompt her to answer, since Donna seemed to know more about that than she did.

"I really don't know," Donna answered, "It's hard to get her to talk about herself. She gets on with Eleven better now, though. She refuses to speak to either of the others."

"Oh, really?" Tentoo seemed surprised, "Why him? Out of all of them?"

"He's made the effort," Rory explained, "I was with him today – he talks about her constantly these days. I think it's good."

"Well, do you… do you think she would speak to me? Has she ever asked about me?" No one answered him. These were some tricky questions, which didn't have good answers – to Amy's knowledge, she had not.

"I'll… ask her," Donna finally offered, "I'll talk to her." Good, Amy thought – _she_ didn't want to be the one to ask Jenny, a woman whose usual response to any emotion was punching something very hard, personal questions. "Let's talk about something else, though, eh? Something good. It's been a hard day." Amy had already explained the day's events to Rory and didn't fancy talking about them again. It wasn't so pleasant having to go to a late dinner with weird food after cremating a global hero.

"…How'd you two meet, then?" Rory changed the subject completely, addressing Donna and Shaun. He'd just about finished his pancakes and set his cutlery down, leaning on the table and picking up his glass of very expensive wine, courtesy of Donna.

"I love telling this story," Shaun spoke before she could, wiping his fingers on a napkin.

"It's really embarrassing," said Donna.

"No!" he protested.

"I'm sure we've heard significantly more embarrassing stories," Amy said, "I'll tell you something embarrassing – Rory fancied me for basically as long as we knew each other, and I thought he was gay. Literally because he was never interested in anyone else I just assumed he was gay. And then Mels-"

"Who's that?" Donna asked.

"Melody. River. Same person, complicated, our daughter, from the future, grew up together _before_ she regenerated into River, it's very weird," Amy waved her away before continuing, "Anyway, she pointed out that he actually fancied _me_. And the rest is history."

"It is quite embarrassing," said Tentoo.

"Go on, then," Rory prompted Donna and Shaun, "What's your story?"

"Well," Shaun began, "It's definitely not as weird as all that you just said-"

"Few things are," Amy assured him. Even Jenny's love-life was probably less weird.

"Basically, we used to live a few streets away from each other, before we ever met, and we used to go to the same laundrette because, well, washing machines are expensive, it was just easier. Didn't have much money before the lottery win. Anyway, I accidentally stole a pair of her knickers."

"You _what_?" Amy exclaimed, laughing.

"She forgot them in the dryer before me, then I had my stuff in afterwards – didn't see her in there. Didn't even realise until I got home, and I was folding it all, and there were these women's pants. So, I did what any decent bloke would do and took them back to the laundrette and I went there every day for two weeks – had the time because I was stuck on a bloody zero hours contract – and I was showing these pants to every girl who walked in trying to return them."

"To be fair," said Donna, "They were very expensive from La Senza."

"Ooh, nice," said Amy.

"Got them on sale."

"Oh _really_?" she was intrigued. Donna leant over the table and lowered her voice to a whisper.

" _Seventy-five percent off_."

"Bloody hell," said Amy, "They're giving them away, it's basically scamming them taking advantage of a deal like that."

"She went mental when I gave them back to her," said Shaun, steering the conversation back on track, "Thought I'd just nicked them then out of her laundry basket or I was some pervert. Took ages for me to explain enough to get her to believe me, and then – well, I suppose you just know, don't you?"

"Unless you're Amy," Rory quipped.

Amy shrugged, "It's a fair cop."

"It's not like I could really let it go without finding out what the girl who owned those knickers looked like wearing them."

" _Stop it_ ," Donna warned him, though he obviously just said it to get on her nerves and thought it was very funny. Amy thought it sounded like one of Clara Oswald's sleazy lines.

"You two are adorable," Amy said.

"That's what _I've_ been saying!" Tentoo exclaimed.

"Alright, alright," Donna waved him away. "Let's change the subject. I'd like to propose a toast."

"Really? What to?" Shaun asked.

"You'll see," she told him.

"I hope it's to cats," said Tentoo, picking up his drink, which was a glass of blackcurrant squash while everybody else had wine. Donna ignored him.

"To Amelia Earhart," she said. Everyone lifted their glasses at once, having already been related the bleak story of the day, "Even if no-one knows the truth about what happened to her except us, she'll always be remembered as a hero, a pioneer, a legend of aviation and women's history, and I hope that she's reached her place among the rest of the stars in the sky."

Everyone bumped their glasses together and said, "Cheers."

Amy didn't say so, for fear of Tentoo asking questions, but she thought to herself that though it had ultimately been a very short toast in front of a group of only four other people – three close friends and her husband – she was sure Donna would be able to deliver her best man's speech at Rose Tyler's wedding in a few days' time, and that it would be great. Maybe even more so than Jack's.


	172. Seo Lǣċes Ġiedd

**DAY 159**

 _Seo Lǣċes Ġiedd_

 _Martha_

They had talked about having children before, she and Mickey, and she had always thought that because she was a doctor she would have a relatively calm pregnancy; she'd be able to tell if something was wrong far more than with simple feminine intuition, and she'd be able to eat and exercise properly and be healthy and do everything right. Everything she knew people were supposed to do when they were pregnant she _was_ doing, diligently, cutting out all kinds of foods and drinks and behaviours – but it wasn't making it any easier. If anything, she was _more_ paranoid, _more_ of a hypochondriac, and she didn't want to talk to Mickey about it. After all, what would he think if the actual doctor out of the pair of them was constantly worried that something was wrong? He wasn't exactly calm and collected as it was.

That was why Martha was sitting in the medibay at the ripe time of five-thirty in the morning, after awakening from a nightmare which was on the brink of becoming habitual about something going terribly wrong with their month-old foetus. Princess Sparkle Tutu and her stumbling, waddling litter were in a decently-sized cardboard box in the corner of the room. They were all asleep save for the glowing, tentacle one, which floated a few inches above its brothers and sisters and meowed occasionally. Every time Martha saw that cat she worried that her own child was going to be born with tentacles - but her allergies prevented her from seeing them too often.

" _Embryo displays traces of Artron mutation and a genome abnormality consistent with the contraction of Corrupt Strain 25EFX4_ ," Helix told her. The same thing Helix told her every single time she wandered into the medibay on her own and requested another scan, multiple scans a day, all revealing the exact same thing – that the baby was going to be a Time Lord Manifest hybrid but aside from that was perfectly healthy. She didn't have any medical reason to believe otherwise, either, it was growing just as it should, just like it did in every other pregnant woman she'd ever examined in her career or learned about during her training. The medical equipment of the 21st Century wouldn't even show the genetic abnormalities of the Manifest virus or exposure to the time vortex – though there was still a month before anything much would show up on an ultrasound.

"You're sure everything's fine?" Martha asked the robot voice yet again, sniffing as the cat dander in the air irritated her noise and made her eyes water. She hoped Rory couldn't hear her. At least, half of her did – the rest of her was secretly wishing that he did overhear, or that Mickey told him something by mistake and he worked out what was going on, since he was the only other genuine medical professional on board. Of course, she thought the TARDIS would let her know if something was wrong, and Jack had lived for centuries and had many forgotten children, grandchildren, _great_ -grandchildren, and so on and so forth. Then there was the Doctor – but the Doctor was so busy, all the time, planning his wedding. And then she didn't know if she wanted to tell Nine or Eleven about something so personal – it wasn't like either of them had heaps of time to spare, either. She sometimes went days without seeing the Ninth Doctor anywhere.

So who else was there to ask for help? Who else that she trusted? She was very close to contacting Flek Phisj who had proven herself many times to be a more knowledgeable doctor than Martha seemed to be because she was from so far in the future, but contacting Flek meant going through Oswin, and Oswin would work out something was the matter within seconds and would probably work out _exactly_ what was the matter within just a few more. She was desperate for a deeper kind of expert, one who wouldn't question her, one who didn't know her, but one who could actually tell her something substantial about what was going on, someone she trusted more than her own paranoid hypochondria.

Satisfied by Helix's limited diagnosis of the health of the foetus she was carrying (at least for the time being), Martha sighed and jumped down from the gurney she had been sitting on and meandered over to look at the kittens for as long as she could before she began to have a more extreme allergic reaction. Princess Sparkle Tutu hadn't worried about the health of those kittens, and they had all turned out relatively fine, aside from the one with the tentacles and the Maine Coon which lurked in dark corners and attacked people, behaviour not generally seen in kittens which were a mere two weeks old. Now it lay there, sleeping, bloated with milk while the kittens kneaded its belly in their sleep. Why couldn't she be as calm as that cat? Why was she jealous of a cat? Why was she practically losing her mind with worry about this baby they were having?

The medibay doors began to slide open and absolutely scared the life out of her, making her jump and back away as though somebody unsavoury were going to come through. Or worse, Mickey, asking why she wasn't in bed – then she would have to share her unfounded fears with him and he'd start panicking as well. They couldn't _both_ panic, she needed him there to talk some sense into her. To ooze the same aura of calm as that cat. She breathed a sigh of relief (which turned into a sneeze) when she saw it wasn't Mickey, it was only Rose, out wandering at that time in the morning for who-knew-why. Maybe she was pregnant too and had also come to interrogate Helix.

"…What's going on?" Rose asked her immediately.

"…Nothing," said Martha, "I was just… checking on the kittens. See if they're okay. If they're feeding. They can be very fragile. I'm the closest thing we have to a vet, after all."

"They need to be taken to a vet?" Rose asked.

"No, I don't think so. Not unless you can find a vet who knows how to replace tentacles with legs. You don't happen to know a vet who can replace tentacles with legs, do you?" she asked. Rose narrowed her eyes at her. She wasn't doing a very good job of not being suspicious.

"Aren't you allergic to cats?" Curse Rose Tyler for remembering things about her. "Your eyes are all red."

"I'm only a bit allergic," said Martha, though the volume of six cats in the room at once (though one of them was hairless) was becoming quite overpowering. "…What are you doing up?"

"Looking for you."

"And you looked for me in here? You haven't woken Mickey up, have you?"

"I didn't check your room."

"You didn't check my room?"

"No, I came straight here. I knew you were here."

"You knew I was here?"

"The time vortex lets me know all kinds of things." Martha felt hot, burning hot, anxious that Rose may have discovered exactly what was going on. She didn't seem like she had, though – Rose had, after all, been so thoroughly excited when they found that cat pregnancy test weeks ago that if she found out _Martha_ , an actual human being, was pregnant, she wouldn't be able to contain it long enough to be enigmatic about what the time vortex was up to. "You need to come with me – I had a vision, it's urgent."

"A vision about what? About me?"

"Sort of, I don't know," Rose said, "It's hard to explain. It was us, in the future. The near future, today, I could tell, we have to go somewhere."

"Where?"

"I don't know that, either. If I teleport though, the time vortex will take us there. It'll make sure the future happens. All I saw was us, walking across a beach and through a forest. It was dark and it was raining."

"It's five in the morning, I can't just leave following one of your visions. The last time you had a vision it was about somebody being possessed by the devil and the Doctor wouldn't shut up about those sausage rolls," Martha reminded her.

"We saved a lost, confused alien," argued Rose, "All because I had a vision."

"And because the Doctor was there."

"She was _supposed_ to be there. It was just us in this one, and it was definitely today – the time vortex wouldn't make sure we go to a certain place at a certain time unless it was important, Martha. Anyway, do you have anything else to do? Other than run scans on these cats you're allergic to?"

"How do you know I was running scans?" Martha asked quickly. Rose frowned.

"I don't, I was just kidding. Were you scanning them?"

" _Yes_ ," she lied, "To check their… progression." Maybe she _should_ be watching the cats more closely. After all, they were sort of lab rats, in the world of mysterious, time traveller pregnancies. The cat hadn't had any issues during its actual pregnancy.

"How old do they have to get before you can give them away to people, anyway?" Rose asked.

"I don't know," Martha said. She really had no idea, she'd never had a cat. "What did the Doctor think of your vision?"

"You're not serious, are you? I wouldn't tell him if I had a vision. He goes mental about me being connected to the time vortex. He annoyed me so much last time he was talking about it that I ended up going out and getting drunk."

"I know."

"With _Clara_."

"I know that, too – you mentioned it the next day. It was very recent," Martha reminded her. "So, he doesn't like you having anything to do with the time vortex? Even though you can't help it? Did you sneak away?"

"I didn't have to, he's in the library, he's there most nights, I think he's trying to write his vows, or something."

"When are you getting married, again?"

"Four days," said Rose, smiling, then she paused the smile vanished. She repeated, "Four days… that's not a lot of time, really, is it? God, and I'm having to spend today following this vision… You know I wouldn't ask you about it if it wasn't important. We still haven't arranged the seating plan, I was meaning to ask people where they wanted to sit. It's a free bar, by the way."

"Oh, brilliant," Martha said, but felt she was being unconvincing, "Can't wait for that." The number one thing you shouldn't do when you were pregnant: ingest any kind of intoxicant. No drugs, no alcohol – probably best to cut out caffeine, too, and maybe even gluten, and certain kinds of vegetables, and things with more than an incredibly miniscule sugar content, and red meat and fried meat and anything else with a large proportion of salt or starch. But definitely no alcohol. "You don't think that you're rushing a bit, or anything? You've only been engaged for, like, three weeks. Not even a month." Less time than she had been unknowingly pregnant.

"Not really," said Rose. "It'll be fine. It'll work out. He'll get used to the time vortex thing."

"And you don't think you should have made sure he was used to it _before_ getting married?" Martha asked. Rose narrowed her eyes at Martha. "You know what, forget I said anything. It's nothing to do with me. I'll look forward to the free bar and free food. The food will be free as well, won't it?"

"Sure, but we haven't decided on a menu yet. The Doctor is insistent on having Gazpacho soup for the starter, for some reason…* I don't get it, it's served cold. I said why can't we just have chicken soup for the starter? Or even better, _garlic bread_. But he was like, 'garlic bread will make the rest of the food taste funny.'" Rose rolled her eyes. "If I get my way, there'll be some garlic bread _somewhere_. Even if I have to have a buffet at the reception while people are doing karaoke."

"You're having karaoke?"

"A wedding's not a wedding without karaoke."

"I'd say a wedding's not a wedding without two people who want to get married, but…" she shrugged, "We didn't have karaoke, me and Mickey. Didn't stop people standing up and singing when they were drunk, but at least there wasn't anybody arguing and competing over who can sing _Sex on Fire_ the best when they're all shit already."

"I'll be sure to put in a special request for Dr Martha Jones to get up and sing _Sex on Fire_. You're the only one who can really sing that your sex is on fire and have it be the truth, too. You know, with the burning. Clara got all those blisters, didn't she?"

"I'll kill you. That is, if I don't kill you before you even get the chance to compile this godforsaken karaoke playlist."

"You'll be drunk anyway," Rose shrugged, "No one gets away with going to Rose Tyler's wedding and staying sober."

"Mmm…" Martha said, unsure.

"Donna told me Amy wants the complete discography of Abba, or something."

"Oh, bloody hell… I hope you realise, I'm going to commit suicide," Martha said, and Rose laughed.

"Lighten up. I'm sure you and Mickey can just sneak away together in the dark since you're so attached to each other recently."

"…What do you mean? We're already married, we don't need an excuse to spend time together." Though they did actually have a very good excuse of talking about the looming baby they were hopefully going to have – unless a devastating and unforeseen event got in the way, like Martha was so terrified of happening. Even if the baby was physically fine, that hadn't stopped Melody Pond from being kidnapped at birth and brainwashed into becoming River Song. And she liked River, as a person, but certainly didn't want her own child to go through the same thing.

"Yeah, but… I don't know. It's like you've been glued at the hip. Everyone's noticed."

"Really…" Martha said. She hadn't realised. Should they be more careful? She didn't want anybody working out what was going on until they were ready. The TARDIS crew should wait until after she told her own mum, at least, which she still hadn't. But then, if Captain Jack knew, maybe Rose should know, too? Rose who could see the future and control the universe?

"Are you alright, mate? You keep zoning out."

"I'm fine. Just tired. It's five in the morning."

"Yeah… this vision, though… it must be important. We need to follow it. Make it come true and find out why it matters."

"Okay," Martha sighed. Maybe the time vortex actually wanted them to find out something useful, after all. Something genuinely helpful. "I'll go get dressed and leave Mickey a note, he'll get worried otherwise. He won't just not think anything of it if I vanish in the night." Even if she wasn't pregnant, Mickey would definitely not like her wandering off without letting him know first. The existence of their unborn child only exacerbated his anxiety tenfold, just like it had done hers.

"Brilliant – I'll see you in ten minutes. I might take some lunch, do you think we should take lunch?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the Doctor never takes any lunch anywhere and we end up out fighting aliens and saving the world all day on an empty stomach. Unless you like jelly babies. And in my vision, I'm not sure it's the type of place that would have a convenient petrol station with a cheap sandwich meal deal."

"Not sure any petrol station has a _cheap_ sandwich meal deal," said Martha, "More like an overpriced sandwich meal deal you have to get because there's literally no alternative." Rose shrugged.

"I'll get some sandwiches for the road."

"Tuna," said Martha.

" _Tuna_? Eurgh what's wrong with you? Eating tuna."

"I've just been craving tuna lately."

"Weirdo. I'll have chicken, like a normal person who doesn't hate themselves," Rose said as they left the medibay together. Rose was already dressed, all ready to leave in pursuit of the truth behind her vision.

"Tuna is a very common sandwich filling," Martha argued, heading towards the doors into the Bedroom Circle.

"Yeah, for _weirdos_. Bring a rucksack out with you, could you?" Rose requested. She sighed.

"Sure, sure…"

"Cheers. See you in a bit."

"Yeah, yeah… see you…"

* _Chapter 965, "American Eulogy" – you may want to go and re-read Thirteen's farewell letter to Oswin and Adam Mitchell because it DOES still accurately predict the future, and there's still one major prediction left._


	173. Þa Gāsta Ġiedd

_Þa Gāsta Ġiedd_

 _Martha_

They were flung into the throes of a rainstorm. Underneath a dark grey sky and next to a dark grey sea both Rose and Martha were soaked through almost immediately. Enormous waves towered next to them and crashed down along the bay, splashing across their ankles and shoes. It was an icy cold shale beach at the edge of a black forest glistening with the rain, and the poxy umbrella Martha had brought wasn't going to do them a jot of good. Martha didn't think she had left the TARDIS for nearing on two weeks, not to do anything other than go shopping, and was overcome by a sense of wonder she had never felt before when stepping into the rain. She was actually enjoying it, being cold and soaked when she was normally hot and dry and felt like she were being suffocated – both literally and figuratively. Maybe she had been succumbing to cabin fever, but regardless, she felt a great and strange amount of relief.

She held a hand above her eyes to shield them from the rain, which flew in all directions in the strong wind, and saw shipwrecks strewn across the beach, along with discarded swords and shields and sacks with unknown contents. And they weren't just any ships, she recognised them distinctly as being Viking longboats, splintered against the rocks. It was hard to tell how long they had been there for, but there didn't appear to be any Vikings around now; it was desolate and the foul weather made it impossible to tell what time of day or night it was. There was some light breaking through the clouds, but whether this was moonlight or sunlight she didn't know.

"Ha!" she actually laughed, staring around, "I haven't seen rain like this for… I don't know. Months. God… You sometimes don't notice how much time you spend indoors, do you?"

"Are you alright?" Rose asked her, talking loudly over the wind. Martha was staring out across the chaotic ocean and the longboats, waves sea foam washing up over the shales. "Martha?"

"Sorry. I just miss the weather sometimes."

"I don't, this is awful," Rose complained. Rose had the backpack with their lunch in it, and she took it from where it was slung over one shoulder to remove the umbrella. Martha had her arms crossed and was still looking at the beach, wondering what the time vortex wanted them to find out there. She thought it couldn't possibly be a recent century – the Vikings had been around more than a thousand years before they were born. The cold rain was refreshing and woke her up properly to put into perspective her bad dreams and poor sleeping; she thought she had lost touch with reality.

Rose opened the umbrella to protect against the rain, but it didn't do much good with the strong wind. Though it was no effort for her to hold it and keep it from blowing away, it was quickly turned inside out, and then the sea splashed over their feet again. Rose's expression was that of someone who'd just have a bucket of ice water thrown across her head without warning. There was a bright flash in the sky and almost immediately a heavy rumble of thunder.

"Probably best to leave the umbrella," Martha called over the wind, "It'll attract the lightning. Do you know what century this is?"

"It's the early Eleventh Century," Rose answered.

"Why are we in the Eleventh Century?"

"I don't know, the time vortex brought us here, the time vortex told me when it is – I think we should head towards the woods," she decided, "It'll be more shelter from the rain, leave us less open to the lightning. And getting killed by any invading Vikings. Come on, it's this way."

"What is?" Martha asked, following her.

"I don't know. Whatever we're here for. It's this way." She was always so vague when it came to the time vortex. Martha wrapped her arms around her and emanated as much heat as she could, so much that steam began to rise from her skin after not very long at all, but the sensation just made her feel like she'd spent too long in a sauna.

Once they were in the forest it became even darker and Martha was unable to see her feet in front of her. Because of this, she tripped right over a branch after barely a minute of trudging through the muddy woods and fell into Rose's side. Rose barely noticed this, with her super-strength it probably felt a bit like leaf had brushed past her arm, but it prompted her to create one of those glowing energy orbs of hers, which hovered in the air just ahead of them an illuminated their dismal surroundings.

"What's it like when the time vortex tells you things? Is it like a voice?"

"No, it's like… I just know things, all of a sudden, and I know that I only know them because of the time vortex," Rose explained, "Things I need to know to make sure things happen the way they should."

"And the Doctor doesn't like it speaking to you?"

"I think he's scared of it."

"It _did_ kill him," Martha pointed out, though she wasn't too sure she knew the specifics of Nine's regeneration into Ten. Her shoes were already coated in mud, socks soaked through from the seawater. She was going to stink very soon.

"That's… it's different. That happened – I became the Bad Wolf – because I _absorbed_ it. It's like… a dam in a river. The river flows, but then gets blocked by the damn, so it all builds up and overflows in one area. That's what happened before, and then the Doctor took it away from me and died because of it. But _now_ , I'm still the dam, but if the dam's open and the water can flow through freely. Or maybe there's no dam at all and I'm the river bed. It goes _through_ me, it doesn't inhabit me. And it's not like I abuse the power I have," Rose said. Martha didn't believe that for a moment, she could think of one very distinct example where she certainly had abused her powers, and _not_ that time she'd tried very persistently to kill Clara. To her annoyance, Rose sensed this in her silence. "What?" she asked pointedly, "I _don't_ abuse it."

"I mean… you did, you know… get rid of Tentoo."

"God – everyone's always making me out to be some sort of monster because of that."

"Well, if I just threw Mickey off the TARDIS and never spoke to him again-"

"It's nothing like that," Rose snapped, "We were fighting. We were fighting for _weeks_ before that happened, because he didn't want to live on the TARDIS anymore, and now he doesn'. Besides, he's fine."

"He is?"

"He's sad, but he's fine."

"You've seen him?" Martha was surprised.

"In the time vortex. Donna's adopted him like he's a stray dog. It's a huge secret, she thinks I don't know about it – but I've been keeping tabs on him for months, I've literally known the entire time. I made sure he reached Saigon okay, I made sure someone offered him a job; someone tried to jump him and mug him and I stopped that from happening. He doesn't know I've been intervening. It was a messy breakup I'll admit, but people have messy breakups," Rose argued. This was all news to Martha.

"Donna's 'adopted' him?"

"He's been living in her flat in London for weeks after she went and got him – and she only found out about that because there was a newspaper article about a fisherman in Vietnam catching a particularly big squid who happened to be him. That article was from a Vietnamese paper which got 'mysteriously' delivered to Shaun Temple, and he showed it to Donna because he recognised the man in the picture. That's how Donna found out. I'm the one who sent them the paper. We wanted different things in life, but I don't hate him. I don't want him dead.

"This is definitely a secret, by the way, you cannot tell the Doctor, he can't know that I ever even _think_ about Tentoo anymore, he'd lose his mind. He's already on the brink with planning the wedding."

"Mmm…" Martha just agreed, all-too-familiar with the feeling of being 'on the brink' with stress. Though, Ten did seem _incredibly_ agitated about this wedding – not that that was particularly surprising, it was hard to imagine the Doctor getting married. The Tenth Doctor, at least. The subsequent two were much more acclimatised to the idea.

Martha began to worry again as they trudged through the mud and the trees and the rainstorm, trusting Rose's 'time god' intuition. She began to think about what else Rose might know, and if she kept the secret of manipulating her ex-husband's affairs from afar, what other secrets could she be keeping? Secrets which weren't even her own?

"…The time vortex hasn't told you anything else recently, has it?" she asked carefully. Rose couldn't hear her over the storm, so she had to repeat herself louder.

"How do you mean?" Rose called. The wind and rain was almost deafening, only slightly dulled in the dense forest compared to on the beach.

"Just… you know. More secrets."

"I'm not gonna tell you stuff about other people," said Rose, "It's not like I pry into their lives on purpose."

"I mean about me." Rose stopped walking, the rain cascading down around them and bouncing off the leaves of the evergreen trees. Despite the bad weather, Martha thought it was probably sometime in spring. Rose narrowed her eyes, her eyes which changed colour at random and were currently a highly odd shade of pink.

"Secrets like what?" Rose asked.

"Look… I'll tell you, but I'd really like to know for sure before I do that you don't already know about it. Do you?"

"I know a few things about you, but I'm not sure any of them are that important…" Rose said, "What's going on?" That settled it for Martha, Rose couldn't know. If it was one of the 'few things' the time vortex had told her, she would have no trouble picking out what, precisely, Martha was referring to. And besides, she wasn't entirely sure that Rose would have been able to keep it to herself and wouldn't have immediately sought them out and attacked them with questions if she had found out. So she made up her mind to confide in Rose Tyler.

And that was exactly what she had been about to do, until they experienced something quite harrowing. There was a bright, blue-ish light, and for a moment Martha thought it must just be lightning – maybe it had struck worryingly close. But when the light did not dissipate after a second, she knew it was something else, coming from behind Rose. Rose still waiting for her reveal her truth, Martha stepped around her to get a look, and saw a figure glowing brightly, an entirely separate image from Rose's golden orb.

"Hey!" Martha called out at it, since it was in a distinctly human and vibrant shape, but when she shouted the apparition vanished as if into smoke or ethereal fog.

"What?" Rose asked her, "What was it?" Martha ignored her and walked past to head towards the spot where she had seen the abnormality but found herself splashing through a deep puddle. Rain bounced down through a gap in the trees, and briefly the moon appeared through the thick clouds; so it was the middle of the night, after all.

"I thought I saw someone. Something."

"Like what?" Rose asked, following her through the mud and rainwater.

"I don't know, like a person, but not a person. A shape. It disappeared."

"What were you going to tell me?"

"It looked like a ghost."

"Martha?"

"A _ghost_ ," Martha reiterated to her.

"Do ghosts exist, though?"

" _Yes_ , they exist," Martha said, "They're made of energy, electricity. Esther sees them."

"Esther… sees ghosts?" Rose asked, incredulous, "Esther's… a psychic?"

"It's not like she sees them, she conducts them, you know she's like a walking lightning rod. She asked me about it in case there's anything I can do, medically, but there really isn't. Makes her faint," Martha explained, but ghosts were not her forte. Medicine, maybe, but definitely not ghosts. It may not have even been a ghost at all, could have been anything – a hallucination, some other energy-based creature, like the Frir or those ghastly 'sex clouds.'

"We should keep going," Rose said. Martha didn't think she believed her about the ghost, which was just typical. But she didn't know what they could do, after all, Esther wasn't with them, nor did they have any other method of generating heaps of electricity. They were in a flooded wood with a lightning storm raging, it was basically the best breeding ground for the supernatural around. "What were you going to tell me about?" Martha had to think about that, had to get herself back into her previous headspace before witnessing whatever it had been (though she kept a close look-out now, glancing around at her surroundings – even if she had been mistaken, there could easily be packs of marauding Vikings out there.)

"Oh, uh…" Now that something else was going on, she sort of wanted an excuse not to think about her own affairs, and so faltered when the time came. But she wanted somebody else to talk to about everything, somebody who understood life on the TARDIS, somebody she could trust, and most importantly somebody else who was a woman. "I'm, um…" Again, she stopped walking when faced with the enormity of the admission. "We're having a baby. I'm pregnant."

Something screamed in her face and she was overcome with terror. That same ghastly image, or at least a similar one, leering at her. Gaunt features, bright white skin, a vivid blue aura encompassing the entire vision, black eyes like coal and rotting, horrid teeth, glistening wounds secreting dark green fluid riddling its body. It shrieked into the night, appearing between them so that both of them screamed as well, Martha falling backwards into the mud while Rose backed away into a tree and accidentally elbowed it with such force that a whole bough of leaves snapped off. The bough fell and landed right where the spook was standing in the middle of a small clearing, Rose's own light source vanishing with its owner's terror. The wood crashed to the ground and into the mud and made the fiend disappear, throwing them both into darkness again.

In a panic Martha lit a fistful of fire, which was a tricky thing to maintain with the heavy rain pouring down around them, and struggled in the mud to get back to her feet. With a golden flurry Rose teleported across the meagre distance to Martha's side to help her stand up properly, Martha now filthy as well as wet and cold.

"Shit!" exclaimed Rose.

"That was a ghost!" Martha said, "I told you!"

"You're having a baby!"

"The _ghost_."

"Forget about the ghost, the _baby_ – oh my god, I can't believe it. You and Mickey!" Somehow, Rose had overcome the horror of a genuine ghost jumping out at them enough to beam widely, her eyes changing through a verifiable rainbow out of sheer excitement. "Are you okay from that fall!?"

"I'm fine."

"Are you sure?" Rose asked urgently.

"You're as bad as Mickey," Martha shook her head.

"Is this why you were in the medibay this morning with those kittens when you're allergic to them? Oh my god, is the baby alright? Is there something wrong?" This was why she didn't want to tell anybody – the incessant questions. She didn't even know which to answer first, so she settled to answer none of them.

"Technically it's still an embryo," Martha mumbled. Rose ignored her.

"Bloody hell, I can't believe it. I can't believe Mickey had it in him. _A baby_ – wow. That's mental. I'm so happy for you! I'd hug you but, I've got a bit of an issue with hugging people too hard at the moment, the Doctor keeps moaning. But seriously, this is…" She grinned, balled her fists, squealed.

"Yeah…"

"Are you not happy about it? You don't seem particularly happy."

"I _am_ , both of us are, it's just…" she lowered her voice and stepped closer to Rose, "Helix says it's going to be a Time Lord. You know, like how River was born. And it's also got traces of the Manifest virus."

"'It'?" Rose questioned.

"You know it takes seven weeks for a foetus to develop its gender?" Martha said, "We have no idea if it's a boy or a girl. Or some sort of glowing, tentacle… thing. I'm scared."

"Martha," said Rose firmly, "It's going to be perfect. He or she or they or whatever is going to be the cutest, most adorable baby basically ever with the best parents anyone could ask for. And you're a doctor!"

"Being a doctor is making me even more worried," she said, "And I can't talk to Mickey. I can't tell him _I'm_ worried. He's anxious enough already."

"Well…" Rose sighed, "You can talk to me now. You've told me. Who else knows?"

"Just Jack, and Ianto, but only because Jack was with Ianto at the time and Jack refuses to go anywhere without him," Martha said, "That's all. I've only known for a week. I just wish there was someone who knew, for sure, what was going to happen."

"Maybe you should talk to one of the Doctors?" Rose suggested, "But not mine, he couldn't cope at the moment. But there's only a few days until the wedding, and then I'm sure he'll calm down. Or Eleven, he's the one who was with Amy and Rory while she was pregnant."

"Yeah, and the baby got kidnapped twice and then brainwashed into killing him and they didn't get to raise their own daughter. And now she's River. I don't want a kid like River," said Martha.

"No, no, I see your point…" Rose put her hands on her hips. "I'm sure we can find someone to help put your mind at ease. We could even… I'm sure I could find a way to talk to Thirteen for you. She must know. She knew about the cat."

"I'm not a cat!"

"I know! I'm just making suggestions! I'm excited for you! You and Mickey! You two are so much better together than he and I ever were, and he's gonna be the best dad in the world, I know it," Rose said. "How-" They heard a piece of wood snap nearby as though somebody had trampled on it and silenced immediately. That last time Martha had checked (about a minute ago), ghosts couldn't break tree branches.

They paused to listen – though Rose was hardly able to contain herself and was obviously dying to ask Martha more questions – and heard whispers. Footsteps. People nearby, real people, talking about something. When Martha clenched her fist and put out the fire burning in her palm, the darkness made the nearby lamp the travellers were carrying pronounced enough for them to see it. They certainly weren't ghosts, and they didn't look like soldiers.

"Let's go see who they are," Rose said, which Martha had been about to suggest herself, "Maybe they know about the ghost." Martha nodded and joined Rose in her careful approach, not wishing to startle the group.

As they moved through the trees Martha finally saw who they were; just three people, a family, the mother carrying a lantern while the father carried a young boy in his arms. The boy looked like he was asleep, but then broke out in a particularly aggressive and wet-sounding bout of coughing. Clearly, he was unwell. The parents desperately whispered to their son to be quiet in case he disturbed the ' _gāstas_.' Knowing that they were probably going to scare the little group no matter how they introduced themselves, and fearing for the wellbeing of the boy, Martha stepped forwards out of the trees to greet them.

They were quite terrified to see Martha and Rose come out of nowhere, but upon seeing they were two women and certainly not spectres of any kind, nor did they have any weapons, they relaxed slightly. Of course, Martha could set them on fire just by thinking about it and Rose could remove them from existence, but they didn't know that.

"You should know better than to be out here after dark," the mother warned them, holding up her lantern. It had what looked like animal skin stretched over it, presumably because that was easier than making glass. The boy began to cough again and curl up against his father. "This forest is haunted by the souls and bodies of the dead."

"There's more than one?" Rose asked, "More than one ghost?"

"The _gāstas_ are not the worst of it," the father said, "The dead themselves still roam, the washed-up Dane invaders, their ships sunk at sea. Our own kinsmen and warriors as well. They wander among these trees."

"Wait, you mean… hang on…" said Rose, thinking. The boy coughed again.

"Is he alright?" Martha asked, squinting to get a look at him. They were all soaked to the skin and shivering. "Why did you bring him out here in this storm?"

"We needed to visit the witch," the father said, "To heal him."

" _The witch_?" Martha asked, horrified, "You're going to see a witch?" When she thought of witches, she remembered the Carrionites from Elizabethan London, the ones who had tormented Shakespeare and the other peasants – they would certainly not help a young boy in need, not unless they intended to use him as part of a twisted plot of world domination.

"We have already been, she lives much deeper in here, where the spirits are more free, but more tormented," said the mother.

"What did the witch do? Did she help you?" asked Martha, looking at the child and noticing redness around his eyes, "He looks like he has whooping cough, he could get pneumonia, you ought to keep him warm and indoors and cover his mouth when he coughs." She would also recommend a strong course of antibiotics and vaccinations for the parents and anybody else the boy may live with, but of course, antibiotics and vaccinations weren't anywhere close to existing. The likelihood of a child that age surviving whooping cough were sickeningly low.

"The _wælcyrie_ already helped, she gave us a poultice, he's improving already," said the mother.

"He is?" Martha asked, incredulous, not wanting to get too close to the child because she didn't have an up-to-date whooping cough vaccination, and it was an incredibly dangerous infection to contract during pregnancy.

"He hasn't been vomitting with his coughs anymore," the father explained, "They're less violent. _Seo_ _wiċċe_ is a great healer." Martha was sceptical, but if they were telling the truth then it _was_ medical evidence.

"Why would a witch help?" Rose inquired, "What did she ask for in return?"

"She asked for nothing," the mother said, affronted, "The witch helps all those who need it, she has cured many ailments in our village, she even repaired a sword wound which would usually mean death in one of our warriors, struck down by the _Danen_."

"Tell me about this wound," Martha said, "How bad was it?"

"It split his belly apart. The smell was inconceivable."

"And this witch healed a wound like that?" Martha was amazed. A stab wound which ripped the guts and stomach apart with a sword would kill someone in their own century in minutes, coming with an enormous risk of infection. An expert surgeon would need to be operating almost immediately for any chance of survival, but a witch had saved him? In the year 1000? "Where can we find this witch, exactly?"

"The way we came from," the mother held up her lantern and nodded in a direction through the trees, "She is a good woman. She brings the only solace we get with the _wīcingas_ killing as they please."

"We must leave," the father interrupted, "Before the dead find us. I hope the witch can help you with your struggles."

"Yeah," said Martha as they began to leave, though she was still highly suspicious of this witch, even more so if she was genuinely helping people, "Me too."


	174. Seo Wiċċan Ġiedd

_Seo Wiċċan Ġiedd_

 _Martha_

The woods changed slowly into more of a swamp, a deep marsh where their feet sank into black mud as they trudged along. The trees in this area were so thick above that they blocked out all the light and a lot of the rain, leaving a fine drizzle hovering around them and an unusual fog in the air. Even the sound of the storm seemed dulled the deeper they went, and sometimes around them the mud and puddles bubbled strangely. It was exactly the kind of place where Martha thought a witch might live, deep in some boggy and unusual area of rural England, and she was paying very close attention to the slimy, fungus-covered flora and the insects and the algae to try and block out the buzzing sound in her ear – the sound of Rose Tyler's incessant, unquenchable questions.

"Why don't you want to talk about it?" Rose was badgering her.

"Because it's too huge," Martha told her, trying to watch her feet and where she was walking, her arms crossed tightly around her, around her stomach, as though somehow shrouding it from view would render Rose unable to ask anymore invasive questions.

"What have you and Mickey been talking about, then? You've been inseparable ever since you found out, right?" Rose said. That was true, she was hardly away from Mickey's side. She didn't even like being away from his side now, but maybe they could wrap up the whole business with the witch before he woke up, which wouldn't be hours.

"Just… mainly about where we're going to live," Martha admitted. As much as she didn't want to think of all this, she still had a desperate need to confide all of her troubles in a fresh pair of eyes. She couldn't decide if she was grateful to have Rose there or annoyed at the interrogation. "Isn't this weird for you?"

"Why would it be weird?"

"Because Mickey's your ex-boyfriend, I don't know."

"Eight years ago," Rose said, "It's not weird. I'm happy for him, you two are like, my best friends. Do you know how close I was to seeing if you wanted to be chief bridesmaid?"

"I think it's matron if you're married."

"I only picked Jack because… well, I just thought he'd be better at it, to be honest. Organising things and making speeches. I can't wait to see his speech at the Doctor's wedding – it's gonna be mental. Him and Donna both." Martha couldn't disagree, she was also excited to see Captain Jack's chief bridesmaid speech.

"He was our best man," Martha recalled, "He did a great speech, oh my _god_ \- we've got it on DVD. It's in our flat though… haven't been back for months. Lucky we had savings, it's been paying our rent while we've been living on the TARDIS this whole time…" She had been thinking about their flat in London more and more lately, after they had left Cardiff once Torchwood had been aggressively 'disbanded.' "I bet we hardly have any money…"

"I've got a fraudulent credit card, you can have some money from that if you need it," Rose offered. Martha frowned.

"No, thanks. The economy may be a mess back home, but it's really not that hard to get a job as a doctor."

"You'll be fine, then," Rose smiled, "You're not going to raise it on the TARDIS though, are you? It's no place for a kid."

"No. We were thinking… somewhere rural. Out of the city."

"What? Like you're in hiding?"

"It's what Gwen does now," Martha said, "As soon as Anwen was born, she and Rhys left Cardiff to go live in some lonely cottage where they keep tons of illegal firearms. Maybe we should be doing that? Just in case? Anwen isn't even… she's a human. But _this_ …"

"Look, I swear, _personally_ , that if anybody comes after this baby, I'll punch them so hard they explode. As if anyone's going to hurt a baby whose mother can shoot fire out of her hands. That's one thing Amy and Rory didn't have going for them. Anyway, forget about all the kidnapping risk and the money and where you're going to live and all that other stuff – though, I'd love to see Jack's best man speech he gave for you two – and tell me about the _most important thing_."

"Which is what?"

"Baby names!" Rose exclaimed with an unmitigated amount of glee.

"We really haven't talked about any names."

"Oh, okay, and you're telling me that never in your life have you thought about baby names before? In your _whole life_? You've got no idea what you'd name a kid?"

"I'll name it 'Rose', after you, are you happy now? Can we stop talking about this yet?" she asked, pleadingly. "It's just an _embryo_ – because it's not a baby, not yet, it's not even a foetus and it's barely got placenta."

"What does it have?" Rose asked.

Martha paused for a while before answering, "A heartbeat."

"Oh my god! A heartbeat! A tiny little a heartbeat! And it's so small!"

"You're more excited about this than I am, honestly."

"You have to start getting excited then, and not lose sight of the only thing we know for sure in this whole situation, that you're going to have a baby, a real baby, and it's going to be adorable and the best thing in the world and it's gonna have so many people looking out for it that nothing bad could ever happen. And even if it did, _I_ control the universe, and – oh my _god_ , are they _bones_?" Rose was instantly distracted by something she saw over Martha's shoulder.

And when Martha turned she saw that yes, Rose had spotted some bones, some very human bones, hanging from a tree. Again, the baby was nothing more than a dull buzzing in the background, like she had left the radio on but forgotten to set it to an actual station. White noise, easy to ignore.

She dragged her feet through the mud towards the strange object, lifting it from where it hung on a thin piece of twine from a branch. But it wasn't ordinary twine, it felt distinctly like human hair, and the bones hung from it as though they were some kind of charm – a grotesque dream catcher, muddy and still with shreds of skin attached. Martha was repulsed and carefully returned the thing to wear it hung, wiping her hand as clean as she could get it on her soaking wet jeans. When she and Rose looked around their surroundings more closely, they saw it was not the only one of its kind. There were more bones, hanging everywhere, all over the place like a psychotic trophy cabinet.

"This is horrendous," Martha said, "It's appalling."

"Must be the witch," Rose said. That made sense, Martha supposed, and made her even more suspicious of whatever monster was hiding out there. But the thought of monsters hiding made Martha spy, at the edge of the trees where the wood turned into dark, impenetrable shadows, glowing creature: another ghost.

"Look," she breathed, tapping Rose's arm and nodding towards it. It drifted, having less shape than the other one they had seen, this blue-ish energy cloud, and then dispersed as if blown by a gust of wind into sparkling dust in the air. "I don't get it – I've been to graveyards and funerals and they're not full of ghosts like this forest."

"There must be something else going on," Rose decided. Martha agreed, there clearly was a larger power at work, especially for there to be so many restless echoes active in one place.

After that ghost dispersed, however, that area of the woods began to light up like a carnival. They tried to continue on their path through the bog, which was icy cold and stickily humid at the same time, both of them covered in frostbitten sweat and moisture, but there were more of the spectres, all of varying degrees of corporeality, drifting in and out of the trees and mud and the heavy, unnatural fog-like shadows. The ghosts flickered, they surrounded Rose and Martha and left them disorientated, unable to progress, barely able to recall which way they had come from in the first place; if only they had been more focused, left some breadcrumbs like Hansel and Gretel, instead of getting so distracted talking about the baby – or, _embryo_ , she corrected herself in her head.

Within seconds of Martha disturbing the bones hanging from the tree they were being swarmed by the creatures, some of them even forming faces, painful, malformed faces with pearlescent, fishy eyes and weeping wounds all over their skin, some even with sores, scabs, rot, decay. And then the moaning began, dreadful sounds of pain and anguish that were inhuman, hisses and groans like death rattles. They were encompassed by the spectres as though they were begging for something – release? From whatever was keeping them trapped? Were they just angry for being there?

" _Anforlæteaþ sona, dwimor_ ," an interloper ordered. Martha turned and was face to face with a creature, spectral in a different way to the ghosts and tall, commanding, pale green skin and glowing white eyes with no pupils or irises or anything behind them, shocking white hair to match. This creature somehow managed to dispel the phantoms terrorising Rose and Martha. The sharp blue lights evaporated, leaving them engulfed in a soft green, emanating from a lamp in the feminine creature's thin hand. " _Ēalā, wīfcild tīma_."

"What did you say?" Rose asked, in shock, looking at the creature looming above them.

"I told them to leave."

"No, you said 'children of time.'"

"You're time travellers. You exude Artron energy, it's all over you both, among other things," the creature explained, "I'm sorry about the wraiths. They became agitated when you disturbed the charm. Their energies are very disruptive sometimes. _Þa earmingas_. _Ic besorgie_."

"The charm – you mean the bones hanging from the tree?" Martha asked.

" _Gese, þa baan_. Come with me, it's not safe here. You're in danger. The _gāstas_ are nothing compared to what else is out there." The creature, clearly an alien of some sort, turned and led them away, holding the lamp up high. "The lamp satiates them, keeps them calm. You shouldn't have touched the charm."

"It's made of human skin and bones – who are you?" Martha questioned.

"It's all I can gather of their remains – the circumstances are complicated. And I'm Itrux. I'm a Zuar. The villagers call me a _wiċċe_."

"You're the witch we've been hearing about," said Rose, "With your bone charms."

"The charms are a means to an end," Itrux said. Martha was straining her memory, though, because she could have sworn she had heard the name 'Zuar' before.

"So, you're an alien?" Rose persisted.

" _Gese_. An ' _idese_ _leōhtfæes_.'"

"That's what they called Florence Nightingale," said Martha, then she gasped, "Oh my god, was Florence Nightingale an alien!?"

"No, there was a Zuar present during the Crimean War. Florence Nightingale was a woman who stole most of her achievements. She met a Zuar and misunderstood the role of the lamp, to ease the pain of spirits, spirits she didn't believe in, despite the scientific explanation of residiual energies."

"If this isn't magic and witchcraft, what is it?" Rose asked. Out of the gloomy fog in front of them, glowing green under the light of the strange, silver lamp, a small hut emerged. It had a thatched roof and crooked, wooden walls, a small chimney, strangely ancient, resting on a large and unusually-shaped mound. This was their destination.

"Science and medicine."

"Listen, I'm a doctor," said Martha as they scaled the mound, "Hanging bones from trees and talking to ghosts isn't science _or_ medicine."

"So, you think it's _dwolcræft_? You, a human doctor, also call me a _wiċċe_? A _wælcyrie_?" But the Zuar, Itrux, seemed amused. "The dead leave behind energies, ghosts. We're healers. All of the Zuar are healers." She opened the door to the small, thatched hut and they entered. It had more body parts in it, some in containers and jars, more charms, some of them only partially made. "They're not ghosts the way humans think of ghosts – they're merely echoes. Stains. Incomplete. But they hurt, they feel pain, their own pain, eternally if nobody helps them move on. The charms draw them here, they feel an attachment to their own body parts, and the lamp keeps them calm enough to talk to, along with other technologies. We help them move on, settle down. Resolve their unfinished business." Itrux set the lamp down on a small wooden desk.

"Bloody hell!" Martha exclaimed, grabbing Rose's arm in shock.

"Don't burn me," Rose told her, prying her fingers off her wrist, "What's up with you?" Then she was alarmed, "Is it the baby? Did it kick? Oh my god, Martha, did the baby kick?"

"It hasn't got fully-formed limbs or a brain, so no, it didn't kick," she snapped, "I just remembered where I've heard about the Zuar before. The spaceship that crashed on Earth in the later Nineteenth Century, it was a Zuar ship."

"What spaceship?"

"The one that Liam Kent excavated and then used to bring Esther and Ianto back from the dead. That was Zuarian technology. And Thomas Edison used it to make some kind of soul-powered electrical generator."

"This all sounds very farfetched," said Rose.

"It definitely happened," said Martha, then she spoke to the Zuar, "How are you allowed to have the technology that can bring people back from the dead?"

"It's the same as any kind of medicine," said Itrux, "And we use it with discretion. We're supposed to. Nobody ever wavers from the Zuarian code."

"Which is what?" Martha asked.

"'Do no harm.'"

"But that's-"

"Humans borrowed it from us."

"…What did you give to the boy with whooping cough? A poultice, they said?" Martha changed the subject. She felt like she was having her entire understanding of medicine turned on its head – how many medical advances were really the achievements of these intervening Zuar? "I'm sorry, I just really don't understand what your role is – interfering with humanity? Like humans can't take care of themselves?" She took this quite personally.

"We're healers to all races," she said, "Please, I'll show you, _tīmawīfcild_." She leant down and lifted a fur rug from the floor, kicking it into a corner and revealing a trapdoor which she opened carefully. Inside was a passageway lit the same pale shade of seafoam green, " _Mec_ _bedrīf_." This they did, descending a small, narrow ladder into the floor of the alien witch, and into what lay beneath the mound – a spaceship.

This spaceship was not very large, only fit for one occupant, and smelled of unusual and potent chemicals. Martha recognised now many advanced technologies – computers, chemistry equipment, injectables, in stark contrast to the contents of the hut above them. This was clearly where the Zuar actually lived, lived and developed her complex 'poultices' and whatever other advanced medicine she was dishing out to the occupants of the dark ages.

"We don't view ourselves as being able to control life and death," said Itrux, "There's a natural order in the universe we try not to disturb, just distribute medicine. We detect where we're needed and one of us goes to observe, to help, to teach – we don't believe that a lack of scientific ability should lead to unnecessary deaths. We stay on the outskirts, go down as witches and sorceresses in history."

"How can you be a doctor to _every_ species?" Martha asked, "It took me years to get qualified and that's just for humans and I don't have any specialisation, I'm basically an ER doctor."

"We live for a long time, learning, on our home world, and then we leave on a pilgrimage. After we save or improve a certain number of lives, we return home and wait to be assigned where there is the most need. Like army medics. There is a great need for a healer here. I'm on my pilgrimage now, I'm very young."

"Really? How old are you?" Martha asked.

"Only a thousand."

"A _thousand_?"

"I know," sighed Itrux, "It's almost embarrassing, I'm a child."

"God," remarked Rose, "Puts the Doctor into perspective, doesn't it? He's always going on about how old he is. He's gonna end up getting a hip replacement one of these days just to prove a point."

"The Time Lord?" Itrux asked.

"You know him?"

"Everyone knows him," said Martha, going to lean against one of the walls, while Itrux had gone to sit down on a stool at an advanced chemistry set which was boiling away.

"Forgive me," said Itrux, "We vow to help any species in need, except the Time Lords."

"What? All the dangerous, destructive races out there, and it's the Time Lords you choose to abandon?" Rose was shocked, "What about the Daleks or the Sontarans?"

"We help at our discretion," said Itrux, "It depends on the situation. Have you never met a Dalek in need?"

"I…" Rose faltered, and then said nothing.

"We have a specific agreement with the Time Lords. They say our medicine isn't necessary, they forbid us to interfere with them, and they disapprove of how we engage with species across the universe." Using advanced technology to help, rather than hoarding it, was a fundamental difference between the Time Lords and the Zuar, clearly. "They vow never to interfere, and in turn, we vow the same thing to them, at their request."

"Every Time Lord?" Martha asked.

"Every Time Lord."

"…What about a non-Gallifreyan Time Lord? A new one? Born without meeting any of the others, without sharing their ideology, their agreements?" Martha asked.

"This is about _eower_ _ċildes_?" Rose had mentioned the baby upstairs, Itrux must have been listening closely.

"Yeah," said Martha, "We travel with a Time Lord, the last of the Time Lords – sort of – the Doctor. And I'm pregnant."

"It's the Doctor's?"

"No!" Martha exclaimed, "God, no. No. _No_."

"Alright, don't sound _too_ disgusted," Rose muttered, then added to Itrux, "I'm marrying the Doctor." Itrux did not seem to care that Rose was marrying the Doctor, she was more focused on Martha.

"If you're as knowledgeable a doctor as you seem to be, can you help me?"

"In what way?"

"I just want to know that everything's going to be okay. We have this virus, too, it's complicated, it's a genetic abnormality with the adrenal gland that causes abilities, and a scan of the embryo shows that it's going to be a Time Lord because it was conceived on the TARDIS, and it's going to be infected with the strain of this virus, and I'm terrified," Martha explained, more frantic than she wanted. "And Rose was just saying earlier that we could maybe find some kind of expert, so… please. I feel like I can't prepare for having this baby before I know if it's going to be alright, and I also have no idea why I'm telling _you_ all of this since I don't even really trust you. I don't know why I told you that either…"

"It's okay," said Itrux, "It's one of the gifts the Zuar have, people are honest with us. It makes it easier to distribute the correct medicine when patients are less inclined to lie about their symptoms." Why did she feel so soothed looking into white, empty eyes in a green face? Anyone looked at least a _little_ menacing if they didn't have _anything_ in their eyes. "I'll make an exception in exchange for you making an exception for me."

"An exception how?" asked Rose, suspicious.

" _Ic beþearfe bōte_."

"Help with what?" Martha narrowed her eyes.

"Do you remember I said _þa gāstas_ are not the most dangerous thing? It is _þa hold_. They have risen, from _hira licburga, hira morþcrundlas_."

"Hang on, you don't mean…" Martha began.

"You mean…" Rose also began.

" _Zombies_?" they said together. Itrux shrugged.

" _Gese, ic ġehycge. Belifene wīcingas, belifene folcwigan, belifena wīfan, belifenan bearn_."

"Zombie Vikings?" Rose repeated the first thing on her list.

"It's what makes _þa gāstas_ so restless, they can't find peace if their bodies are still walking around out there, attacking people."

"Why are there zombie Vikings, exactly…?" Martha asked, "Because here _you_ are, with technology which has brought two of our friends back from the dead and one of them with a whole host of side effects where she shoots lightning out of her hands and will die if she isn't attached to an electrical source, and now there are zombies?"

"It's not my doing, I promise," said Itrux, "Another _cnihtcild_ _tīman_ , he came here, bade me to move on because he was sent here by his superiors, worried about the effect I was having on the villagers and changing history. I told him if he helped with this problem, I would leave, because I would have no reason to stay."

"Is he dead too?" asked Martha.

"I'm afraid I don't know, but I haven't seen his spirit. If you find him, and you help _þa hold_ find _friða_. Then, I promise, I'll do everything I can to help with your baby. I'm sure I can put your mind at ease, it would be my pleasure."

"Yeah," said Martha, "As long as we get rid of the… zombie Vikings. Were things always this ridiculous?"

"I think it's got worse lately," said Rose, "With Thomas Edison and his Soul-Stealing Machine."

"The _cnihtcild_ _tīman_ , he went to the village to examine _heora_ _līcbyrg_. You should start there."

"Great. We investigate zombies by going to a cemetery."

"A cemetery is probably the last place the zombies want to go, though," Martha said, "So we'll be fine, just casually finding out what's reanimating the dead." She turned to add to Itrux, "It's not a plague, is it? With a cure?"

"I would know if it was," said Itrux, "It's something else, no cure. The spirits are gone from the bodies, they are only husks. Please, the _cnihtcild_ _tīman_ will know more. And I'll help with whatever I can once this is done."

"Sure," Rose grumbled, "Just off to kill some zombies, and then back before lunch. All in a day's work for us 'children of time'…"

 **AN: Fun fact, I have an exam in Old English next term so I'm using this as a revision tool and you all have to put up with it. Also are you guys as excited about Mickey and Martha's baby as Rose is?**


	175. Se Hæleþes Ġiedd

_Se Hæleþes Ġiedd_

 _Rose_

"Blimey."

"Yeah."

"Those're Vikings."

"Yep. And they're zombies."

"Mmm…"

"I feel like maybe the time vortex is playing a practical joke on you," Martha said. Rose shot her a glare. "What? Oh, come on. This is ridiculous."

"You're pregnant with an alien superhero baby," Rose pointed out sharply, "I don't think you're one to talk when it comes to what is and isn't ridiculous."

At present, they were both crouched behind a stone wall observing the goings on in a small and abandoned village they had been led to by Rose's extra-natural gifts. The wall was mossy and damp, and they knelt in dirt and mud on the other side, in the graveyard they had been told to visit, full of empty graves and mounds of wet dirt. The storm had let up to a fine drizzle. They tried to ignore the smell of corpses as they peered over the wall.

They were certainly zombies, though; wandering around in that typical, zombie-like gait, shuffling to and fro like their limbs were frozen solid. Many of them were grotesquely injured, one of them had a sword stuck through his metal helmet right down to the hilt – though the top half of the blade was broken off – giving him the appearance of having horns.

"Hey," she nudged Martha and pointed this specific shuffler out, "Maybe that's why people think Vikings have, like, horned helmets."

"What? Because of one bloke with a sword in his head?" Martha asked incredulously. Rose shrugged.

"Maybe?"

"It's probably just people getting confused between ancient Persian helmets, they were sort of similar, and they _did_ have horns," Martha explained, then went back to observing the zombies while Rose stared at her. Martha noticed this, growing self-conscious. "What?" Rose said nothing. "Shut up. I saw a documentary about the Persian empire on BBC Four."

"Eurgh," Rose said, visibly disgusted, "Who watches BBC Four?"

"It was just _on_ – I had a really bad hangover, this was ages ago. Let's just focus on the zombies, yeah?"

"Speaking of the one with the sword through his head, though," Rose said, lowering herself back down behind the wall so that she couldn't be seen by the zombies, who were all mingling in the centre of the village around the largest building, a wooden hall or tavern or something. But apart from the zombies it seemed to be a ghost town, no sign of this other 'child of time' the Zuar had bade them to find. Rose was halfway convinced they were going to run into Jack. "I always thought that removing the head or destroying the brain killed the undead."

"First of all, you've seen _Shaun of the Dead_ too many times-"

"Classic film," Rose muttered.

"-second of all, his brain might not be destroyed."

"There's a sword sticking out of it."

"You'd be amazed what kind of injuries come through A&E. Bloke with a kitchen knife stuck his head after getting a fight with his wife, drove himself to the hospital, said he couldn't feel a thing. And he survived, basically fine. Plus, there was this really famous bloke we learnt about in med school called Phineas Gage, who had an iron rod driven through his entire head and his brain and survived but had his whole personality drastically changed. He turned into an arsehole. Really opened up a lot of debates about physiological psychology. Carried the iron bar around with him for the rest of his life."

"What a weirdo." Martha made a noise of agreement. "I bet he watches BBC Four."

"Well he lived in the Nineteenth Century."

"So did everybody else who watches BBC Four."

"Look, they're all swarming around that one building, maybe there's something in there?" Martha suggested, "Like this time traveller we're looking for."

"How are we supposed to know a time traveller when we see one?" Rose asked.

"Dunno, suppose they could be wearing tons of makeup and a tracksuit?" Martha suggested mock-innocently.

"It's comfortable." Martha rolled her eyes. "Look, we need a way into that building, there has to be something interesting in – _oh_ my god, that one's eating a dead body." There were two young zombie children huddled around a gigantic, bloated soldier's corpse, riddled with muscles, but now with his innards being pulled apart like spaghetti Bolognese by two youngsters. "We have to get weapons. Where's your gun? I swear you used to have a gun."

"I got rid of it when Oswin made us those stun guns."

"So where's the stun gun?"

"I don't think it would work on zombies."

"Let's try it."

"It's not here. Guns are rubbish against zombies anyway, you need a blunt instrument."

"You mean like a cricket bat."

"Stop thinking about _Shaun of the Dead_."

"The Doctor used to play cricket! He must have a cricket bat! I'll just nip back to the TARDIS and-"

" _What_!? You'll leave me here!? Me and the baby!?"

"Oh, okay, so when you don't want to talk about it it's just an embryo, but as soon as you think a zombie might attack you and try to eat it, it's a baby? You're full of double standards," Rose argued.

"If you abandon me with these zombies, I will kill you. I'll rise from the grave and rip you apart."

"Ugh. Pregnancy hormones are _not_ a good look on you."

" _Pregnancy hormones_!?" Martha exclaimed, a little too loud. They paused, froze, turned to look over the wall again at the ambling zombie hoards. But unfortunately, the volume of their conversation had been steadily escalating, and without realising they had drawn the attention of the two-dozen members of the undead lurking in the village.

" _See_ ," Rose hissed, "Now you've got the zombies after us. You've got baby brain already." Rose knocked on Martha's head and Martha, furious, hit her hand away. Sparks flew from her fingers at the same time. "This is bad."

"Oh, really!?"

"Well it's _your_ fault!" Rose argued, but the zombies were advancing, groaning. Rose, annoyed, stood up from behind the wall now that the zombies had seen them and their already-poor cover was completely blown. "Look, just… come on…" Rose began to edge away, and Martha followed her, sticking close, backing into the graveyard. "Nice zombies! You just… stay over there, yeah?" The zombies continued to amble towards the wall.

"I don't think that's working."

"Shut up, Martha," Rose said, glancing around for anything she could use as a weapon apart from her fists, because she didn't really want to get close enough to the zombies that she had to resort to hitting them. What if one of them bit her? Maybe the Zuar _did_ say it wasn't technically a virus (like _Shaun of the Dead_ ), but she still didn't think that being bitten by a zombie was something she should just be okay with happening. Or bitten by anybody.

"Seriously, can't you do anything? Make them just cease to exist?"

"And can't _you_ start throwing fireballs?"

"I haven't got any practice," Martha said, "I don't know how to do that. Plus, we're in a forest."

"A damp forest."

"I don't want to risk burning down an entire forest because I don't know how to control this pyrokinesis!" Martha argued angrily. And then the closest zombie, the one with the sword through his helmet halfway across the mossy wall into the graveyard, exploded. Well, his head exploded. Gore went everywhere, Martha and Rose jumping back to escape the spatter. "See!? I told you I can't control it."

"He's still moving!" Rose exclaimed, "But removing the head or destroying the brain is supposed to work! Oh my god, what are we going to do?" She was getting frantic.

"Uh… during the Miracle when nobody was dying they burned them in big incinerators."

"Burning! Great! Do your thing," Rose entreated.

"You do yours! Vaporise them!"

"No! Make fire!"

"I just told you, I can't-"

"HEY, FUCKERS!"

An object sailed through the air from a now open wooden-shuttered window on the large, central building the zombies had previously been gathering around, an object which looked distinctly like a glass bottle with a rag in the neck in the few seconds Rose actually got a glimpse of it. It crashed to the ground in the middle of the hoard and shattered, creating a moderately-sized firestorm.

"What was _that_!?" Rose exclaimed.

"A petrol bomb," Martha said, then she saw an arm in the window beckoning them, and she dragged Rose in the opposite direction of the zombies. They fled through the graveyard while the zombies began to burn – lucky dead bodies were so flammable, especially when doused with alcohol – sneaking behind some huts. The undead had terrible peripheral vision and barely noticed them scurry away as they wailed in the flames, darting around the buildings until they had looped through the very small village and back to the main building, where one of the other windows was un-shuttered.

"Get in here," their IED-armed rescuer ordered. Rose climbed through the window first and then helped Martha through second, though Martha glared at her and said very firmly that she didn't need any help climbing through a simple ground floor window even if she _was_ carrying a tiny foetus. "Block the window, block the window!" They dragged a large rack covered in weapons to block the shutters again (though it was mainly Rose) and could finally take in the appearance of this stranger, the other 'child of time.' Suffice it to say, he was as dressed for the period as they were. He was practically covered in fluorescents – leg warmers, arm warmers, head band, t-shirt, and then some random looking bits of chainmail, a sword, a backpack, and a vortex manipulator on his wrist. A time agent.

"You look ridiculous," Rose said. He was immediately affronted, and – Rose couldn't help but notice, not that she was looking or really thinking about that at all because she was getting married in four days – _very_ good-looking. "Aren't you time agents supposed to blend in with your surroundings?" And then, at the worst possible moment, her phone rang. Her phone which was not on silent, and now played _Bleeding Love_ at full volume. Martha frowned.

"Is that Leona Lewis?" she asked. Rose shushed her and got her phone out of her pocket. It was a text message, from Amy. "Amy says have I deleted her recording of _Bargain Hunt_ from the holobox. I can't believe she watches _Bargain Hunt_."

"I did it," said Martha.

"Why?"

"Well… just…" she mumbled, "Okay, fine, _One Born Every Minute_ was on and I didn't want to watch it while everyone was in there in case they started asking questions." She crossed her arms huffily. Rose shook her head and ignored the text completely, putting it back in her pocket. "And _Bargain Hunt_ 's rubbish." The time agent had his hands on his hips, looking them very judgementally.

"Seriously? And _I'm_ in trouble for not blending in?" he questioned them. Rose looked around the room: it was in a state of immense disorder. Blood on the walls, tables and chairs and stools pushed against the doors and walls to keep out the zombies. It didn't look like there were any other survivors apart from the Viking zombies. The settlement had been decimated.

"You're practically glowing you're wearing so many fluorescent things," Martha snapped.

"I'll have you know this was a last-minute assignment, I just got back from the 1980s where I had to go undercover in a performance of _Starlight Express_. Which I was amazing in, thanks for asking. I had to be there on the exact same night as a very specific Coca-Cola executive in 1985 so that I could convince them that New Coke was a disaster and to drop it. Do you know how hard it is to convince Coca-Cola executives to do anything? I gave the Greaseball performance of a lifetime. Tony-worthy"

"Could've been worse," said Martha, "Could've been _Cats_."

"What's _Starlight Express_?" Rose interrupted.

"It's that musical," said Martha, "You know, with the trains."

"The trains?"

"They're all trains." Rose had never heard of this.

"Toy trains," the time agent interrupted, "They come to life and compete for the affection of a beautiful stage coach. Though in reality, she was a huge diva. It was an enormous acting challenge to pretend to be interested. Anyway, I did that, and I came back to the office and immediately they're saying – 'DeLacey, there's a stray Zuar and reports of the undead in the Eleventh Century, we need you over there.' Did I get time to change? No. Only time to pick up this cool asteroid sword and a few Molotovs."

"Wait, what?" Rose asked, "Did you say 'DeLacey'?"

"Yes, sorry – it's been a long few days, there's no hair gel in this century. I'd be a lot more amiable if I wasn't worried about my quiff or my roots showing through," he complained, "Anyway, where are my manners. I'm DeLacey. Emmett DeLacey." He held out his hand for them to shake, and that was when it hit Rose where she had heard his name before: from Jenny. Emmett was the name of her enormous spike-gun, and DeLacey was the name she gave to her mob associates.

That was the moment she had another of her time vortex visions, which almost always normally happened in her dreams, one of Jenny in an icy cave wearing only furs waving a dead, alien creature in the face of a bartender and then this young man, Emmett DeLacey, sitting at the bar and watching her; and then a second vision arrived of Emmett bleeding to death in the co-pilot's chair of a spaceship after being shot in the chest with a crossbow bolt; another vision of Jenny with his corpse floating in the water of a swamp and an alligator looming nearby; Jenny burning his body on a pyre; Jenny and an urn filled with ashes which Rose could have sworn she had seen before on the TARDIS.

All of this information reached Rose's consciousness in a split second, less than that, as though she had known it all along.

"Are you okay?" Emmett DeLacey asked her when she didn't reach to take his hand. She clenched her jaw and then forced a smile.

"Yep," she said rigidly, "Just, uh… heard your name before. That's all."

"Oh, really? Where from?"

"Dunno. Got a friend who's a time agent. _Was_ a time agent, once," Rose shrugged, "Or maybe I've heard of you from that train musical."

"A train musical you hadn't heard of until a second ago?" he asked incredulously. Speaking of things they had heard of, the noises of the zombies groaning outside was getting louder again.

"Maybe it's just déjà vu." Emmett seemed unconvinced, and then went to retract his hand – which he had still been holding out – at which point she made a mad grab for it and forgot about her superstrength. The same superstrength that had prevented her from hugging Martha earlier on. Emmett flinched, gasped, and buckled when she touched his hand, shaking it much too hard.

"Rose!" Martha exclaimed.

"God, sorry," Rose let go and left the boy staring at marks on his hand, "Don't really know my own strength."

"There's not knowing your own strength and then there's breaking my fingers."

"I didn't actually break them, did I?" Rose said, "I could probably heal them for you, if-"

" _Shhhst_ ," Martha ordered her. She shut up immediately.

"What did you say? Heal them?" he questioned.

"Nothing, _forget I said that_ ," Rose said, waving a hand in front of his eyes like Obi Wan Kenobi. Martha looked at her like she was being utterly ridiculous, but Martha didn't know that Rose's newest trick – wiping memories – actually worked. It was coming in very handy when she was planning a wedding to an alien with a stolen credit card, she had to keep twisting the minds' of the contractors so that she didn't get arrested for fraud and Ten didn't get shipped off to some laboratory (though she wished he was in a laboratory sometimes; it was a nightmare planning a wedding with the Doctor.)

"Like I was saying, I'm Emmett DeLacey," he reintroduced himself, giving Rose another opportunity to really _very gently_ shake his hand in what she thought was the world's limpest handshake, but which still made him wince. "Crazy handshake."

"I get that a lot." Martha was amazed Rose's Jedi mind tricks had worked. Rose didn't understand why – the Doctor was always messing around wiping people's memories, as were Torchwood "So, you're here to deal with the Zuar? We met her."

"Itrux? She's sweet," said Emmett, "A novice. I've met older Zuar before – they live for, like, fifty-thousand years – and they're just… mysterious. Don't like to tell you what they're doing. Anyway, you're not time agents, why are you here?" he questioned, crossing his arms.

"Heard there was a witch," said Martha, "You know, in history. And stuff."

"History," Rose repeated for emphasis.

"…Yeah, okay. It's fine. Don't tell me. I run into all kinds of you freelancers. I really don't care how you got here as long as you're here to help me. And again, sorry for the attitude – I'm still hungover from the musical. Had to be drunk to get through it and then complex Coke politics. Difficult business to manipulate. They would've kept New Coke if it wasn't for me. And then there would we be? With _two_ brands of Pepsi?"

"This might be hard to believe, but I really don't care about Coca-Cola," said Martha, "There's a hoard of zombies outside and this village is probably going to burn down because you threw a Molotov into the middle of them."

"Relax – the rain is so bad the fire won't take to the wood out there. Dead bodies are a lot harder to burn than people think," said Emmett, whose dead body was destined to be burned, "If the temperature isn't high enough you just get barbecue. Barbecue zombies." But the zombies were clearly not dead, they were back to trying to break into the hall.

"Well, great," Rose grumbled, "Now I'm hungry. Maybe we should have our sandwiches." She took the rucksack from her shoulders and began to search through it for food. Martha thought this was a terrible time to eat sandwiches, but she was desperate for the tuna.

"Here's the thing," Emmett began, "I've talked to some of the neighbouring villagers before I went to to see the Zuar, and everything unusual can be tracked to a mysterious explosion which destroyed a giant area of trees about a mile away from here, which _I_ suspect was made by an unusual kind of meteor, and – is that a Kit-Kat?" It _was_ a Kit-Kat, Rose had just removed from her bag. "Hey, I haven't been able to eat anything since I got stuck in this room two days ago, do you think-"

"Depends on Martha," said Rose.

"Why?" Martha asked.

"If you want the Kit-Kat. He can have it as far as I'm concerned, but if _you_ want it-"

"I'll just have my sandwich." Rose tossed the Kit-Kat to Emmett.

"Why does she get food priority?" Emmett questioned.

"Because _I'm_ having a baby and I'm stuck out here being attacked by zombie Vikings, that's why," Martha snapped, unwrapping her tuna sandwich from the foil, "Go on, keep talking. Explosion, asteroid."

"I think something's reanimating the dead," Emmett said, then quickly added, "I mean, obviously – but bodies are just vessels for energy. If something else is forcing energy into them, then they'll get up and start walking around."

"That's what happened to Esther," Martha said, wolfing down her tuna sandwich ravenously. Rose hadn't been able to find any mayonnaise to put on it because Clara was hoarding all the mayonnaise in her room like the freak she was. Rose was enjoying her run-of-the-mill cheese sandwich, though not with nearly as much vigour.

"Esther doesn't eat people alive, though," said Rose, "Otherwise Sally would definitely be dead. But look, he's right, I've seen this kind of thing before. More than once. The Gelth were controlling dead bodies and using them as vessels, so were those gas mask zombies, in a way. They weren't eating anybody, but… look, there's a lot of people who want to do freaky stuff with dead bodies and would probably love a zombie outbreak." Like Nios's secret new almost-sort-of-girlfriend Rose absolutely wasn't supposed to know anything about but, again, the time vortex whispered all kinds of irrelevant information to her. She also knew that Amy Pond switched the labels on her hair products to pretend they were much more expensive than they actually were, and that Adam Mitchell secretly sang Busted songs (surprisingly well) when he showered. Completely useless information.

"Okay, so, you, me, and Greaseball here will go to see this meteor crater and take it from there," Martha said, "If it's not any kind of infection then it must be technology or evil aliens. And I'd rather have those than a plague outbreak."

"Good plan. I mean, what if the baby-" Martha glared at Rose, mouth full of tuna. "Fine. What if the _embryo_ got the zombie disease, and then it turned undead and ate you alive from the inside? Like spiders?"

"Sorry – how pregnant are you, exactly? To be out here? With the zombies?" Emmett asked. In the background, Rose was dully aware of the zombies getting louder and louder, more and more frantic in their efforts to tear the wood and from the walls and raze the village's only intact building to the ground.

"I don't know, maybe seventy percent pregnant," Martha said sarcastically.

"There's percentages of how pregnant you can be?" Rose asked, eating more cheese, wishing she hadn't sacrificed her Kit-Kat.

"Are you joking?"

"…Yes," Rose lied. She hadn't been joking, hadn't picked up on the sarcasm, and she really wasn't the most maternally knowledgable person.

"I took a course in midwifery, that's why I'm asking," Emmett shrugged, "The Time Agency, they run these things sometimes. It was midwifery or sword-fighting."

"But you're carrying a sword right now," Rose pointed out.

"Yeah, because they wouldn't let me bring a gun. But it's fine, I know loads about sword-fighting. I've seen all thirteen _Pirates of the Caribbean_ movies."

"I feel comforted," Rose muttered.

"A month," Martha answered him, "Only a month pregnant. And I'll be fine. Plus, I'm a doctor, so-"

The worst happened.

Well, not _the_ worst, Martha's stomach wasn't ripped open by a monstrous, alien baby, leaving it to Rose to don a Sigourney Weaver-esque persona to defeat the offspring in a giant mech, but still quite bad. But still, quite bad.

The Viking zombies, furious from being tricked and then set on fire (and maybe enticed by there now being three fresh humans plus 'embryo' for them to devour), finally broke through Emmett DeLacey's carefully crafted barricades. Rose nearly dropped her sandwich, it was that dire.

"I think that's enough lollygagging, don't you?" Martha said, backing away from the broken-through window, right at the moment _another_ window was smashed to pieces by a dead, burned hand right next to her. She shrieked and threw a fireball at it out of nothing more than reflex, jumping away. "I think your Molotov just made them even angrier!"

"Did you just shoot fire!?" Emmett exclaimed.

"Long story! Too many zombies!" Rose said.

"Right," he said, then he drew his sword, which had a purple blade (somehow) and was just as ridiculous as the rest of his outfit. "We'll fight our way out."

" _Or_ you could just, you know, use your vortex manipulator and just teleport us away?" Rose suggested.

"Teleportation without a capsule!? With a baby!?" Martha exclaimed, "I'm _not_ doing _that_."

"Fine then!" Rose shouted as zombies were crawling through the windows on all sides, blocking their every escape route. Except for one _last_ escape route. "This asteroid crash – you said it was a mile away?"

"Yep," Emmett said, "North-west." He slashed his sword and hacked off a zombie arm, and to their horror the arm kept moving and crawling along the ground towards them while the stump leaked thick, black blood. Rose nearly screamed.

"Alright, well," she picked up her rucksack and slung it over one shoulder, grabbing Martha's elbow and then Emmett's shoulder, "I suppose we're taking the express route. Or, the _Starlight Express_ route."

" _Just teleport us!_ " Martha shrieked as a zombie Viking lunged for them. Rose Tyler did exactly as she was told.


	176. Ðorh Þam Scræfe

**AN: In case any of you are wondering why you should be interested in Mickey & Martha's baby considering the fic is set to end very soon (the wedding is the finale) – yes, you WILL be seeing the baby after it's born and when it's older, and then I'm sure it'll be very interesting to re-read these early pregnancy chapters after you actually get to know the kid (who is great and features in many drafts, btw).**

 _Ðorh Þam Scræfe_

 _Rose_

There were craters, and then there were _craters_. They were right in the middle of an enormous carving in the landscape, as though a giant had scooped up the dirt and rocks and then burned all the trees to the ground for good measure. There were charcoal-like pieces of debris – stones and branches – out there in the valley of ashes, and suddenly the rainstorm seemed to increase in severity with the dense woodland obliterated. At least the empty landscape assured them that there weren't any more zombies, but it did pose another problem; the fact that they were dead in the centre and there didn't seem to be any alien objects nearby.

"But-!? You-!? That's-!? How-!?" Emmett DeLacey stared at Rose with horror, "You teleported us! Without any kind of equipment!" Rose felt a pain in her head, akin to a great burning on the inside of her skull, a boiling bleed in the brain. By showing Emmett DeLacey her powers, she had begun to change history. The sensation was a warning to rectify what she had inadvertently done. She held up her hand towards him.

"I didn't," she said firmly, "You teleported us, with the vortex manipulator." Emmett got a glazy look in his eyes, then blinked, frowned, accepted this new truth. The pain in Rose's head disappeared instantaneously. She whispered to Martha while Emmett processed his altered memories, "No powers."

"Are you serious!?" she hissed, "There's _zombies_ out there and you're saying I'm not-" Rose shushed her aggressively when Emmett regained his composure. It was a lucky thing Martha trusted her. She could imagine if it were Amy Pond she were with she would end up being interrogated, having to reveal all and effect greater and greater manipulations of Emmett DeLacey's memory – and memory was a fragile thing. She knew the risks of modifying it. But she also sensed that if he were to find out about her temporal abnormalities, it would mean dire changes to his own future – and Emmett's future was intertwined with Jenny's, and Jenny's with who-knew how many thousands of lives.

"Let's just think logically about this," Rose tried to get them back on course, because she didn't want to stay there in the rain and the wind and the frost for any longer. She had been sopping wet for at least the last two hours and it was really beginning to bother her.

"Well?" Martha prompted, "What have you so 'logically' been thinking about?"

"I was hoping one of you might have a suggestion. Of a logical nature."

"Okay, well," Emmett began, lifting up his wrist so that he could point the vortex manipulator at the epicentre they were standing in, "Say something _did_ crash here, it's obviously not here now, so someone's moved it."

"Or some _thing_ ," said Martha, "I'm sure wolves haven't gone extinct in the UK yet in this century. They might take something back to their den. There might be zombie wolves, too."

"That's a nice idea," Rose glared at her. As if zombie humans weren't bad enough, zombie wolves were much worse. Unless the zombie wolves only wanted to kill and eat other wolves – after all, Ravenwood could only survive by drinking human blood, none of that _Twilight_ -esque 'vegetarianism.' She'd just die of malnourishment.

"Let's assume that it _wasn't_ wolves who moved it because tracking down wolves is harder than tracking down people – and when I say harder I mean it involves looking for shit, and then examining shit, and sometimes piss, too," said Emmett, scanning the ground around them.

"So, we're saying humans moved it?" Rose asked, "Probably… because they thought it was valuable, right? What if it was back in the village?"

"Definitely not, I searched that place before the zombies found out I was there," Emmett said, "They'll have hidden it somewhere else, with so many Viking raids. Where would you take something if you wanted to hide it from pillaging Vikings?"

"Bury it, or take it to a cave, or something," Martha suggested.

"Exactly," said Emmett.

"Oh, you're joking. You expect us to wander around aimlessly out here looking for a cave? It could take days to find whatever specific cave whatever crashed might be hidden in. We don't even know what we're looking for," Martha argued. "There must be an easy way to do this. Can't you just track it? Just do a scan for technology?"

"With _this_?" Emmett nodded at the vortex manipulator, "Love to, but it's… okay, I was _supposed_ to take it in for repairs the last time I was back at base, but I got sent here so quickly, as we already discussed at length because I'm wearing a ridiculous outfit. And they're really more about monitoring your own vital signs than doing anything else."

"You don't have any, like, scanner for alien objects?" Rose asked.

"Scanner for-!?" he almost laughed, "Trust me, that's… it's borderline impossible."

"What about for technology in the past, then?" Rose was a bit annoyed. "Basically all you time agents do is stop time being altered by rogue technology."

"Which we do using our investigative skills," he said, "What do you think we do? Stop advanced technology from falling into the wrong hands by bringing with us even more advanced technology? Gadgets let you down. Any secret agent can tell you that."

"What about James Bond?" Martha interrupted, "He had loads of gadgets."

"Yeah," Rose agreed, "Or Inspector Gadget."

"That's ridiculous," said Emmett, "Inspector Gadget is a police officer, and James Bond is a highly unrealistic franchise which I personally don't have the time for. Look, all we have to do is head southeast from here back in the direction of the settlements and we'll probably come across whatever cave they hid the debris in along the way." And he set off walking towards the edge of the crater, tracking through the mud and leaving them alone in the rain for a few moments, until they hastened to catch up. Well, Rose thought, she _had_ said to think logically.

"Why is your sword purple, then?" Martha asked once they had reached Emmett again, "I've never seen a purple sword."

"I said, it's made from an asteroid. Very high-quality sword, wish I had an inkling of how to wield it. Now, if you wanted me to cook something with it, I'd blow your mind. I'm a phenomenal chef." Though Rose knew that Emmett had only known Jenny for a brief period of time, and not yet in his own chronology, she was distinctly reminded of Jenny when he said that. Maybe he had got it into Jenny's head to learn how to cook. "I did think about naming the sword, but I'll probably end up returning it to requisitions after this is over."

"What were you gonna name it?" asked Rose.

"Hadn't thought that far ahead."

"You should call it Jenny," she suggested.

"Why?" he asked. She shrugged.

"No special reason." Emmett merely frowned at her and continued on his path. Martha was also perplexed – without the time vortex, perhaps she had not worked out the significance of who they were talking to. Rose turned her attention back to Martha. "You haven't thought anymore about _names_ , have you?" The rain continued to hammer down upon them, weak thunder rumbling above, but Rose was too distracted watching her footing to notice any lightning.

"No."

"You've just never talked or even thought about having kids before?" Martha didn't reply, a silence Rose took to have a meaning of its own. "So you _have_."

"Mickey always said he wanted to call any boy we had Michael. Or, Michael Jr, I suppose it would be." They left the rim of the crater, crawling steadily uphill, and the trees which had been destroyed by initial impact began to return as they re-entered the dark forests.

"Really? That's hard to believe, I called him Michael _once_ when I was having a go at him for something and he _freaked out_. I honestly forgot that was his name until you said it now. He got revenge by calling me 'Rosie' for a week just because my mum used to call me it when I was about seven." Martha laughed at that anecdote.

" _Rosie_ ," she copied.

"Don't you start," Rose warned loudly over the high winds.

"We could name it Rosie if it's a girl."

"You better not."

"Honestly, we haven't talked about it. I feel like we've barely talked about anything, and all we've been doing is talking," she sighed, "Haven't even decided who we want to be the godparents yet, since mum will _insist_ on having it christened." Rose gasped.

"Oh my god! _Please_ can I be the godmother?"

"Of your ex-boyfriend's baby?"

"That was, like, eight years ago, come on. It's not like I'm hung up on him – I'm getting married to another man, for the second time," Rose pointed out, "Can I?"

"I don't know."

"Martha! I love this kid!"

"It's not been born yet!"

"Well, I will love it."

"If I promise to talk to Mickey about it and say we'll _think_ about _maybe_ asking you to be the godmother, then will you _please_ stop asking me questions and going on about this unborn foetus?" Martha pleaded. Rose grinned very widely but said not a word, thrilled with the mere prospect of being considered for the role of godmother to Mickey and Martha's offspring.

"I hate to break up the baby love party," Emmett interrupted, "But I think that could be a cave down there." He pointed out a trench gouged naturally in a small clearing of trees, mud and silt pooling at the bottom from the storm. But at one edge a formation of stones clearly revealed a dark mouth, a chasm which could be very shallow or could stretch for miles.

"What if that's a wolf den?" Martha asked. "Or bears? Zombie bears?"

"Could you stop suggesting random zombie animals?"

"Zombie foxes? Zombie squirrels?" Martha continued.

"Or maybe there's some zombie badgers who could give us zombie TB and then we can all die of zombie lung failure." Emmet jumped down into the pit and the mud, getting all of his soaking wet neon-Lycra filthy. With no alternative, Rose and Martha were stuck following him, jumping down and also getting themselves even dirtier than they had been before.

"Eurgh, this is gross."

"Tell me about it," Rose muttered as Emmett went to climb up the stones to get into the small cave mouth, "I wish I could just change my clothes to be from an earlier point in time when they were clean and dry."

"You can do that?" Martha asked. They heard an echoing splash from inside the cave, and Emmett had vanished from sight.

"I could if we didn't have to stop _this one_ from finding out who we are and who we know," she said, but then Emmett was calling for them to follow so she couldn't explain to Martha who he was. Rose clambered up the low rocks in his wake and peered into the gap. There was a light coming from within as she crawled through the gap.

"It's quite a drop," Emmett warned. He was right, it was, straight into cold, dirty water; the cave had become flooded during the rain. It came up to her knees and was incredibly unpleasant – didn't people normally wear special suits when they went caving?

Rose stepped out of the way as Martha dropped down from above. The light was coming from Emmett's vortex manipulator, which apparently _did_ have more special features than he was letting on. The screen glowed brightly and illuminated what appeared to be a complex cave system, certainly larger than it appeared from outside. A good place to hide an artefact from Viking raiders. Rose and Martha both took out their phones and turned on the torches. Any lurking wolves would probably have left when the cave began to fill with water.

"This water isn't good," said Emmett, "Water is what channels the ghosts, makes them stronger."

"It is?" Rose asked him.

"Itrux explained to me," he said, "That's why she lives in the bog."

"With her creepy bone charms," Martha muttered.

"I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," quoted Emmett, beginning to wade through the water to progress through the cave. They followed him and the ripples he made in the muck. "I guess whatever century you hail from still isn't advanced enough to account for the Zuar." Martha scowled in response to that. "They make a solemn vow to help any and all species and people they come across."

"Except Time Lords," said Rose.

"Well – there's a lot of history behind that," said Emmett, "The Zuar were under siege by the Sontarans – you know the-?"

"Yes," said Martha.

"They hate medicine, being a medic is an insulting demotion, preventing honourable deaths on the battlefield. Even more they hated the Zuar using their superior medicine to heel the Rutans who asked them for help. The Sontarans aimed to eradicate the Zuar, and the Time Lords did nothing to help when the Zuar begged them, because of their non-interference policy. Well, that's not completely true, I heard that one renegade Time Lord abandoned Gallifrey's isolationism and went to stop the Sontarans."

"Which one?" asked Martha.

"The Doctor. I suppose he couldn't let _more_ doctors die. It's because of him that the Zuar aren't extinct." Rose smiled to herself when she heard that. Of course the Doctor had more honour than to just ignore the Zuar when they were in need. Everyone could trust the Doctor. "Do you know him?"

"Just the stories," Rose lied.

"I'd like to meet him someday," said Emmett. His wish was almost going to be granted – Jenny was the next best thing compared to her father.

The water sloshed around them as they progressed, the ceiling covered in stalactites and getting lower as the passage narrowed. Soon enough it was too difficult to try and talk, as they were all focusing so intently on walking, sideways, down the tunnel, very awkwardly having to duck and dodge the precarious rock formations. Rose had never been a fan of caving. She had gone caving on a school trip once, a lifetime ago, and had got stuck while crawling on her belly through a small slit she thought was going to collapse and crush her at any moment. She hadn't really been stuck, just unable to move from fear, though it had never quite evolved into claustrophobia. The memory was returning now, however, and left her feeling unpleasant. That, coupled with the threat of zombies, flooding and ghosts, was making her itch to escape the dank cave.

"I once dated someone who went spelunking as a hobby," Martha said. Already, this was a superior anecdote to Rose's, though Rose had not shared hers. "Long time ago, when I was getting my degree. Made me do it once, it was a nightmare – I didn't know how long we'd be in there because he didn't say. Anyway, long story short, I ended up peeing myself."

"You _what_!?"

"Okay, when you've been neck deep in water in a cave for four hours desperate for the loo the whole time, you really stop caring about whether you pee yourself or not."

"Can't believe you're having a baby."

"Oi!" Martha splashed water at her like they were children in a swimming pool.

"Hey!" Rose exclaimed, "I'll have you for that." And then she splashed Martha in return, only, she employed a great deal of her superhuman strength, creating a verifiable miniature tidal wave which crashed down over Martha. In the dim light of her phone, Rose saw her glare.

"Are you two fighting?" Emmett asked from Rose's other side. Rose laughed. Martha spat out some water.

"Your face."

"It's not funny."

"It's great."

"It's not!" said Martha, but she was beginning to smile.

"Just get revenge on me later when we're out of this cave."

"Oh, you know I'll get revenge, mark my words…" Rose turned to continue and was faced by a judgemental expression from Emmett in the light of the phones and the wristband.

"Are you done?"

"Yes, thanks." He shook his head dismissively and continued. The tunnel they had been sandwiched inside steadily began to widen again, much to Rose's relief who had become increasingly worried that they would wind up in a dead end, maybe even stuck forever. An entirely irrational fear, of course, because she could teleport and so could Emmett's vortex manipulator, and she could phone her fiancé and have him just come and get them and worry about erasing Emmett's fragile memories later on.

The tiny gap opened its mouth to what could be described as a room by someone being liberal with their words, in a vague shape somewhat similar to a circle. It was not so large, and the ceiling stayed low and oddly threatening with the stalactites, but Rose felt more able to breathe. The problem was that it was her feared dead end; she could see no way forward. No obvious way, at least.

For a brief few seconds it looked like they were going to have to turn back and continue to trawl the woods, until Emmett DeLacey in all of his impeccable, Time Agent wisdom stepped out into the room with his confidence overflowing just a trickle, and was swallowed up by the water. It happened so quickly Rose didn't understand what had happened right away, almost like he had vanished.

"Oh my god!" Martha exclaimed, splashing forwards to his aid. But Rose held her back as bubbles appeared on the surface and then, panting and heaving, Emmett burst through the surface, floundering, unprepared for the fact he had to swim. He got close enough to Rose and Martha – who did not want to proceed because they didn't know where the floor of the cave disappeared into a chasm – that they could drag him back to his feet.

"It's deep in there," he coughed.

"Did you have a nice dip?" Rose asked. He continued to cough. "So, we're going back, then?"

"Going back?" he questioned.

"Well… it's a dead end. Is it… not a dead end?" _Please don't tell me I have to swim, please don't tell me I have to swim_ , she thought to herself relentlessly.

"Rose, look," said Martha, pointing into the water. Emmett stepped away and turned to face the water himself and saw what they saw.

A vibrant blue light had appeared in the pool, which steadily formed the image of a glowing, pale face in the disturbed surface: a ghost. Itrux was right about them being stronger in the water, especially during the rain in the middle of a lightning storm. The face vanished and only a blueish orb was left, an orb which descended like a bathysphere into the water, illuminating the deep pit Emmett had fallen into. And also illuminating a wide passage which it floated in front of.

"That's the way we have to go," said Emmett, nodding at the water.

"You're kidding me," said Rose, "I'm not a strong swimmer. And Martha's pregnant. Pregnant people can't swim."

"You just made that up, there's nothing wrong with swimming when you're barely a month gone," Martha told her sharply. "Look, let's just… get it over with."

"…But it's cold," Rose mumbled. Emmett didn't care to listen to them, he just dove right in. Very impressive, considering he was wearing chainmail and carrying a sword. Martha looked at her expectantly. "You go first, so I can check you get there okay and aren't left behind." Martha raised her eyebrows. "What? You're _pregnant_ with my godchild."

"It's not your – fine, just to get away from you, I'll go next." She took a deep breath and descended into the water in pursuit of Emmett, and Rose watched from above until Martha – who actually seemed to be a good swimming – was almost through the narrow hole in the underwater wall. Then she herself followed, thinking about how useful it would be to have brought Mickey the water-breather along with them, but finding it not quite as difficult as she thought.

Yes, having to try and see where she was going through gallons of dirty cave-water was not remotely pleasant, _but_ at least if she was swimming she could use her superstrength, which meant she could move much faster and easier than either of the other two. She followed Martha and the strange orb came with them, lighting up the way now that Rose was sure her phone and Martha's were both defunct. She could repair them later via her 'timey-wimey powers' (as Ten would say), but not in the presence of Emmett.

Holding her breath, she pulled herself through the circular hole, which rested at the base of the pit now flooded with the rain, and followed Martha until the floor began to rise to the point that she was crawling out of the freezing water and gasping for air. Martha helped her to her feet.

"See? Wasn't too bad." The ghost, still not in a human form, hung in the air above them, but now it really did seem like the end of the line. The phantom hovered above a corpse, slumped against the wall with dead skin and rotten eyes. Emmett, hands on his hips, stood in front of it. Rose pushed her wet hair out of her eyes, shivering and staying as close to Martha (who was giving off a considerable amount of heat) as she could.

"What?" Rose asked him.

"It's, uh, holding something," he said, pointing, "See?" Rose squinted and saw something silver and shiny with, unmistakably, a blinking, electronic light.

"That must be what we're looking for," said Martha, "If the ghost showed us it."

"Yeah."

"Are you going to grab it?"

"Well… what if that corpse is… you know. _A zombie_."

"You've got your sword," Rose reminded him, at which point he sighed and drew his unusual, purple sword, making to step towards the body.

As Emmett approached steadily, holding the sword aloft and ready to strike in one hand while preparing to make a grab for the device with the other, the blue spectre vanished without warning. They were left with no source of light, Emmett's vortex manipulator now switched off and both Rose and Martha's phones almost certainly broken. And then, horrifyingly, they heard a dull groan in the darkness.

"Uh-oh," said Emmett.

"Was that-?" Martha began. They could hear movement.

"Crap, _crap_ – I can't get the wrist-strap to work."

"My phone's broken," said Rose, fumbling with it after managing to get it out of her pocket blindly. It did not come on.

"Mine too," said Martha. The groaning grew louder and Rose stepped backwards until she was walking into the water again. "Rose-" Martha began.

"It's too dangerous," Rose warned.

"Us dying is also dangerous!" she protested.

"If you two can do something I'd really appreciate if – SHIT!" Emmett's shout of panic was Martha's cue to produce fire from her skin on both her hands, lighting up the room and revealing that Emmett was being pounced upon by a hungry zombie. His sword clattered to the floor and slid towards the water as he struggled to use both his hands to try and push the monster away.

Rose wasn't expecting the moment when the zombie's leg inexplicably exploded, which was almost certainly Martha's accidental doing, sending out a wave of bone fragments, congealed blood and viscera towards them, kicking up quite the stench. With one leg gone it fell to the floor, clinging to Emmett and changing its attention from his head and neck to trying to tear through the chainmail and rip out his guts.

In a horrific moment, Rose saw it happen in the back of her mind along with a migraine-like pain: if she did not do something in that moment, the zombie was going to rip Emmett apart, feast on his intestines like spaghetti and use his rib cage as toothpicks. It was with this in mind that she ran for the fiend, swinging her hand in a devastating punch. Her knuckles collided with its skull with as much strength as she could muster, which was a _considerable_ amount of strength. Her fist absolutely pulverised the head of the zombie, and the momentum took her crashing into the cave wall and punching a large hole in that, too. She hoped it wouldn't cause a cave-in.

Headless and legless, the zombie body continued to writhe on the stone before them, until Martha finally summoned the strength to blast a handful of flames at it. The rags and leather it was wearing caught fire instantly, and made the smell even worse.

"How did you do that!?" Emmett stared at them as he went to retrieve his sword first, device second.

"Because… we're mutants," Rose lied eventually, looking at her bloody hand. Well, it wasn't really a lie, she supposed.

"Like X-Men," Martha added quickly, "Genetic virus, gives us… abilities."

"…That makes sense," he nodded, "Going by your clothes and phones I'd say you're Twenty-First Century, so you're Manifests?" He did know his history, even if he didn't know how to use a sword.

"…Yep," said Rose, shaking her hand to get rid of the brain mulch stuck to her skin. As long as they didn't mention that they knew the Doctor or that she had time manipulation abilities, she wasn't getting alarm bells from the time vortex.

"We need to go," said Martha, eyeing the burning body, "It's going to fill with smoke in here."

"Okay. Just let me…" Before the flames completely overcame the cadaver, Emmett stooped down and hacked off a few of the fingers from one hand. They both stared at him. "It's for Itrux. If she can make a charm and talk to the ghost, we can find out exactly what happened with this device."

"Great," said Rose, "Then let's hurry up and get out of here."


	177. Þæt Mānfolni

_Þæt Mānfolni_

 _Rose_

"I'd really rather not eat it, to be honest."

"You said you wanted my help…"

"Yeah, but…" Martha picked the anomalous object out of Itrux's long, green fingers, a circular something-or-other coated with a slimy substance. It did not look appetising. "I'm just confused about what it is."

"A short-range scanner," Itrux exclaimed.

"Why's it all gooey?" Rose asked. She and Emmett DeLacey lurked in the corner, observing and trying to stay out of Itrux's way, Emmett examining the severed hand he had stolen from the corpse (it smelled, and Rose kept trying to edge away from it.)

"It's glue," said Itrux, "It will stick to the inside of the digestive tract for the duration of the pregnancy, then the glue will lose its durability and it can be passed naturally."

"Can't you scan me from the outside?" Martha asked, still examining it. The glue was beginning to drip.

"This is the best method," Itrux leant close to Martha to implore her, "Trust me." Martha looked as though she was about to bite the bullet and swallow the unusual object, but at the last second her eyes flickered from holding Itrux's white, glowing gaze to meeting Rose's, across the room.

"What do you think?"

"I…" Rose was surprised, " _You're_ the doctor." But that wasn't good enough, Martha wanted her to genuinely weigh-in. And, she realised shortly, it was her duty as potential, maybe godmother to do so. If that role was going to be hers then she had to show she was capable of it. "You should eat it. I trust her, and I trust that she knows she doesn't want either of us as her enemy, and… you need to put your mind at rest. Worrying so much can't be good for the _embryo_." She emphasised her use of Martha's preferred term for her unborn child. Martha nodded and looked at the object resting in the palm of her hand, then she threw caution to the wind and ate it. Dry swallowing the thing made her cough.

"What now?" Martha asked.

"We have to wait. Ten, fifteen minutes. Oh, but you should avoid consuming anything with too much sugar."

"For how long?"

"Until the baby is born," said Itrux.

"How much is too much, in your opinion? I don't think I have _that_ much sugar," Martha said.

"You have Coco Pops every morning," Rose pointed out.

"Well, I'll… stop eating Coco Pops. For nine months. Eight months, even."

"It can damage the consistency of the glue, that's all," Itrux explained, leaving Martha's side for the time being, Martha remaining perched on the edge of the one bed in the small spaceship, "Could affect the legitimacy of the scan results if it doesn't attach properly, make you worry unnecessarily. I'm sure I have a specified dietary plan for a human of your age and stature in my records. Now, what of this artifact?" She picked up the mysterious device from her desk of other trinkets and materials where it lay. It was very small, silver, had a blinking light, could fit in the palm of Rose's hand. No larger than a tennis ball. Certainly though, it didn't belong in the period.

"I think it's some kind of war machine," Emmett said. Rose thought the Doctor might know what it was, but she couldn't mention the Doctor in Emmett's company.

"Could always be medicine gone wrong," said Rose, "You remember I said we have an undead friend who shoots lightning and can't survive without absorbing electricity after an encounter with _your_ lost technology."

"Your friend…" Itrux began, setting the device back down, "Does she have a connection to spirits?"

"You could say that," said Martha, "They appear to her, drain her of energy."

"Interesting… I may be able to help. It would be against normal Zuarian rules, but Zuarian technology being misused in this way means we should go to extra lengths to support the victim." Itrux began rummaging around in a large drawer, in a spaceship full to the brim with drawers and boxes and containers, and from within she produced a lantern much like the one she had been carrying when they had met, only adorned slightly differently. "I'm afraid I can't stop them from appearing to her, but this should calm them when they do and stop it from being so damaging. She should be able to make it work, if she's so imbued with Zuarian energy." She held the alien lamp out to Rose.

"Well, thanks," said Rose, surprised, taking it, "I'm sure Esther will appreciate it." It was not presently glowing the characteristic shade of mint-green but was very interesting to look at now she had the chance to examine it closer. While it was silver in colour, Rose thought the alloy was unknown and had a strange, dark tint to it when it gleamed in the ship's interior lights. It was decorated carefully as well, crafted with the utmost care, and within it there was no visible light source. No candle wick, no bulb – it was very evident why people thought Itrux was a witch, with devices like this at her disposal.

"Now, then. Allow me to see this hand." Emmett gave her the blackened, rotting lump of flesh he had been carrying with him. Rose cringed away from it when it was held up, but Itrux was completely unfazed.

"Speaking of hands," Martha began, seemingly getting an idea about something as Itrux carried the severed thing over to one of her tables. After Rose saw her take out a very sharp and unusual knife, she looked away, not wanting to see whatever was going to happen next. "Say I know someone who had a severely broken thumb-"

"How severe?" asked Itrux.

Martha paused, strained to remember the details for a moment, "Right thumb, fracture in the proximal phalange and metacarpal, dislocated at the basilar joint. Dorsal dislocation. It was reset and put in a cast, but she's reckless, keeps hurting it more. And I've told her off for it a _lot_. A different doctor recommended we break it and reset it again, but she said she'd rather have it all deformed than go through that. And she's not, uh, completely human. Painkillers don't have nearly the same effect."

"If she won't let you reset it, put it back in a cast until she either learns to be careful or changes her mind. Strenuous activity with a severely damaged thumb could permanently impaired it."

"I've seen it," said Rose, "It's definitely permanently impaired."

"You don't have any magical, bone-healing salve?" Martha asked hopefully.

"I am not magical."

"Make sure you put this cast on her before the wedding," Rose advised, "I'd rather not see it in the pictures. It's all yellow and bruised." Martha rolled her eyes. Against her better judgement Rose spared a glance for Itrux and saw her carving into the skin on one of the hand's fingers like she was filleting a fish. But then she saw something else, too, and Itrux dropped the knife. "Did it just move?" Itrux backed away from the crowded desk and Emmett reached for the hilt of his sword, all of them fixed upon that severed hand.

Rose Tyler had a flashback in that moment – not a time vortex induced glimmer of knowledge, but a genuine memory which struck her out of nowhere – of the Ninth Doctor, the day after they had met, being attacked by the plastic, detached hand of an Auton invader. Only this situation was worse, because it wasn't plastic, it was part of a dead person's waterlogged body. And it launched itself across the room like a jumping spider.

Itrux evaded it and it landed on the floor, Rose shrieking in horror, Martha lifting her feet onto the bed, Emmett holding up his sword. He slashed downwards with the sword but was, as he had said so himself multiple times, not very good with a sword; the hand scuttled out of the way of the blade (which was wedged into the metal floor from that point onwards) and underneath one of Itrux's cabinets. It was like having a big spider in the room, if the spider was gigantic and a zombie. They waited with baited breath for it to reappear.

"…What do we do?" Emmett asked in a whisper, tugging at the sword to try and free it from the metal.

"I don't think it can hear you," Martha told him, "It hasn't got any ears."

"It hasn't got a blood supply, either, I don't want to make any sweeping generalisations before I have all the facts," he hissed back, finally succeeding at freeing his sword. He wrenched it with far too much momentum, however, and it swung through the air. Rose had to jump out of the way.

"What are you doing!?" she exclaimed, "You could have killed me!"

Martha shouted in panic, "The hand!"

It had scurried back out of its hiding spot and was dancing around Rose's feet, horrifying and with scraggy bits of rotten meat hanging from its gnarled bones – it reminded her of when the Eleventh Doctor had had gangrene briefly*, or once when a mouse had found its way into she and Tentoo's home. She had been _terrified_ ; she hated mice.

"Oh my god, kill it! KILL IT!" she shouted. Emmett swung his sword and again missed horribly, knocking more of Itrux's possessions to the floor.

"I'm sorry!"

"It's right there!" Martha pointed at Rose's feet.

And Rose, in all her wisdom, stepped on it.

It was a grotesque moment. Stepping on a spider was bad enough, the thing would end up mangled and secreting funny-coloured blood, but a _human hand_? A _partially rotten human hand_? She heard it both crunch and squelch at the same time, and it created a dark, goopy spatter on the floor like biting into a cherry tomato, covering Rose's shoe – which had already been filthy and soaked – with dead-person-mulch. The bones were crushed by the force she employed to destroy the thing; she doubted Itrux would be making a new charm out of the pulp she could scrape up from the floor.

"…Sorry," she said eventually, lifting her foot away. And yet one finger remained intact, just missing Rose's sole, and as soon as the shoe was moved it began to try and drag itself away like a wounded slug. "What the f-"

"Give me that thing," Martha implored Itrux, indicating the odd, blinking device they had recovered from the flooded cave. Itrux passed it over, panicking just as much as the rest of them were by this hand which refused to die, and Martha took the object and clamped her palms around it.

For a brief few seconds, Martha exuded an extreme heat, and used this to melt down and destroy the device, dropping it onto the floor as it dripped molten metal, soon to be fused to the base of the ship like a rock formation made from overflowing lava. _Finally_ , the hand stopped twitching.

"…Do you think that means all the other zombies are dead, too?" Rose asked. Nobody answered. Emmett held out his sword at the finger and nudged it slightly, but it did nothing now.

"Now we have no way to find out what the object was," Emmett pointed out, nodding at the metal mess on the floor in front of Martha.

"Maybe that's for the best," Martha said, "Anything that can reanimate the dead and create zombies is too powerful for _anybody_ to control." Rose suspected that was a minor dig at her for possessing ultimate control over life, death, and existence itself. _Honestly_ , she thought, _you bring Captain Jack back to life for all eternity one time and nobody lets you forget it_. What did a girl have to do to prove she wasn't going to be reckless with the power afforded to her by the Bad Wolf?

"I will go to see to the spirits," Itrux announced, drifting in that spectral way of hers towards the ladder back to the hut above. Rose examined the bottom of her shoe as Itrux left, cringing as the sludge dripped from the rubber onto the floor in front of her.

"Stupid sword," Emmett complained, "I asked for a mace, you know. Blindly hitting things I can do, but precision? With a sword? Just because I'm a marksman doesn't mean I can hack and slash with any real proficiency. I'm getting rid of her as soon as I go back to the Agency."

" _Her_?" Rose questioned. He frowned at her.

" _You_ were the one who told me to name it Jenny."

"So, your sword… it's called Jenny?"

He shrugged, "I guess. It's a cute name. Did you get it from someone?"

"No, no," Rose lied, "But, uh, since we helped you today, and all… I've always wanted to learn how to swordfight."

"Have you?" Martha asked incredulously.

"Yes," Rose told her through gritted teeth, "I'm always telling you about that."

"Right, yeah," Martha, perplexed but no longer caring about deducing Rose's behaviour, "Constantly."

"Fine," he sighed, putting the sword back in its hilt and then lifting the strap from around his shoulders, handing the whole thing to Rose. Martha looked at her _very_ disapprovingly.

"What? I'm not gonna stab anyone with it."

"You'd better not, because _I'll_ have to sew them up again," Martha warned her. Rose shook her head and kept a tight hold on Jenny the Sword.

Emmett's vortex manipulator (which hadn't suffered quite as badly as Rose and Martha's phones had after being submerged in cave-water) beeped and he lifted it up to examine. Rose saw writing appear on its screen.

"Does that thing get text messages, too?" she asked.

Emmett didn't answer that question, but related what the message said, "They're letting me choose my next assignment."

"What are the choices?" Martha asked.

"Malfunctioning prosthetics and a dangerous plague in the 201st Century, or dismantle a suspected smuggling ring on Tungtrun in the Sixty-First Century. Well, considering Tungtrun is a desolate ice planet-"

"You should go there," Rose said as Emmett was going to inform his bosses at the Time Agency of his plans to deal with the prosthetic situation.

"To _Tungtrun_? Why?" he asked.

"Well – malfunctioning prosthetics and a plague? You've just been dealing with a rogue hand and some zombies. It'd get a bit boring, don't you think?" Rose said, "Should do something else. Smuggling ring. Might be able to get your hands on something a bit cooler than this sword." Emmett paused and thought about that.

"You know what? I'm sure the smuggling will be wrapped up quickly enough that I can just deal with the prosthetic thing afterwards," he shrugged, then commented wryly, "I'm trusting you on this Tungtrun thing."

"Yeah," said Rose, feeling hollow, "Yeah…" He was going to die on Tungtrun.

A noise from above, and Itrux was returning, carrying her own lamp, which Rose now realised was mug larger and more ornate than the spare one she had been given for Esther. Though, she couldn't rightly expect Itrux to just give up her main lamp, considering giving away the lamps in the first place was – as she had said – against usual Zuarian protocol. Rose had collected a fair few trinkets on her day out, she realised. And had meddled in more than a few lives. She now wondered if she had been brought there by the time vortex to ease Martha's mind about the baby, or to ensure that Emmett DeLacey was sent to his doom in order to play his vital role in Jenny's life.

"The ghosts are passing on. Peacefully. Destroying the device worked. I am in your debt," Itrux said to Martha mostly, "Enough time should have passed for the scan to work."

"God, I almost forgot," Martha said. Rose had forgotten, too. Itrux received a gadget, a small circular disc, and held this out to Martha. She took it. "What's this?"

"The surface is a button." Martha pressed it and there was a tiny click, at which point an image appeared, a hologram projected out of the surface of the disc. It was a hologram of a small blob, very small, so minuscule in fact that Rose had to step closer (nearly slipping on the shoe-slime) to get a proper look at it.

"Oh my god," Martha stared at it, "Is that…?"

"Looks like a popcorn kernel," Rose announced, squinting at it.

"It's the baby," Martha was awestruck.

"An adorable popcorn kernel."

"It's a live image," Itrux explained, "You'll be able to watch it grow. And the device won't interfere with your regular ultrasounds and scans. But, please, take something else." She handed Martha yet another odd device. "Your century's doctors-"

"I am a doctor from my century," Martha reminded her.

"It's a pager, you would call it. To summon me. I am desperately interested in what this child will become, and the best suited to help." Martha clicked the button again and the hologram of the tiny, undeveloped embryo disappeared.

"Thanks," Martha said, somewhat overwhelmed, "You can bet you'll hear from me again."

"You helped me, so I shall help you; I never break my word."

* _chapter 315_


	178. Þa Dohtor Tīma

**AN: Fun fact you guys may have forgotten, it was actually Martha who nicknamed their living room "Nerve Centre" originally.**

 _Þa Dohtor Tīma_

 _Rose_

"Thank god, your dad said you'd be in here… wait, what's going on?"

Rose had just walked into the TARDIS garage, where the Eleventh Doctor had informed her Jenny was most likely to be, and saw Jenny surrounded by large boxes of belongings. She looked up, surprised to see Rose searching for her, her wounded hand still as unpleasant as Rose remembered it and now with an additional injury to boot – a black eye. How had _that_ happened? Did Rose even want to know?

"I'm just putting some things on the ship," Jenny explained, perusing what looked like a photo album.

"Well, why?" Rose asked. Jenny was distracted by the picture she had spotted, smiling vacantly. "Jenny."

"Hmm?"

"Why are you putting stuff on your ship?" The bulbous flying saucer hovered silently in the room between them, reflecting a distorted but spotless, shining picture of them both. Rose was still carrying the sword and magic lamp.

"Oh, uh… I'm moving," she after some hesitation, glancing back at the photo album again, "To the village."

"You're…? You're leaving the TARDIS?" Rose couldn't believe it. Jenny, who had just reconciled with her father after two centuries, had just begun to have the life she had dreamed of travelling endlessly through time and space, Jenny whose future Rose had just assured by doing something cruel and unpleasant, was leaving the TARDIS? Throwing everything away?

"Yeah, well, you know. I keep getting injured and roped into all these schemes, and it's not so easy being around Jack and Ianto, honestly. That's not a good situation. Plus… well… you know," her eyes strayed to the picture again. Rose's curiosity got the better of her and she walked over to see what it was; a photograph of her and a young woman Rose didn't recognise.

"Who's that?" Jenny and the stranger looked very happy in the picture laughing.

"Astrid," Jenny said, "First person I was dating I moved in with. Long time ago, in Berlin."

"You're moving in with Clara, then?"

"No, she doesn't want to, I'm going to live on the ship. It's bigger on the inside," she added wryly. Rose noticed the black eye really was quite nasty, even partially swollen. Jenny cleared her throat and closed the photo album on the picture of Astrid, leaving Rose waiting for an opening to bring up another figure from Jenny's past. "But, _y'know_. I don't think I should be ashamed to admit that I want to be closer to the girlf."

"To the…?"

"Girlf."

"Which is?"

"Girlfriend. You know what, I called her that the other day and she told me very expressly never to do it again because it sounded ridiculous, and now I'm saying it to somebody else I see what she means," Jenny said, more to herself than to Rose, who had never heard anybody say the word 'girlf' in reference to anything before.

"Isn't the TARDIS sort of, like, everything you've ever dreamed about?" Rose decided to just ask the question outright instead of guessing about Jenny's feelings. Lucky Jenny was in a good mood, Rose had been expecting her to be cold and and indifferent. But then, everybody did say that Jenny was like living sunshine.

"I don't care about the TARDIS, I care about my father," she shrugged, "I'll still see him all the time. He can't get out of fatherhood _that_ easily, now we're finally friends. _Anyway_ , what's up? No offence, but you know you're filthy?" Rose had forgotten. She had trailed mud, water, and other substances onto the ship with her. "What's that weird mud on your shoe?"

"It's not mud, it's mashed up pieces of some dead person's hand," Rose explained, nonplussed, burdened with the purple space-sword and magic lamp. "That's not important."

"If you say so."

"I only wanted to talk to you about something." Jenny crossed her arms and raised her eyebrows, waiting for Rose to explain. "I met Emmett today. Emmett DeLacey."

"You _what_?" Jenny's arms dropped immediately and she wore an expression of shock and sadness, "Where? When?"

"In the Eleventh Century. He was sent there to sort out this problem."

"What problem?"

"Zombie Vikings – but that's really not relevant, it's just… I'm sorry. The time vortex showed me his future. How he has to meet you, how he has to die. And I told him he should go to Tungtrun. To his death. I had to do it, for the timeline, so that everything would happen to you like it's supposed to," Rose explained. She hadn't a clue how Jenny would react, she was a very tricky person to read and often behaved unusually.

But Jenny's usual response to many things was to remain silent, stoically calm, and it was this side of her which Rose saw again. She did not say a word, only turned and lifted one box from where it stood on top of another and opened the cardboard flaps of this one on the bottom. After a few moments of rifling, she pulled out an urn; silver, simple, tightly sealed, Jenny held it out to Rose to show her.

"This is Emmett," she 'introduced', "When I moved to America I took his name. Now when people hear 'DeLacey' they think of… mobsters, and moonshine, not him, who promised to save me from Tungtrun… so, was he as cute as I remember him being?"

"Honestly, he was hot," Rose admitted. Jenny laughed a little.

"Just wanted to check my memory wasn't playing tricks on me." She held up the urn and examined it for a few moments longer, before resolving that she would put it back in the box until she could find somewhere to put it on her ship. "I had some things to ask you, anyway, so-"

"Oh, me too," said Rose. There was a pause.

"Well, you go first, then."

"I just wasn't done talking about Emmett, that's all, he gave me something," and then she held out the sword.

"He… gave you a sword?" Jenny looked at it suspiciously.

"I asked him to give me it, he was just going to get rid of it otherwise because he doesn't know how to use a sword at all," Rose shrugged, "And I thought I know somebody who might want it. It's purple, it's made from an asteroid. Oh, and… at my suggestion… he named it Jenny." Again, Jenny was shocked, and took the sword from Rose, drawing it out of its hilt. No longer in the night-time rainstorm of the Dark Ages, the sword's colour was able to shine much more vibrantly.

"You're just going to give me a sword?"

"Well, _I_ don't want it. And _he_ didn't want it. Besides, it's named after you, sort of. You've got to have it. It's like, meant to be, or something," Rose shrugged.

"Have you seen it?"

"I don't need to have seen into the future to know that you're supposed to have this sword," Rose said, "Take it. In exchange for you being nice to the Tenth Doctor at his wedding in a few days. And I know, you don't like him, but it's just for one day and it would mean a lot to me. Him. Us." Truthfully, this was a spur-of-the-moment ultimatum, she had originally been planning to just give Jenny the sword regardless. But using it to bargain that she be well-behaved and polite at the wedding would give Rose some peace of mind (she'd been quietly worried that Jenny might publicly start shouting at her father for his shortcomings, or worse, not show up at all.)

"I… okay," she seemed resentful of making this promise, but made it anyway. "I'll be good. Do I have a plus one, also?"

"Yes, Clara can come."

"Really!?" Jenny beamed, apparently under the impression that Rose was going to ban Clara Ravenwood from accompanying her. "But, um, she might not be able to go to the service, is that alright? You won't be, like, offended? I'm sure she wishes you the best, it's just, she's not so great with religion."

"It's really not going to be a religious ceremony."

"Still. Best to err on the side of caution, right?"

"Honestly, it's fine. I want it to be a happy day, for everyone, not just me," Rose said, "You don't have any song requests, do you? I'm taking song requests from everybody. Or karaoke."

Jenny barely had to think before she answered, "The Beatles. _All My Loving_. Always cheers me up, nostalgic. I was also meaning to ask, though, if you have a wedding cake yet."

"No, actually. Why?"

"Well, it's just – in the village, I got a job, in a bakery, and I was talking to dad and I thought maybe, if you needed one, I might like to bake it. Whatever you want. Just to get me back into the swing of things before I start in a week. But obviously, it's fine if not, and-"

"Of course you can bake it. The Doctor wants it to look like a TARDIS. I said I don't care what it looks like as long as it's not a fruit cake – I _hate_ fruit cake, don't understand why it's 'traditional.' I said, if I'm marrying an alien I'm having a chocolate cake, end of story."

"I can do a TARDIS, it's just a big rectangle. And chocolate it is." Jenny beamed.

"I just need _one more_ favour." Rose held up the magic lamp. "We were given this lantern by a Zuar – you know, as in the species who built the technology that brought Esther back from the dead. The Zuar said that this lamp should help her when she sees ghosts, if she sees ghosts – Martha said she does, I have no idea. It's supposed to calm them down, or ward them off, I don't really know. Can you pass it along? You see Esther all the time."

"Sure," said Jenny without question, setting the sword down on top of her boxes and taking the lamp from Rose as well, "How does it work?"

"Apparently Esther will be able to figure that out for herself," Rose shrugged.

"Well, I'm sure she'll be grateful if it works."

"And Martha's looking for you. She said to go find her later on this evening. It's about your thumb."

"I'm not letting anybody break it again," Jenny warned, "I don't care how many presents you give me-"

"She wants to put a cast back on it until it's _completely_ healed, she thinks that's for the best, and if you don't go find her she'll come and find _you_ , and you _really_ don't want to make her angry at the moment," Rose said, not wanting to spill the beans about Martha Jones' imminent bundle of joy. But Jenny wasn't particularly intuitive, so Rose didn't worry.

"I'd rather not. She hasn't seen my black eye yet, she'll give me an earful. But how is it _my_ fault if Clara's ex-girlfriend likes to jump out from around corners and punch me in the face?"

"Why did she do _that_?"

"For a joke. She's sadistic."

"Just go see Martha. And make sure you have that eye covered up for the wedding photos, alright? Get some concealer."

" _Fine_."

* * *

 _Martha_

Upon returning to the TARDIS, Rose had done as-promised and repaired her broken phone, restoring it to an earlier point in its own chronology. And because of that Martha, alone in the console room, was subjected to an almighty barrage of previously undelivered text messages from her worried husband. She had left him a note, of course, but it had been a very vague and non-specific note which couldn't have comforted him an awful lot. Not wanting to be questioned about why she was covered head-to-foot in mud and dirt, she took the long way around to get back to the Bedroom Circle where she assumed Mickey would be, skimming the paranoid texts as she did. Rose had already left her and teleported away to try and find Jenny, who was _hopefully_ going to come and find Martha later on so that she could have her cast reapplied.

Checking carefully by peering around the corner that the Bedroom Circle was empty, she breathed a sigh of relief and approached her own bedroom door, opening slowly so that she didn't startle Mickey. He was sitting cross-legged on their bed with a laptop on his knees, headphones in, serious expression on his face. Whatever he was browsing must be important. He took out the headphones as soon as he saw her though, and practically _leapt_ off the bed. He had been about to hug her, like she'd been gone for weeks, but thought better of it when he noticed how dirty she was.

"Are you okay!?" he exclaimed, reaching over her head to close the door behind her so that they had some privacy.

"I'm fine, I'm just muddy."

" _Very_ muddy, where did you go?"

"Random forest in the Dark Ages during a rainstorm. Had to go swimming through a cave."

"A cave!?"

"It's not that bad," she told him, sure that if he had the chance he would cover her in bubble-wrap and wait on her hand and foot for the next eight months. Still, she made up her mind not to tell him about the zombies. He might faint. "None of that is important, I have to show you something…" she rummaged in the wet, dirty pocket of her jeans and found the disc she had been given by Itrux. "We met an alien doctor. But, more than that – a thousand-year-old alien doctor from a race only made up of doctors. They're like, the Time Lords of medicine. And she… ugh, basically I've been dying with worry ever since we found out about, you know."

"Have you? You didn't say anything."

"I knew how worried _you_ were, I didn't want to make it worse by adding _my_ anxieties to the mix. And there are a lot of them. I've been having Helix scan me every day, I can't sleep, I keep having bad dreams about everything that could possibly go wrong, because-"

"Don't sit on the bed," he said quickly when she had been about to do exactly that. "What? You're really dirty. You need to have a wash, desperately." She shook her head. "You should always tell me when you're worried, Martha, that's the point of being married."

"I know, it's just… overwhelming. I haven't been thinking clearly, it's just…" And Martha began to do the last thing she had expected to do: she began to cry. A combination of the lack of sleep, bad dreams, constant worries, very stressful day. Or perhaps just the one fear she had deep down. Mickey lost all his reservations about how muddy she was and did hug her then, and she wished she had talked to him more in the last week, about more than just cold, hard facts to do with money and jobs and living arrangements, because all of that was nothing compared to how she felt. "I'm just so scared something will go wrong… and I feel guilty because I'm supposed to be happy, because it's a _baby_ , but I'm not happy, I'm just terrified…"

"Find me a pregnant woman who _isn't_ terrified," he said.

"But does it make me a bad person? A bad mother?"

"What? No! No. Definitely not. You have more empathy than anyone I've ever met, you're going to be the best mum in the world. I promise, it's normal to be worried, you should know that. And I'll be right there to whole time, let me worry. Tell me everything you're upset about and then you can stay calm and I can be stressed, it'll be better that way. Let me show you what I was looking at when you came in," he let go of her, though she was still crying softly because everything just felt like it was too much and picked up the computer. She saw on the screen various house listings he had bookmarked. They did not own any property, just rented a flat in central London, and she was still intent on _not_ raising a child in central London, even if it _was_ where she and Mickey had both grown up.

"You want to buy a house?"

"Maybe, or rent, I don't know, but… we need to leave, I think. I think you'll feel better if we're not the TARDIS and we're properly preparing, and we can go to all the scans, the sonograms, get a nursery, other baby stuff-"

"Have you been researching?"

"Of course I've been researching! I'm gonna be a dad, I have to do research. I've found a lot of books, and – I had this idea. But you might hate it, so I haven't said anything…" he put the computer back down and fetched her a handful of tissues from their tissue box. She wiped the tears from her eyes and the snot from her nose, still feeling her heart racing with anxiety. But at least she had Mickey. Even if her worst fears came to fruition, she would _always_ have Mickey. "I was just _thinking_ that, well, we have savings. And we're going to stop alien hunting, that was your idea-"

"We're definitely not alien hunting anymore," she reiterated sternly.

"I _know_ , but _you're_ a doctor and I'm barely qualified to be a mechanic, and I haven't even done it for years – I don't want to go back to it. And with us being concerned about the same thing happening to our baby as what happened to River…"

"What are you saying?"

"What do you think of me being a stay-at-home dad?"

"Well, I…" her surprise at this suggestion managed to stop her tears, and she wandered over to lean on the wall, thinking. She hadn't even entertained the idea, assuming that they would both go back to work.

"I think it's a good idea. At least for the first few years. And you'd be able to support us. Not that I want to put all the financial responsibilities onto you – obviously if you think it would be too much strain; I wouldn't want you to be overworked or you wouldn't be able to spend as much time with the baby, but-"

"Let's go for it," she decided, "It solves a lot of problems. And you're right, I'm a doctor, and I could always… do specialist training, you know? There's a lot of money in specialising in infectious diseases or oncology, more than there is in emergency medicine. And it's less stressful than working in A&E."

"See? You're calming down already now we're talking about things. I always want you to talk to me, I don't care how much worse you think it'll make things, because it won't. It'll only make things better. What are you holding?" She had forgotten about Itrux's disc in her hands.

"It's a scanner," she told him, and then she clicked it down and held it in the palm of her hand. The same hologramatic image of a tiny shape, no bigger than a grain of rice, appeared in the air between them.

"What's that?"

"It's a live image. Of the baby." She let him take the disc as he stared in awe, as if he could actually make out the features of this tiny shapeless picture.

"I'm in love with it already."

Martha laughed. "There's, um, something else, too…"

"What?"

"I told Rose."

" _What_? I thought we were going to talk about it first before we tell anybody else?"

"I _know_ , but she was _there_ , and I thought the time vortex was going to tell her about it anyway because it tells her all kinds of things – like how Donna has apparently adopted Tentoo and is putting him up in one of her flats and it's some huge secret from Rose, but Rose has known about it the entire time. And, this might sound stupid, but I just _really_ wanted to talk to another girl. One who isn't in my family."

"What did Rose say, then?"

"She's so excited you'd think she was the one having the baby," Martha said. Mickey laughed.

"Really?"

"Yeah. Wouldn't stop asking me about it, convinced me to talk to the alien doctor who gave me this scanner. And I might have promised her I'd talk to you about her being the godmother."

" _Rose_? The _godmother_? I'm her ex-boyfriend."

"I said that, but she's been begging me _all day_. And we don't really have any other candidates."

"What about Gwen?"

"We already decided we'd ask Jack to be godfather-" It had been a very tough decision to choose between Jack and the Tenth Doctor, but ultimately they thought they owed more to Jack for bringing them together when they worked for Torchwood, and encouraging them, and him being the first person they told about the baby, "-I don't want _two_ people in Torchwood. Plus, Rose _is_ a time god. As well as probably my closest friend, somehow." Mickey remained sceptical. "She's probably going to pitch you on it the next time she sees you, so just wait until that happens and then tell me if you still think we should talk to Gwen."

"Mmm… _okay_. I'll think about it. If you're still so sure we have to have a Christening-"

"I told you, my mother will kill me if I have a baby and don't get it Christened. It's not worth making her angry over. Easier just to do it."

"You have to have a name before you can have a Christening," he reminded her, because he kept trying to convince her to talk about baby names even though she thought it was much too early. Also because she didn't have any ideas because she had been trying not to think about the whole thing. "And I still think-"

"I told you it's not being called Rita if it's a girl." Rita-Anne was Mickey's grandmother's name and he was vying for the opportunity to name the baby after her. "I'm putting my foot down."

"But-"

"No."

"Come on."

"Middle names. Maybe."

"…Do you feel a bit better?" he changed the subject to something other than the pointless name debate.

"Maybe. A little." She thought that as soon as they stopped talking all of her worries would come flooding back regardless of anything else.

"Better enough to go and have a shower and get changed so you don't stink? Because you _stink_. Think of the conditions you're forcing our unborn child to live in-"

"Oi!" she protested, but he just laughed.

"Go! Have a wash. Please. For my sake. _Please_. I'll make you a cup of tea. I'll even come into the bathroom and carry on talking to you if you need it."

"That's the worst excuse I've ever heard for wanting to stare at a naked woman."

"What!? I'm your concerned husband – why would I want to see _you_ naked?" he challenged jokingly, switching off the disc and putting it down on the dressing table. She said nothing, only looked at him, reminding herself how lucky she was to have met Mickey Smith, how lucky it was that Rose had broken his heart so many years ago and run off with an alien.

"Thanks," Martha said eventually, "For everything. For being you."

"Luckily I'm always me, and I'm not going anywhere. Promise."


	179. She Must Be Out of Her Mind

**DAY 160**

 _She Must Be Out of Her Mind_

 _Adam_

"And _I_ remember _exactly_ what your daddy's first word was, you know, even though I was only nine. But I was the best nine-year-old babysitter any family could ask for, and your oldest uncle – well. I doubt he's ever changed the nappy of any of his _own_ kids, let alone a sibling. But do you want to know what he said? He said 'baby,' because we're a very self-aware family, and me and Fynny were _right there_. He was a whole year old though, so he's nowhere near as clever as you, and being clever also runs in the family." The baby giggled as Oswin fed him tiny morsels of baby-food, slimy, brightly-coloured paste. Future baby food was much more exciting than Twenty-First Century baby food, Adam Mitchell thought, which all looked like mashed up vegetables going by what he remembered from when Ellie was a baby fifteen years ago. The baby made a meaningless sound. "I know!" Oswin exclaimed like she understood him, "I think this synthetic goo looks tasty as well. I'd be eating eat if I was physically capable of eating. In fact, I grew up eating loads of goo-like stuff because I've always been terrible at cooking, I'm sure your dad remembers plenty about that."

"Speaking of things you're sure about," Adam interrupted this one-sided exchange, "Why do we have to have matching outfits to this wedding?"

"Because we're adorable, babe," she said, beaming, continuing to look at the baby and talk in her baby-voice while she talked to him.

"It's a wedding, not a prom," he said. He was sat at the table in Nerve Centre looking at the most expensive suits he could find on his phone. "Anyway, aren't you wearing black, like always? Because you're morbid?"

"No, Rose won't let me. I thought I'd wear red."

"But I don't look good in red, that's why I was going to get a blue suit."

"Yeah, but _I_ don't look good in _blue_. Well, obviously I look good all the time, but I look best in red."

"Which is why I don't see the point of colour-coordinating for somebody else's wedding," Adam sighed, still scrolling down the website at various blue suits. He was sure he couldn't pull off red, not even a dark red. Blue was the safest bet. Or grey. "What about grey?"

"Hmm…" Oswin thought, "See, I think you'd look totally hot in grey," she still appeared to be addressing the infant as she talked, "but _I_ can't exactly wear grey to a wedding. She told me off for suggesting black, so I don't think she'll let me go with grey."

"I think you're making it more complicated than it needs to be," Nios, the only other person in the room, interjected. Adam kept forgetting she was there despite her position sitting right at Oswin's side, while he was stuck with the baby between them, because she was attached to her phone, texting. Every so often she asked Oswin for help with what to say, and Oswin almost always told her she had to work it out for herself, unless Nios begged her especially well. Most of Oswin's attention was on the baby.

"I don't think you're one to talk about making things more complicated than they need to be," Oswin quipped, feeding the baby another spoon of goo, "Do you have a girlfriend yet?" Nios glared at her, a glare which struck fear into the heart of Adam Mitchell and made him worry dearly on behalf of his own girlfriend.

"What do you think of this message?" Nios held out her phone to Oswin, who was getting annoyed at Nios's constant uncertainties with her own texts.

"Tell her you want her to sit on your face."

"No!" Nios exclaimed, horrified, stealing her phone away so that Oswin could no longer see it. Oswin rolled her eyes. "I can't believe you'd say that in front of the baby."

"It's _fine_. You don't know what I'm talking about, do you, cutie?" she asked the baby with a wide smile, and he giggled in response. " _No_ , because you don't have a dirty mind, because you're a little angel, aren't you?" He continued to laugh and wave his arms happily, but in the process he knocked the jar of baby food out of Oswin's hands and it splattered across the tray at the front of the high chair. Oswin stared at the mess for a moment. "Wow! He's going to be an artist. I can see it already. Beautiful. Abstract. What do you think, babe?"

Adam peered over the baby's head to see the shapeless, green mess on the plastic tray. "I think genius of all kinds runs in your family, clearly. It speaks to me." Oswin smiled at him warmly, seemingly getting distracted from what the baby was doing for just a moment, until she realised he had started to push the food around the tray with his hands.

"No, no, no," she said, stopping him, then she asked Adam, "Could you hand me those wet wipes?" He put down his phone and handed her the wet wipes, which rested in a large bag on the table filled with necessary baby supplies from Oswin's sister-in-law, Juliet (seemingly the only person in Oswin's family who had an ordinary name.) "Now I'm _very_ sorry to have to get rid of your wonderful expressionist artwork, but unfortunately I think this might be a bit too radical for the art world to really comprehend at the moment."

"Why do you talk to it like it understands you?" Nios questioned sceptically. She was highly suspicious of the baby, and Adam thought she most likely wouldn't be there at all if she wasn't vying for Oswin's constant approval of her correspondence with Dr Cohen.

"First of all, Ni, he's a he. How would you like if we called _you_ 'it'?" she challenged, "And second of all, because it's good for language development. You have to talk to babies constantly to help them learn and make sure they don't feel lonely. You don't want to be lonely, do you?" she returned to cooing at the baby as she wiped the plastic down.

"Oh my god!" Nios exclaimed suddenly while Adam had still been perusing suits online. He looked up and saw her grab Oswin's arm, making Oswin jump. "She said do I want to come over."

"Do you want to cum over her, did you say?" Oswin asked faux-innocently, pretending she had misheard.

"To her flat," Nios reiterated, either ignoring Oswin's comment completely or just genuinely not hearing it over her excitement. "What should I say? What do you think it means?"

"It means she fancies you, idiot," Oswin shook her head.

"No, but…" Nios stopped talking, looking at Oswin like she was willing her to understand the inner-workings of her mind. But Adam thought Oswin hardly understood her own mind, let alone Nios's, and besides – she was distracted wiping the baby's hands clean and then lifting him out of the high chair to hold him and bounce him.

"But what?" Oswin asked, distracted. Nios said nothing. Oswin looked at her, " _What_?"

"I don't think she'll try to sleep with you," Adam said, making a blind guess at what could be bothering Nios so deeply that she couldn't even vocalise it. By some miracle, he was right on the nose, that was plain to see by her expression. The conversation could not continue, however, because they were at that point interrupted by Mickey and Martha walking into Nerve Centre having a hushed conversation.

When they saw they had company, they stopped, and when they saw that the company included an infant who – despite Oswin getting all of her appearance from Clara – eerily bore his aunt's large, brown eyes, they stared. Nios went back to paying attention to her phone, while Oswin and Adam were mutually perplexed by Mickey and Martha's reaction.

"Is that a baby?" Martha asked in shock.

"A baby!?" Oswin exclaimed, "Where!?" Martha glared at her.

"Where did you get that!? Whose is it?"

Oswin sighed, then addressed the baby in her arms, "Are you going to introduce yourself, or shall I?" The baby laughed and tried to play with Oswin's hair, which she was indifferent to. Adam kept suggesting she cut it, but it didn't bother her particularly. "Nalyt, this is Mickey and Martha, say hello," she lifted one of his hands and made him do a tiny wave while he babbled nonsensically, "And Mickey and Martha, this is Nalyt, my nephew, he's an incredible eight months old. I'm babysitting for Reker, my second-youngest brother. He's all grown up now, isn't he?" she added to Nalyt.

"…Don't take this the wrong way," Martha began, "But-"

"Why would they let me, a lunatic, babysit?" Oswin finished her sentence for her. Martha crossed her arms self-consciously.

"I wouldn't have put it _that_ harshly."

" _Basically_ , I'm a last resort," Oswin shrugged, "Well, sort of. They used to have Fyn do it but now Fyn's moved to Venus it's impossible. So, Fyn's on Venus, Reker's dad was busy, my youngest brother Jatt is, like, sixteen, Reker _hates_ my oldest brother Dret, and Zalur lives with the Spore Remnants on Eslilia. But Fyn actually recommended me, he was like, 'why don't you ask Oswin to babysit?' and luckily Reker has fond memories of me since I was a better mother to him than our actual mother. Besides, I'm obliged to give them half-hourly updates – they're watching a play their twin girls are in. Who are named after me, by the way, because not _all_ of my relatives hate me."

"Hey," Adam changed the subject and addressed Mickey and Martha, who were unusually enthralled by the baby, "Are you two wearing matching outfits to Rose's wedding?"

" _What_?" Mickey almost laughed, "No, mate."

"Yeah, that would be a bit weird."

"You see!?" he exclaimed triumphantly to Oswin, "I told you."

"Okay, _fine_ , I give in, have it your way, I guess we just won't win the award for best-dressed couple."

"I don't think there are gonna be any awards," Mickey said.

"A girl can dream," Oswin snapped at him. "I'm wearing dark red, then. Clara's wearing lavender or something, I don't want to match her. We're matching enough already."

"What colour should I wear?" Nios asked her.

"I thought you conscious synths are supposed to be able to think for yourselves?" Oswin quipped. Nios glared at her, but did not respond. Adam thought that if anybody else dared talk to Nios like that she certainly wouldn't let it go. "I don't know, honey. Wear blue to match your sexy eyes. Maybe _you_ should match outfits with Mitchell."

"Mitchell doesn't want to match outfits with anybody," Adam muttered, though he _was_ looking at blue suits again.

"Why don't you ask Dr Death what colour _she_ thinks you'd look bangable wearing? And you have to say, 'would I look bangable', because then you've got her thinking about banging you," Oswin said. Adam knew that normally she would use a much more crass word than 'bang', but she was self-censoring in the presence of the baby. A baby repeating the word 'bang' wouldn't really raise any alarm bells.

"Who's 'Dr Death'?" Mickey asked as he went to make some tea. Oswin raised her eyebrows at Nios, waiting to see if she would actually answer.

"Nobody," she mumbled. Oswin shook her head.

"She's just shy and embarrassed about her feelings," Oswin told the baby, "I bet _you_ wouldn't be too nervous to tell a girl how you feel about her, would you?" The baby laughed.

"I did tell her!" Nios protested.

"Then where's your second date?" Oswin questioned, "You've got to pull your finger out, and then you've got to stick your finger _in_ -" Undoubtedly, she had been about to say something vile an incredibly personal about Cohen, but did not manage to finish her thought (luckily), because without warning the baby broke into spontaneous tears, as was their habit. "Oh _no_ ," she was instantly absorbed in her nephew, "What's all this now?" she cooed. It didn't take more than a few seconds for Adam to realise why he was crying.

"I think he's done a poo," Adam said, "I can smell it."

"Oh, really?" Oswin actually smiled and lifted the crying baby, "Your mummy will be _so proud_ of you!" then she added offside to Mickey, Martha and Nios, solely because they were in that direction, "He's apparently been having trouble going recently and it's got them worried. Who wants to help me take him to the medibay to change him? Since I can't walk _and_ carry a baby _and_ the bag full of baby stuff Juliet gave me."

"We'll do it," Martha volunteered immediately, hardly waiting for Oswin to finish her sentence and motioning between herself and Mickey. Adam had never seen anybody so excited to change a baby's nappy before. He himself wasn't averse to it, but didn't want to make the baby too cold by lurking near him; his cryokinesis got more and more extreme as time went on.

"Both of you?" Oswin frowned.

"Yeah," Mickey nodded. He, too, was bizarrely enthusiastic. Adam watched them carefully, even Nios intrigued by their unusual demeanours. Still holding the crying child, Oswin then broke into a manic grin.

"I get it now," she announced, looking between Mickey and Martha.

"Get what?" Martha seemed alarmed. So did Mickey.

"You know what," Oswin boasted smugly, and going by their reactions it seemed like she certainly did. "It all makes sense... I have a message for you, from the Doctor. From Thirteen."

"Babe," Adam interjected, "Are you sure this is-" She only needed to look at him to make him stop talking, and Martha leant desperately close to Oswin (Nios uncomfortably in the middle trying to lean back to get out of the way).

"What message?" Martha hissed. She, too, looked manic, but in a different way to Oswin, who was unquestionably excited.

"She left us a note, with instructions about the future. Most of it's come true already. It's how I knew the Time Lords only had the flu."

"What did it say?" Martha persisted.

"You have to promise never to say anything about this to Clara, or Eleven, or Jenny, or anyone who'd tell them. If _I_ can keep a secret from Clara and Jenny, I'm sure you can. They can never know this message exists. And the same for you, metal mouth," she told Nios, "Not a word."

"Okay, whatever," Nios was indifferent.

"Yes, we promise," Martha said, in agony as Oswin kept her waiting, "What did Thirteen tell you?"

"She told me to tell you she _promises_ everything will be okay, and you don't need to worry about anything at all, and that I'd know when you need to hear that," Oswin said, "That's all. She's very cryptic."

"She promises?" Martha asked, all of a sudden close to tears.

"She underlined it a bunch of times, so yeah," Oswin shrugged, then repeated in a crude copy of the Doctor's accent, " _Tell Martha everything will be fine, more than fine, amazing_. Now, which one of you wants to carry the poopy baby? I'd rather have it be the person who doesn't shoot fireballs out of their hands." Mickey, though he was uncertain about what to do with a baby, lifted stinky Nalyt very awkwardly as he stood up. Oswin picked up her cane and Adam passed Martha the bag of baby supplies, then watched them disappear into the medibay with the kittens.

"What was all _that_ about?" Nios asked him as soon as the door had closed completely.

"Honestly, I don't know," he said.

"Well all the clues must be available if she knows what's going on."

"Oswin's a genius," he reminded her. She looked at him with a deadpan expression.

" _You're_ a genius."

"I'm just some computer nerd, I'm not good with people. Wait, though… you don't think…"

"Think what?"

Adam came and took Oswin's seat next to Nios and lowered his voice, "What if she's, I don't know, ill?"

"Ill?"

"She's been acting weird, and then getting so strange around a baby? What if she has, like, cancer?"

"…Why would seeing a baby upset her if she has cancer?"

"Because humans are like that, if they see something young they think about, like, the inevitability of their own mortality and how they're never going to be young again. You're synthetic, so you don't understand how pervasive the fear of death is," Adam explained. Nios still had her phone held tightly in her hand as though she would attack anyone who went near it, but at this remark she made a frown.

"Are you sure this isn't just you?"

"Don't you read loads of philosophy books?"

"I wouldn't say _loads_ … do you have any book recommendations?" He was taken aback.

" _Me_? No. I don't read books. Ask Clara, you know she's an English teacher."

"I forgot about that… do you really think she has cancer?"

"I don't think Clara has cancer." She glared at him, which he found very frightening. " _Oh_ – sorry, I wasn't… it was a mistake." She frowned again, like she didn't understand him. He felt like a specimen in a test tube.

Luckily, Adam was saved from further scrutiny by the Ninth Doctor entering and bellowing the latter half of an announcement he had begun to make before leaving the console room. Initially Adam assumed he was talking to somebody else, presumably River, the only person he ever talked to, but this wasn't true. He was on his own, shouting something, and looked thoroughly disappointed when he saw it was only Adam and Nios in Nerve Centre. Even the excitement of the baby had been lost.

"Oh," he said, deflating. "I was hoping for a better crowd. No offence. Well, some offence. Is there no one else here?"

"Oswin, Mickey and Martha are in the medibay with a baby," said Adam.

"A baby!? On my TARDIS? Where did it come from? It's not lost, is it? You know, stray babies find their way onto this ship more often than you'd think."

"It's Oswin's nephew, she's babysitting for a few hours today. They're changing his nappy."

"Really? Why aren't you helping? She's _your_ girlfriend, not Mickey and Martha's." Adam thought that Oswin would love to be Mickey and Martha's girlfriend, she would jump at the opportunity. Figuratively speaking. Obviously Oswin couldn't jump.

"They volunteered. Very quickly. And I don't think it's a good idea for me to pick up the baby, I'll get nervous that I might freeze it by accident, and being nervous will make me more likely to freeze it by accident."

"You're freezing your phone case right now," Nios pointed out. He was, there was a fine coating of frost forming around its edges. He put the phone back in his pocket and crossed his arms tightly.

"…I'm nervous."

"About what?"

"I feel like I'm being interrogated."

"Were you always like this?" Nine asked, squinting at Adam Mitchell like he was a puzzle. "What was it about you that made Rose so keen?"

" _Rose_?" Nios looked between Adam and the Doctor.

"She fancied him," said Nine. Nios couldn't believe it.

"Why is that so shocking?" he questioned, growing incredibly self-conscious and fidgeting, "Pretty girls like me." He did not sound convincing. "Oswin likes me." Oswin was _definitely_ pretty. "Anyway, what – what did you want?"

"See what the pickings were like in here. I've stumbled across some interesting information to do with a space colony. Mysterious deaths, incurable plague, that sort of thing. You don't know where Jack is, do you?"

"With Ianto, probably," said Adam. "Why don't you just take River out with you?"

"Mmm, well," he muttered, as though that were some kind of explanation. By this point, Nios was looking through her phone again. "Where's Rose?"

"Wedding planning. The wedding is in three days."

"What about Donna?"

"Out," said Nios, "I saw her leave."

"So, what? I'm stuck with you two? It really _is_ slim pickings." As the Doctor spoke, the medibay doors opened and Adam glanced up to see Oswin come limping back through, with Mickey holding the baby and Martha holding the bag of supplies. They seemed happier, somehow.

"Slim pickings out of my favourite two people in the world?" Oswin challenged, returning to her seat next to Nios and then glancing to Mickey to implore him to return the baby to her possession. Mickey, however, seemed quite enthralled by Nalyt, staring at him and his big, bright eyes. Oswin cleared her throat. "He's _my_ nephew."

"…Right," Mickey carefully handed Oswin back the baby, who burped in the process. This made Oswin beam.

"That was a good one!" she praised him, "Better out than in." She rubbed his back gently and resumed bouncing him like she had been earlier. Martha, watching, set the bag down on the table.

"I thought Jenny was your favourite person in the world? Or Clara?" Nios asked, putting her phone down now that Oswin had returned to their midst. Nine crossed his arms and observed, focusing mainly on Nios, whom he still seemed to find a bit of an enigma. Most of them did, even Adam found himself fascinated when he was around her that she was a machine – though, then again, Oswin was technically a 'machine.' He realised he was staring at her, which she noticed.

"What?" she asked him, smiling.

"Nothing, I just… forgot you were a hologram for a minute, that's all." She frowned at him slightly but didn't question him further; he got the inkling she was going to bring this up again later.

"Oswin," Nios implored.

"Sorry, cutie-pie," Oswin glanced at her, "Jenny _would_ be my favourite person if she hadn't ditched me for that floozy vampire. And as for Clary, well, I love her deeply, but contrary to popular belief I do not fancy her. You and Mitchell, on the other hand?" She wolf-whistled. "One-hundred percent fanciable material, don't you agree?" This question she addressed to the baby. "You definitely agree, don't you, little man? Marth, can you pass me a tissue, he's dribbling." Martha did exactly this.

"So none of you are interested in what I've found?" Nine looked around at them all, "You're all just obsessed with this baby?"

"Babies make me uncomfortable," Nios said, looking suspiciously at Nalyt.

"There you are, take Ni out for the day. She's due a day out, take her mind off all the pining," Oswin said. Nios shot her a glare. "What is it you have?"

"Space colony. The year 200200. Something about a spate of unexplained prosthetics-related deaths."

"Unexplained prosthetics-related deaths? _Wow_ , I'm cumming already," said Oswin.

"The baby," Martha hissed at her.

"It's fine, it's a homophone for a completely innocuous word – you think I wouldn't watch what I'm saying around an impressionable infant? I'm not risking him repeating anything _risqué_ to his mother so that I won't be able to babysit again," Oswin said.

"Here I thought you couldn't help being so disgusting," Nine commented.

"It's an enormous façade," Nios said dryly, looking at her phone again. Keeping hold of the baby with one arm, Oswin snatched the phone with the other. "Hey!" Nios grabbed for it, but Oswin held it away from her and she clearly didn't want to agitate the baby, so she didn't lunge to get it back.

"Tell her that you want to see her flat, stupid," Oswin told her, handing the phone back. Nios then put her phone away so that Oswin couldn't get at it again. She turned back to the Doctor. "Take Mitchell out."

"Mitchell doesn't want to go out," Adam interrupted, "He wants to stay in because he's in the middle of a competition with Esther to do with headshot challenges. She's got twenty-two more headshots."

"Let her win!" Oswin exclaimed, "She deserves to win, she's adorable."

"Depends if he's going to try and steal advanced technology again."

Adam laughed very uneasily, "I wouldn't do that…"

"Go on, take him out," she implored Nine, "He doesn't want to hang around with a baby all day. And he won't steal anything. You won't steal anything, will you, Mitchell?"

"What if there's a really cool prosthetic leg you might like?" he questioned her.

"Do you doubt my ex-girlfriend's ability to make cool prosthetic legs?" she raised her eyebrows, "And considering these deaths are apparently related to prosthesis… Nios will make sure Adam doesn't steal anything. Take both of them. I think they should bond. Ooh, _even better_ – take Sprite. You'll look after Sprite, won't you, Ni? I want to see how he behaves without me around, how willing he is to trust other people. Who better to test it than my favourite paranoid android?"

"Seriously?" Nine looked between Adam and Nios like someone had just spat in his food. Then he looked at Mickey and Martha. "Are you _sure_ you two are busy today?"

"Yeah," said Mickey resolutely.

"Let them tag along," Oswin implored, "Buy them an ice cream, or something."

" _Ice cream_?" Adam questioned her.

"Yes, teddy-bear, go have a delicious ice cream." He was horrified that she had just called him 'teddy-bear' – which he still disliked – in the presence of other people. He went a fierce shade of red while everybody else asked if she had really just called him that, while Oswin was indifferent to the terrible embarrassment she had just inflicted.

"Oh my god!" he complained, "Okay, I'll go, I'm not putting up with this." He stood indignantly. Nios wasn't as hard a sell, because she just didn't want to be around the baby, so when Adam left to follow the Ninth Doctor (who muttered 'teddy-bear' under his breath and scoffed) she also stood.

"That's nice, baby. You two have a good day now! Don't catch any plagues! Remember to take Sprite! I love you both _so much_!" Oswin called after them as the doors to the console room closed firmly.


	180. Repetition Without Replication

_Repetition Without Replication_

 _Adam_

"It seems impractical to build like this. What's the purpose of this replication?"

"You're looking at a great wonder of human engineering in one of the most powerful empires in the universe, and you think it's impractical?" the Ninth Doctor quizzed Nios. Sprite clung to her shoulder as she looked through a narrow window at an expanse of dark, metal skyscrapers, embossed against inky outer space like monuments. Adam thought they looked cool, but he supposed Nios did have a point – could it really be a good idea to build a Manhattan-esque sea of buildings out in space like that?

"Yes," said Nios, "The increased surface area makes this place drastically more susceptible to meteor strikes. It's an unnecessary risk just for a pointless sense of familiarity."

"A sense of familiarity is pointless?"

"What purpose does it serve?"

"I suppose you just don't have anything familiar you want to hold onto," said the Doctor. Adam saw Nios frown slightly; she didn't like that statement. Adam thought the Doctor had a point though – how old was Nios? Only a few years? Even less? Maybe she didn't have anything to cling to. Sprite, despite not having a face or being able to speak any language aside from a series of R2-D2 bleeps, appeared to be exhibiting a sense of wonder at the sight through the window.

"Can't you ask Adam questions?"

"Why? Are you uncomfortable?" Nine persisted.

"No, it's just exhausting."

"He's boring," Nine shrugged. Adam stood awkwardly nearby, feeling like a gooseberry, his hands deep in his pockets. They were in the lobby of the residency of somebody important, or who thought they were important, in the enormous, central skyscraper at the heart of the expansive space station. The man who lived there had a lot of digital portraits of himself on large, thin screens hanging from the walls, him in different poses, cracking a smarmy grin or flexing muscles he didn't actually have. The TARDIS had landed them just outside, and it had been the only door unlocked, with a notice pinned up saying that the man was 'taking interviews.'

"Is this what your house looks like?" It took him a minute to realise that Nios was speaking to him now, while Nine paced around as they waited for the door to be answered. "Pictures of yourself?"

"No, I hate pictures of myself," he said, "Oswin complains that we don't have any pictures together."

"You do live in a mansion, though?" Nios persisted. He felt as though he was getting the third degree. Nine glanced over his shoulder and listened in.

"I wouldn't say it was… it's a big house. It's modern architecture… that's not important; I'm thinking about selling it anyway, so." Selling his house was a very recent idea he hadn't even brought up to Oswin yet, though he thought he knew exactly what she would say: that he should do whatever will make him happy. Nios (and Nine) was perplexed.

"Why?"

"Well, it's just… kind of gaudy. Unnecessary. Empty. Nobody lives there when I'm away. I just thought, you know, I'll buy a flat, in Cambridge, close to CyTech headquarters, so I can keep an eye on things. I'm sure Oswin could do me a teleport link, or something. There's a deal going on at the moment for us to buy some big brownfield areas in London and Newcastle and I want to be able to oversee it," he shrugged.

"What are you going to do with the land you buy?" Nine asked sceptically, as though Adam was going to say he intended to build an enormous fracking site just a short walk from the Thames.

"I was going to build affordable housing and sheltered rehabs to help the homeless. Since the government isn't going to do it."

"Where's the profit in that?"

"There isn't any profit," said Adam, "We'll fund it with this new smartphone we're bringing out, which I'm _also_ supposed to be helping develop…" His plan to buy a flat in Cambridge was looking more and more like the best option. "It's pretty hard to make a sustainable smartphone."

"Synths are sustainable," Nios said, which intrigued him greatly.

"Really? In what way?" he asked, enthralled.

"We're made with sustainable materials, manufactured by robots. The same way people in _your_ century assemble cars. And when we break down, or _die_ , they _recycle_ us," she said very bitterly. Sprite's long legs could be seen just cresting the edge of her right shoulder, visible in Adam's wider field of vision, as though she had a big, metal spider crawling on her back.

He would have liked to have asked her more questions about her own sustainability but didn't think the Ninth Doctor would approve – what with Adam's spotty history 'stealing' advanced technology and knowledge – but their gracious host chose that moment to bestow his presence upon them. The automatic door opened so abruptly, and with such a nasty scraping sound, that Sprite jumped and hid further down Nios's back (Adam also jumped but hoped the other two didn't notice.) Out walked the man from the paintings, dressed in what looked like a fur coat and pyjamas. His strange clothes were only the first thing to be noticed about him, however; despite his youth, this man had a fully robotic arm, and a very jittery robotic eye, as well as a few robotic fingers on his _other_ arm. He was a bona fide cyborg.

"Welcome, welcome!" he opened his strange arms to greet them. Adam would call them prosthetics but thought that 'prosthetics' didn't do them justice; these were full-on bionic appendages, far more advanced than even Oswin's leg (and he had never seen anything like her leg before).

"Happy to be here," said the Doctor, grinning, attempting to be polite (for once.) Nios, like Adam, was quite disturbed by this stranger. "Where is here, exactly?" The man frowned.

"It's Tem's house," he said.

"Who's Tem?" Nine asked.

"…This is Tem," he pointed at himself, "You're in Tem's abode. Welcome, welcome." He repeated himself, sounding like a malfunctioning machine. _Was_ he a machine?

"Never trust a human who talks about themselves in the third person," Nios said quietly; Adam supposed if he wasn't human, Nios would be the first to know. He happened to share her sentiment of being sceptical when it came to people who spoke in the third person.

"And where's Tem's house?" Nine persisted, crossing his arms, casting a judgemental eye over the gaudy pictures on the walls. They scrolled through more than a dozen individual photographed poses of Tem like a slideshow, each one on a different real – and here Adam thought Oswin could be a narcissist sometime; she was nothing compared to this nutcase.

"Here, of course. In Eutopia Bay. But, with an 'E.' They said the 'E' means something, but the alphabet has always… hm… what's the word? For something's… you can't really…"

"Confused?" Nine asked.

"Yes! The alphabet has always confused me."

"What does he mean, 'with an "E"'?" Nios asked the Doctor.

"He means it's spelt E-U-T-O-P-I-A. It comes from the Latin. It means 'good-place.'"

"Isn't that what it means without an E?" Adam asked.

"No – didn't you ever study Latin and Ancient Greek?"

"No."

"With no 'E' it means 'no-place', as in, a 'utopia' could never exist. This is why I hate your Earth-languages – too many homophones. Confusing. You never know what you're saying half the time. Where I come from, we don't have homophones. Inconvenient. Anyway, Tem, we're a group of travelling salespeople." He changed topic alarmingly quickly, taking both Adam and Nios aback. Tem's eyes lit up.

"Meaning what?"

"We're selling… cameras."

" _Cameras_?" Now he was excited, seeing as he loved looking at himself so much, "But, I don't see you carrying any cameras."

"You think we'd bring valuable merchandise out here with us? For it get stolen?" The Doctor laughed at him. "Of course not. No, no, we sell one type of state of the art camera, here, I'll show you." He took out his psychic paper and held it up to Tem, who was thoroughly astounded by whatever he saw on it. Nine took it away again swiftly. "But only some people are eligible. You have to do a survey."

"A survey? I love surveys. They're the ones with the questions, right?"

"Correct answer," said Nine, "See, you're doing fantastically already. The first question is – what happened to your arms?"

"What do you mean?" He seemed perplexed.

"What happened to them?"

"In what way?"

"They're robot arms."

"Is that a question?"

"Why do you have robot arms?" Nine persisted.

"They needed an upgrade. They were boring."

"Upgrade?" Nios asked carefully. 'Upgrade' was Cyberman speak. Anyone knew that.

"All the Level One citizens are augmented."

"Augmented?" Adam asked abruptly. The Doctor was surprised that he had talked; maybe he'd forgotten he was there. "You mean like…? You know, never mind… there's just this game where, people get robot appendages like that, and they call them augmentations. Augs. It's not important, now that I think about it…"

"No. Doesn't seem important," said Nine coolly. Nios didn't say a word. Adam looked at his feet. "What do you mean 'Level One citizens'?"

"The highest level," said Tem, "People like me."

"What makes _you_ higher level?"

"Well, you know. I'm a good person."

"Right."

"Why replace your body parts if they were functioning perfectly?" Nios inquired.

"It's the fashion."

"The… fashion? It strikes me more like self-mutilation, removing one's own extremities."

"All Level One citizens get augmented. That's how people know we're Level One."

"Huh…" Adam mused, remembering something Oswin had told him once. He, personally, thought he had mused rather quietly, but Nine and Nios both looked at him with curiosity, Nine apparently annoyed at him interrupting. "It's nothing, it's just, Oswin once told me this story, about someone from an alien race who had his legs removed and replaced with fake ones for no reason. It was a few months ago. She called him an 'aesthetic amputee.' He had something to do with Jack the Ripper, I think… uh, how many levels are there, exactly?" He decided to question Tem in order to push their attention away from him. He didn't like having all eyes in his direction.

"Only two. Us, the Level Ones, and… the people downstairs."

"'Downstairs'?"

"This is a little bit of an… unpleasant topic. You should come in, I don't want any of my neighbours to overhear me talking about those, um, _Level Zeros_ ," he whispered this, then proceeded to turn on his heel and return to his front door. "Open the door, Max," he ordered somebody who didn't respond. The doors did open, but Adam wouldn't be surprised if Tem was talking to someone who didn't exist, and they were just automatic. Regardless, they followed him inside.

If the lobby of Tem's home was horrifically conceited, his actual living room was even worse. It was enormous, full of ludicrous 'artistic' sculptures, even more screens with either pictures of him or a dozen different TV channels like the giant TV in _Back to the Future 2_ , all playing at once like a cacophony of brainwashing nonsense (he wondered if there was anything good on.) Even worse, at least half of the sculptures were exaggerated recreations of Tem, and usually the exaggerations seemed to be in his 'lower regions.' Except in one, where one of his arms had transformed into a big gun, like he was Megaman.

"Can your arm actually do that?" Adam asked, eyeing it.

"No. We're not allowed weapons in Eutopia Bay."

"My arm can do that," Nios whispered to him as Tem was distracted looking at his own engorged statues.

"Really?" Adam asked, in awe.

"I have built-in night vision, too."

" _What_? That's so cool!"

"And a jetpack."

"…Are you messing with me?"

"I can toast things between my hands."

"Oswin's rubbing off on you," he muttered, now very disappointed. "Can't believe you would lie about having a jetpack and a Megaman gun." Maybe Nios lying to him for her own amusement was a sign that she liked him? Oswin definitely liked him and she also constantly lied to him for her own amusement, about things equally ridiculous as having a jetpack.

"You should get Oswin to modify your brain chip and turn that into a big gun," Nine quipped.

"Why do you have to bring up that brain chip at every opportunity? I regret it. Wish I'd never done it. Can we forget about it?"

"Forget about the door in your head? Don't think so," said the Doctor, "Now then, Tem, time for more survey questions. Differences between a Level One citizen and a Level Zero."

"Well," Tem stopped looking at pictures of himself flexing, "It's decided based on what we did when we lived on Earth. Then we were selected, and given our levels based on our behaviour."

"And what did you do that was so good to end up rich and living here on your own with a dozen statues of yourself?"

Tem beamed and said, "It's actually more than that, and upstairs I have a chrome fountain. Anyway – Max – tell these camera salespeople I've never seen before about how the levels were decided before we arrived."

" _An algorithm_ ," answered a male, disembodied, robotic voice. A circular amber light set into the wall lit up when the voice spoke. It reminded Adam uncomfortably of HAL 4000. " _Values were assigned to deeds and positions were allocated based on points_." It sounded like Helix, only with even less intonation and emotion, which was really saying something because Helix wasn't programmed to display _any_ emotion.

"So it's a heaven and hell type thing?" Nine asked, "Sheep and goats?" Nios stared suspiciously at the light on the wall, Sprite still hanging onto her back. "Why would anyone come out here if they were going to have to live as one of these 'Level Zeros'?"

"We all have our needs met, still," said Tem, "I think. Max says so. I've never met any of them. They're, uh… you know."

"What?" asked the Doctor.

"Dirty."

" _Dirty_?" all three of them questioned. That didn't sound politically correct.

The computerised voice, 'Max', then announced an urgent bulletin. All of the TV screens changed at once to be one large, unified image, displaying something also being delivered in an identical robotic, flat voice. The pictures were horrendous; it wasn't hard to recognise a slum, even in outer space. Max was notifying all Level One citizens or a change in severity in some kind of plague outbreak and 'permanent quarantine.' The people in the videos looked gaunt, starving, and maybe a little dirty, but it didn't seem like they had access to basic resources. All Adam could see was gloom and squalor.

" _A red alert for tuberculosis and cowpox remains in effect for all Level Ones. In the secondary news, further reports of unexplained deaths related to prosthesis malfunctions_ -"

"That's enough of that, Max, turn it off. I'm sure these salespeople don't want to be bored hearing about all those Zeros." The screens went dead instantly.

"Sorry, did that thing say tuberculosis? Cowpox? How do you get an outbreak of tuberculosis in space in this century? It should be eradicated, and even if it's not I'm sure it's just a one-pill fix, not even an injection," the Doctor said.

"I told you, they're dirty," Tem shrugged. Adam really didn't like this guy. "Look, if they wanted to be Level Ones as well, all they had to do was be nicer in life."

"What's the nicest thing you've ever done, then?" Nine challenged angrily.

"I returned someone's credit chip."

"A credit chip? That's it? One person's credit chip?"

"They're _bad people_ ," Tem reiterated, "Really."

"With the technology you have here for these ridiculous upgrades, and you're letting people die?"

"Can we get on with the survey yet?" Tem tried to change the subject.

"Definitely not. I don't think you deserve a camera. I think the nice Level Zeros might want some cameras," said Nine.

"It's nothing to do with any of us what anybody's allocations are. It's all down to the AI."

"AI?" Nios was surprised. She nodded at the amber light, "That?"

"Max is an AI."

"Interesting," she said, "Doesn't sound like an AI at all." Adam had been thinking the same thing, it sounded no more intelligent than Siri, and only seemed to have opened some doors and turned a TV on.

"What would you know? You sell cameras," said Tem.

"Yes," said Nios stiffly, "You're right. I sell cameras. I don't know anything about AI."

"We're leaving," Nine announced, "No offence, Tem, but you seem like a conceited, selfish moron, and I wouldn't sell you a camera if you were Louis Daguerre. Let's go."

 **AN: I'm now back PROPERLY and my assessments for my 2nd year of university are all wrapped up, how crazy, and also coming up is the fifth year anniversary of this fic which is probably the most ridiculous thing in all of history. I should explain though that I've been distracted with a few things other than assessments recently - first of all, I actually got another job writing for WatchMojo now (yes, really, it's super cool) and I've been doing it since January but I think just didn't mention. So obviously since I'm a real adult now who has to pay rent like I'm sure a lot of you reading this are too, it's harder to update. Secondly, for the past few months I've also been working on a Clara & Thirteen side-fic I'm going to launch at some point (it's called "Retrograde" and I wrote the entire first storyline which are going to hopefully end up being much longer almost novel-length things like 50k words, and then disrupted my own canon in the main continuity so the majority of it is basically unusable lol) ****but it's just been hard to balance the main fic and all the side-fics so I've ended up writing tiny bits of each of them and creating nothing substantial which is why nothing's been uploaded, but I'll have more time since I'm free from uni now until October (obviously I still have literally no social life so I'm not planning on going anywhere).**

 **In the other thrilling news of my life, some of you may remember that May 31st is my birthday which was exactly a week ago today and I'm now 20 years old which means that in America it would be just one year until I was old enough to drink alcohol but in the rest of the world the legal drinking age is 18 or younger so it's not really a milestone. And finally I got a tattoo last Saturday which is totally cool if itchy. Two questions: are you guys a) excited about a Clarteen future-set side-fic (which will obviously have your usual alien and time travel shenanigans despite them living on Earth), and b) - do you like Nios and Cohen and their arc? It's just I know nobody cares about Sally Sparrow & James Elliott except me, but I'm intrigued to hear if you like Nios and Cohen.**


	181. How the Other Half Lives

_How the Other Half Lives_

 _Adam_

It was only one lift journey down from the highest echelons of the Level One dwellings to the rife and impoverished cesspool of the Level Zeros. No matter when or where you were, a slum was still a slum, and easily identifiable. The dirt on the walls, the skeletal bodies of the inhabitants, the sadness in the air. The rich lived in the skyscraper-like structures, with large, tube walkways made of glass going between them like a spiderweb to avoid having to go below. There was nothing elevated where they were at present, however, just the very base of the Eutopia Bay, the gutter. It made Adam Mitchell even more motivated to help them, and not just them, everyone who possibly _could_ be helped by the CyTech fortune he had at his fingertips; there _he_ was, in his ivory tower made of stolen software, doing next to nothing. Was he as bad as the so-called Level Ones?

"Are you enjoying seeing how the other half lives?" Nios asked him quietly. The Ninth Doctor was looking around at the sight before them: disease, starvation, sorrow. It wasn't so easy to gentrify areas in outer space, to relocate people, so it seemed the people above merely tried to forget that the Zeros were there at all. It really shouldn't shock him too much, he thought; after all, were things not exactly the same in the Twenty-First Century? Maybe he thought that things would be better in the future, or at least hoped.

He didn't answer Nios, only looked at her for a moment, not knowing what she wanted him to say.

"Humans never really change," sighed the Doctor, probably jaded by scenes like this, containing his outrage until the opportunity to actually help presented itself. Adam didn't know what to make of that – was it really impossible for humans not to change? Were they really any worse than other species?

"The categorisations are peculiar," said Nios, who had been so engrossed in what was going on around them that she had only checked her texts a dozen times in the last five minutes, which was a downgrade from having her eyes permanently glued on its screen. As far as Adam could tell she hadn't even received any new messages because Dr Cohen was apparently at work cutting up corpses. Not that that knowledge was mitigating Nios's new obsession. "In the past, at least the class system is tacit. Not based on points."

"Credit ratings?" the Doctor suggested.

"Credit ratings are about how good you are with money, not how much you have," Adam pointed out, "And they don't necessarily designate where you can and can't live. You could be earning hardly anything but if you don't get into debt or take out loans then you'd still have a good credit score."

"Fascinating," said Nine flatly. Adam decided that speaking had been a bad move on his part, and he should have continued to avoid it at any opportunity. "What's this, do we think?" he nodded ahead at a huge crowd of people all gathering around a structure in the centre of a circular, town-square-like area. They had come straight off the lift into this open space and the monolith in the centre.

The structure had just one opening with a large, circular light set above it, glowing amber, bathing everything in the small region in yellow-coloured light; it made Adam's eyes hurt, bothered his colour-blind glasses. It made him want to take the glasses off to see if there was an improvement, but knew that if he did that the yellows and steely greys around them would be even more sickening and accentuated. Colour-blind _sunglasses_ might be the next thing he should invest in. The people were lining up relatively orderly and talking to the light, this 'Max' they had seen earlier. The Doctor approached them with Nios and Adam (and a frightened Sprite on Nios's shoulder) in his wake.

As they got closer, Adam saw the unmistakable signs of sickness. It wasn't only the hacking coughs coming from the group, but they were all riddled with sores and pustules, weeping wounds and terrible infections; he felt guilty about being glad for his cryokinesis preventing him from contracting any infection (apart from the unusual barnacle growth on his left arm he had received from the Flood on Mars, but that was neither spreading nor getting worse.)

"That's impossible…" the Doctor said, staring at them, "These people are infected with all kinds of things." The people weren't listening to any of them, too distracted trying to talk to the computer in the middle, a great big monument to the artificial class divide. "It looks like the plague."

"What, _the_ plague?" Adam asked, "In space? How did the plague get to space?"

"Same way it travelled along the Silk Road? In ships? Carts?" Nine suggested.

"Is that really, like, a thing?" Adam persisted, "Do they not check spaceships for rats? Can't they just do a scan and find any rats? That was always something I thought was strange about _Alien_ – the cat in space that they only have to kill the rats in space."

"But you went to the _Alien_ universe and adopted that exact cat, and now we live on a spaceship with six cats," Nios pointed out to him.

"Well… _yeah_ , but… because they're cute. Not to hunt rats."

"He's got a point," said the Doctor, which sparked one of the most intense feelings of validation Adam Mitchell had ever experienced, "They _do_ scan for rats on spaceships. And this is an epidemic, surely whoever's in charge would have done something? All it takes is a few antibiotics to kill the plague, and all these other diseases – cowpox, TB, they're meant to be eradicated in this century; why would they all have shown up here at once?"

"Maybe there were some hidden infected cows with the hidden infected rats?" Nios suggested somewhat dryly, "There could have even been some hidden infected badgers, too."

"There might even be a whole farm," Nine joined her sarcasm, "It's a bit like a farm here. For people with diseases."

"I think I heard Rose tell me a story about something like that before…" Adam mused.

"She told _you_ a story?"

"Well, no, I just heard. She was talking to Martha. They didn't realise I was there, probably," he mumbled.

"Excuse me," a teenage boy interrupted them hoarsely; a member of the long line they were about to intrude upon, circling around the glowing monolith and back through the streets; it was so long Adam couldn't see the end of it, "You have to queue."

"Don't worry, we're just watching," said Nine, meandering closer to the only person who had actually noticed them, while people at the front of the queue were still speaking to the computer.

"Please, Max, we're starving," an elderly woman whose turn it was to address the machine was pleading.

" _Your allocated credits allow for two portions of sustenance_ ," said Max.

"I need these rations for my whole family, they're too sick to come here now. Don't you have any medicine?" she was begging.

" _Your allocated credits allow for two portions of sustenance. In three days, you will have enough for one dose of antibiotics_."

"Don't you have any compassion? Aren't you the most advanced creation of humanity? Can't you feel for us?" the woman persisted.

"Hurry up, we all need to eat," somebody behind her in the line complained.

"My grandson is going to die if he doesn't get any medicine," she said, "Why should my allocated credits matter? Why should he die because of that?"

" _Your allocated credits allow for two portions of sustenance_."

"Just take it and go," a man shouted, "We're all sick. Your grandson is no different." A door beneath the yellow light which resembled a dumbwaiter opened, and it spat out two plastic pots of paste no bigger than a petri dish each. Was that supposed to be a meal? The old woman began to weep as she picked up the pots and shuffled away, allowing somebody else to begin begging the machine, Max, for food.

" _Your allocated credits only allow for one portion of sustenance_ ," Max said this time, to the teenage boy who had told them to join the orderly queue, no less.

"I asked for medicine, I don't need any food," he said. It didn't look as though he had eaten for days.

" _Your allocated credits allow for one portion of sustenance_."

"That thing has all the intelligence of a dialogue tree in _Assassin's Creed: Odyssey_ ," Adam muttered.

"I told you," Nios began to reiterate, "It doesn't sound like an AI. It's just… got a voice. That's all."

"Then why is everyone so convinced of it?" Nine posed a new question to them, a _real_ question – why indeed? Even without actually knowing real AIs (he looked at Nios when he thought this), he was sure he'd be able to realise the hollowness of this 'Max.' "They can't all be idiots like Tem upstairs."

Something stirred among the people in the line while the teenage boy continued to beg for medicine only to be rebuffed at every turn by the robotic voice of Future Cortana. The Doctor, Adam and Nios observed as the crowds seemed to part to make way for a figure, a woman, middle-aged, who didn't appear to be sick at all. Instead she came forwards, smiling, and when the teenage boy saw her he even told Max he would take his measly, singular 'portion of sustenance' and stepped out of the way. Apparently, this woman was not bound to the unspoken rules of queuing, she went right up to the dispensary to address the machine.

"Max, I'll spend all my allocated credits on enough food and medicine for all the citizens present."

" _Your allocated credits allow for 700 portions of sustenance and 300 doses of antibiotics_." What followed over the next few minutes might as well have been a miracle. As fast as Max could spit out tiny tubs of paste and bottles of individual pills, this mystery woman – whom Adam realised had a robotic arm much like Tem's – was handing them out to the poor and needy. She put only one portion of sustenance in her own pocket and no medicine at all, giving things away equally to anyone and everyone. Some returned to the line to also spend their own credits too, but many took what they were gifted by this stranger and left.

"She's like communist Jesus, or something," Adam said.

"From what I've read of human culture Jesus displays clear evidence of communist ideologies and traits," said Nios, then she continued, " _Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. … After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, 'Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world_.'"

"What's that? Bible mode?" the Doctor questioned her as the people continued to take the food and medicine. Adam watched and listened.

"Human philosophical writings are impossible to comprehend without a grounded understanding of religious thought."

"And what do _you_ 'think' of religion?"

"I think that people often twist it to fit their own narratives."

"Isn't that what you're doing by quoting John right now?"

"Yes."

"A very human thing to do," he quipped.

"'I think, therefore I am,'" she quoted some more.

"And who was it said that?"

"Descartes. I do know how to read, you know." Adam thought Nine enjoyed questioning Nios like this but wasn't sure that she herself appreciated it. It didn't matter, because they were promptly interrupted by the philanthropic Jesus-figure, who inquired of them whether they wanted some food and medicine for themselves.

"No, we're just visiting," said the Doctor, "We'd hate to take supplies away from the people here who need them."

"Visiting?" the woman asked, "Visitors to Eutopia Bay? Nobody ever visits Eutopia Bay."

"That's not true, we are," Nine grinned, "Eager to learn about the Eutopia Bay way of life."

"It isn't much of a way of life at all," she said bitterly, "I'm Jaleah, and I'm sorry that you're here."

"You're a Level One citizen, aren't you?" Adam asked her, seeing her arm. She followed his gaze to her own arm, too, and sighed.

"A brutal practice. I don't know who devised the removal of limbs and body parts like this."

"Why go along with it?" Nios asked.

"I wish I could answer that."

"Aren't you afraid you'll run out of your 'allocated credits'?" Adam continued.

"Why?" Nine challenged him, "Would you be? You wouldn't share?"

"Of course I would share," he said, annoyed at the Doctor's constant implications that he was some kind of arsehole, "It's a question. Why are you allowed to ask questions and I'm not?"

"Just trying to get you out of your shell, pretty boy." Adam grimaced. He happened to like his shell.

"I'm not worried, Level Ones are allocated thousands of credits every week - 'social currency', it's called. The only thing they spend them on is more augmentations and other ridiculous things. The people down here get next to nothing, they've never even been vaccinated against anything – while we upstairs were all vaccinated as soon as we arrived."

"But if you were vaccinated earlier, surely that implies that somebody knew there were going to be plague outbreaks," Nios said quickly, "Which doesn't make sense."

"Who's in charge here?" the Doctor asked.

"Max," Jaleah answered, "No citizen, of any level, has seen any authority other than Max. AIs are supposed to be non-biased." Remarkably she too believed that Max possessed real intelligence. "He reports on the news down here, but nobody upstairs cares. I couldn't stand it, I came to help in whatever way I can." Maybe the human race wasn't quite as irredeemable as the Doctor had implied earlier on.

"You're just allocated credits depending on your level?" Nios asked, "Nobody works? Has jobs? There's no way to earn more?"

"Max does any job required. He keeps the station operational, assigns the rations. At the start, the Eutopia Bay program seemed to be a promise of a better life, but now, it's… it's…" Jaleah began to stutter. She scrunched up her face in a frown and staggered backwards, catching herself briefly on her backfoot.

"Are you alright?" Nios, who was afforded the quickest reflexes by her nature as a synthetic, stepped forwards to grab Jaleah's arm and keep her upright. She blinked very quickly, didn't say a word, moved her head backwards and forwards. Then, out of nowhere, she collapsed, Nios unable to support her whole weight like that. Jaleah had gone into a fit, right in front of them, and in an instant was writhing on the ground.

"It's a seizure," said the Doctor. The citizens collecting the food Jaleah had delivered them began to see what was happening, making their way over in horror, "Everyone stand back!" The Doctor took out his screwdriver in order to scan her and find out what was happening, crouching carefully down at her side.

"Her heart rate is through the roof, and her brain activity," said Nios, who had taken out her phone again – hopefully she was texting Cohen and asking her about seizures, since Cohen was a doctor to Adam's understanding. It was futile, though. In less than a minute from the sudden beginning of this strange reaction, Jaleah went completely limp.

"No, no, no," said the Doctor, still scanning with the screwdriver, but it was no use.

Nios announced, not needing to take a pulse, "She's dead. I'm sorry."

 **AN: I got a twitter (again, I got one like a good few years ago now and then deleted it) so you should go follow me on that, it's the same username as my FF username here (CaitlinJ1021) though it's mostly for networking purposes. But also you can see a) my cool tattoo and b) my actual face (shocker) which is really not particularly exciting but who knows. It is generally just gonna be me complaining about video games and posting whatever YouTube videos I've written, though. ALSO, reviews are SUPER COOL I would LOVE if people would review so it seems like people actually read this thing.**


	182. Big Brother is Watching You

_Big Brother is Watching You_

 _Nios_

To Nios, the most unnerving thing about Jaleah's death had been the abruptness of it. Less than a minute from the beginning of her odd seizure she was completely brain dead, no heart activity, every part of her body shutdown. Perhaps she was showing her true colours of being a cold and unfeeling machine by her preoccupation with the nature and details of Jaleah's death rather than the actual fact of it, but they couldn't _all_ get overwhelmed with emotion. Adam Mitchell, next to her, was completely shell-shocked by what had happened, while Sprite was cowering on her shoulder. At least the Doctor was still trying to investigate; in the heavy silence, the only sound was that of the sonic screwdriver as he attempted to run a diagnosis. Immunised against every disease, perfectly healthy, a philanthropist clearly adored by the people now flocking to her body – it was part of a puzzle Nios could not yet solve (though she did think to herself that were Oswin there, she would surely know all the answers by now.)

"She was poisoned," the Doctor said eventually, holding the sonic up to his ear like he was listening to it. He tapped it a few times against the palm of his hand, then looked down at Jaleah's body again. There was blood at the corners of her mouth. "Traces of a deadly toxin in her bloodstream."

"How could she have been poisoned when she was standing right in front of us?" Nios asked, "Nobody touched her, we weren't even standing that close."

"You should check her arm," said Adam, apparently _not_ as shocked as he appeared to be – more surprised than anything. "The augmentations. Maybe this was one of those mysterious 'prosthetic related deaths'? They were the reason we came."

"Good idea," said the Doctor, "Maybe you do have _some_ value, _teddy-bear_."

" _Don't_ call me that," Adam grumbled, "I don't even like when _she_ calls me it, I keep telling her not to. She's relentless."

"It could be worse," said Nios as the Ninth Doctor – smirking to himself because he was proud about how much he was agitating Adam Mitchell – began to scan Jaleah's enhanced arm. "She called me 'Fisto' for some reason the other day."

"That's my fault, sorry," he said.

"You told Oswin to call me 'Fisto'?"

"No – no, it's not – there's this sex robot, in this game – I was just playing it, and she was all, 'what's going on?' so obviously I told her, and… It's called 'Fisto.'"

"You were playing with a sex robot?" the Doctor interrupted. This was definitely an insensitive conversation to be having around a recently deceased woman.

"No, it was for a quest – this really isn't the time," Adam said awkwardly, very aware of the body, "It's honestly not that funny at all."

"You were right, I can hardly believe it," said the Doctor eventually, addressing Adam though he still didn't look at him, focused on the body. "The arm killed her, it has an empty cavity with traces of the same fluid as in the blood, and an injectable mechanism."

"Her own arm injected her with insta-kill poison?" Adam asked in disbelief.

"Apparently."

"There's no sign of a malfunction?" Nios asked, "Maybe the fluid is just part of the mechanism? I have fluid running through me that would be toxic if it leaked. Humans are notoriously weak to internal bleeding. Perhaps it's something like that? Battery acid?"

"No. Poison. I recognise the chemical composition. No applicable use other than murder, but painfully easy to manufacture; it was definitely designed for this function. That's probably the explanation behind all the deaths. It was obscured from normal scanning, too, that's why it took me a few minutes to find it," he got back to his feet and crossed his arms. "We're definitely missing something here." Nios couldn't help but agree. "Fashionable prosthesis rigged to kill their owners? Eradicated plagues and only half the population is immunised against them? Not to mention that immunising people against these things at all carries the implication that at least somebody knew there was a risk of contact with the infections – and TB definitely doesn't naturally occur in space." She had half a mind to ask Cohen what she thought about it, but she still hadn't actually responded to the invitation to go to her flat, not wanting to change the subject because it would look like she was avoiding the question. And the fact that she _was_ avoiding the question was completely irrelevant. Besides, she wasn't sure how best to summarise what, exactly, was going on, in order to see if Cohen did have any legitimate ideas.

The Zeros watching them didn't make a move. If Max was broadcasting unpleasant news bulletins about the Level Zeros to the Ones, she was sure that he would be doing the same in the other direction; they probably knew about the mysterious deaths. The Doctor had to have heard about them some way, after all. As well as that they were used to seeing people die around them; tragedy must be par for the course.

She had nearly forgotten Sprite was attached to her back like a very timid, robotic limpet, until he scuttled down from her in an instant and began to circle around her feet, beeping. Adam Mitchell almost jumped out of his skin at the sight of the little creature, while the Doctor remained suspicious of Oswin's latest creation.

"What is it?" Nios asked Sprite.

"Can you understand him?" the Doctor asked.

"Sprite and I are actually constantly sharing our thoughts in binary code through a micro server cloud," she said. The Doctor paused, then smiled slightly.

"I get it. You're tricking me."

"Yes." But Sprite was still dancing around her feet, then when he was finally satisfied he had their attention, he shot off in the opposite direction of the crowd, the corpse, and Max's food dispensary, into some spindly, narrow alleyways of the slum. "Why do humans insist on always having alleyways no matter where they build?" she queried as she began to follow Sprite, leaving Jaleah's body and the other sick Zeros.

"As architects, they're a very unoriginal species," said the Doctor, "You should have seen the Citadels on Gallifrey. Very few alleyways." This was the same direction the old woman had left in, the one with the dying grandson, before Jaleah's arrival. It made Nios pause, and then make a mad dash back to the dispensary to take a few of the tiny pill bottles of medication.

"I have a tuberculosis," she told the humans gathered around when they gave her dark looks for taking the medicine. She did a very unconvincing cough, her body not quite able to cough in the same way a human's did, and then rejoined Adam and Nine, power-walking away.

"Didn't know synths could get tuberculosis," Nine jibed.

"We get it from badgers," she said, not explaining herself. He didn't appear to care an awful lot, but by this point Sprite was kicking up a fuss in his desperate bid for them to follow him.

The thing agitating him happened to be just around the corner, too. He crawled up a wall like a spider and then began to apparently attack something, though Nios couldn't see anything there, high on the wall above them and nestled into the nook of a building. The Doctor, being the tallest, approached the spot agitating Sprite and reached up to feel around.

"Hold on – there's something- AH!" The 'something', whatever it was, appeared out of nowhere and then fell, landing on the Doctor's head. It clattered to the floor at their feet: a camera, for sure. A camera which had been sitting invisibly on the wall observing people, and only Sprite had been able to detect it. Grumbling and rubbing his head, the Doctor picked it up and examined it, while Sprite returned to crawling across Nios's feet.

"You could sell that to Tem," Adam commented.

"It's broken."

"He probably wouldn't notice."

"Enough about you exploiting people for profit," the Doctor quipped to Adam's annoyance, " _Now_ the question is who's watching through these cameras?"

"Max?" Nios suggested.

"Not sure they'd need to be hidden so well if it was only the computer," said Nine, "Someone doesn't want these people to know they're being spied on… are there any more of these? We need to trace the signal." Sprite, thrilled about being utilised, practically leapt at the opportunity to help even more, and rushed off again to lead them in a new direction. "Wonder why he's able to find these cameras when the sonic didn't pick them up."

"Oswin built him," said Adam, "He's very advanced."

"Big fan of AI?"

"It's what's keeping her interest at the moment," he said, glancing at Nios as though Nios was one of Oswin's many 'projects.'

"What's her end goal?"

"I don't know – maybe she wants to be able to help them?" he suggested, "I mean, Oswin's like, the closest thing Nios has to a doctor." She nearly corrected him by bringing up Cohen but knew that wasn't remotely what he was getting at. Plus, he was right, Oswin _was_ the only person capable of helping if something were to go wrong with her. "I don't think she's trying to create her own race of obedient super-computers, or anything."

"You don't 'think'?" Nine asked him.

"I'd hate to assume anything… she'll have good intentions."

Sprite had located another high spot on a wall, and this time the Doctor shooed him away from it and stood on his tiptoes, holding up the sonic after feeling around for the second invisible camera. Sprite crawled back up her leg and returned to his perch on her shoulder. While the Doctor tried to break through the cloaking, Nios's phone chose that moment to buzz in her pocket, and as soon as it did she entirely forgot about what was going on and checked it with startling reflexes. She had both been hoping for and dreading another message from Dr Cohen, and to her horror, it _was_ another message from Dr Cohen:

 _If you don't want to come over you should just tell me_.

"Oh, f… _urgh_ ," she grumbled under her breath, incredibly annoyed at herself and herself alone for not knowing how to respond. She was a vastly superior species to humanity in every way – there was no logical reason why she shouldn't know precisely how to behave. And yet, she was completely stumped.

"What's up?" Adam Mitchell asked, standing and waiting for Nine to be done, hands awkwardly in his pockets. Everything about him was awkward, the very act of existing seemed to make him monumentally uneasy.

"It's just… I don't know what to say to this," she completely relented and showed him her phone. He must have _some_ insight for her, after all – he'd managed to get Oswin to date him, somehow (Nios hadn't been on the TARDIS prior to their relationship). He may actually have something valuable to contribute.

Perplexed, he asked, "Do you _not_ want to go to her flat?"

"I don't know."

"I mean… why? I thought you like her?"

"I _do_." She was bearing her entire heart and soul, if machines could be said to have hearts and souls.

"Then go see her. That's like, a way more relaxed date than having to actually go somewhere. Me and Oswin don't really go places together often…" he seemed a little downtrodden about this however, but quickly gathered himself, "It's more important that you just spend time together rather than what you're actually doing. And at least in her flat there's nobody else around, I hate when there's other people."

"If you like this girl you should go see her," said the Doctor over the noise of his sonic, since he had apparently been listening in. "It's not easy getting invited inside someone's house. I usually have to break in because they always refuse to let me through the door. Don't know why that is… I have such a winning smile, too." He flashed them both a grin, which made Adam uncomfortable and passed right by Nios's attention span without registering; she was glued to her phone, trying to work out her response.

"What should I say?" she asked Adam.

"Uh…" he paused for a long while.

"Never mind, you're useless." Still not sure what to put, she ended up just putting her phone away again, still leaving Cohen hanging, at which point the Doctor succeeded in whatever he was trying to do to the camera.

It materialised still attached to the wall and he exclaimed, "Ah-ha! A signal! Now we can trace it back to… hang on… that can't be right – are you sure that's right?" He addressed the sonic directly and fidgeted with it. "The signal from the cameras is broadcasting to somewhere over three-hundred-thousand miles away."

"There's people even deeper in space watching this?" Adam asked.

"Yep – and I wouldn't say it's many people, either. This solar system is completely empty of habitable planets, no native species, nowhere to be colonised – my best guess is this feed goes to another space station. On the plus side, if they're three-hundred-thousand miles away there isn't a lot they can do to stop us snooping around. Unless Max has some sort of attack mode."

"Well don't jinx it…" Adam mumbled. The Doctor then snapped the relatively fragile camera from the wall and dropped it to the ground next to them, breaking that one as well.

"Speaking of attack mode…" Nios began. Sprite was freaking out again, and so they began to follow, under the assumption that he was going to lead them to another camera. They didn't necessarily need to find another camera at that point but were at a loss for any other leads. "He must be a lot more complicated than I thought."

"Why build him? What's his purpose?" the Doctor questioned, watching Sprite carefully.

"She told me she has him to help her with things. Day-to-day things," Nios explained.

"And what do you think? You're not riled up about it being slavery?"

"He's willing to help," said Nios, "And I think if he decided he didn't want to anymore, she wouldn't do anything to stop him from living his own life. Dogs do what people tell them as part of their nature."

"It's funny because she actually hates dogs," said Adam, "She doesn't really like any animals. Just machines."

"Machines _are_ better than organic lifeforms in every conceivable way," Nios said. She was joking, but wasn't sure if Adam knew that (although, objectively speaking, they _were_ better than organic lifeforms in every conceivable way.)

"I don't blame her; some of those cats you've got are a bit prickly. One of them keeps attacking me," said the Doctor.

"Yeah, the Maine Coon is a bit vicious…" Adam said, "The tentacle one's sweet though, I think we're keeping that one."

"Who said anything about keeping any of them?" Nine questioned.

"Erm… the, uh… the Doctor did…" he said uneasily, "The Eleventh Doctor."

"Typical," Nine scoffed, "Who have you found to give the others away to?"

"Clara Ravenwood wants the Maine Coon," explained Nios, "It doesn't attack her, it likes vampires. _Hates_ Jenny, though."

"I was thinking about going around Rose's wedding and trying to get rid of them that way," Adam added. A relatively sound plan, Nios thought; it wasn't like any of them were actually old enough to give away yet, no matter how big and nasty the vampire cat was.

Nios began to hear crying, while Adam continued to explain to nobody in particular his plans for his cats. She paused in the alleyway to listen, straining her ears. Neither the Doctor nor Adam realised she had stopped for a few seconds, but she was completely sure she recognised the voice: it was the old woman whose grandson had been on the brink of life.

"Where are you going?" the Doctor asked her as she turned to leave towards a different alley of the slum, following the sound. She didn't answer.

"How can they deny medicine like this?" a man angrily argued, "It's cruel. Does nobody off-station know anything about this? About the dying, the disease?" Nios now knew that people off-station certainly did know about it, and yet nothing was being done. Eventually, she located the tiny dwelling where the people were, hearing the man argue while the elderly woman cried within. "My wife, my daughter, dead to these diseases – it's inhumane. We're nothing." She knocked on the door. "Who the hell could that be?" She braced herself as he came and opened it, revealing a tiny, two-bedroom flat, beds rammed into the living room and a miniscule kitchen vacant of food. It had little more than some plates, a sink, and a hydrofier.

"I saw your mother," she guessed at their relation, and was not corrected, "At the dispensary. I brought you some medicine." Truthfully, she did not know how much help her meagre portion of stolen supplies would be to that boy, who was lying in bed, unaware of his surroundings, covered in cowpox sores. He was so sick he hardly looked human, his skin made entirely of erupting, bloody welts. She held out the pill bottles.

"You used your social currency for this?" he questioned.

"…No. A woman called Jaleah did."

"Jaleah? Is she there now?" he became hopeful.

"She died, she had a seizure," said Nios. All his hope was taken away.

"They keep coming down here, those Level Ones. Every few weeks there's a new one who can't stand to see us on the news bulletins, and it always happens the same way. Thank you for this. Thank Jaleah for this. This might be enough to…" He looked at the boy and sighed. Nios was also not optimistic about his chances. "Just… thank you. Whoever you are." She nodded, and he closed the door.

All the while, the Doctor, Adam and Sprite had observed from nearby shadows.

"Why did you do that?" Nine asked her.

"Why didn't you?" she challenged. He didn't have an answer. "Come on, Sprite. What did you want to show us?"

In silence now, they resumed following Sprite. The Doctor's eyes bored into her as she walked slightly ahead, as though he were trying to unravel the mysteries of her synthetic consciousness just by staring. So she felt compassion for human beings – why was that revolutionary?

"Do I really seem so cold that me doing something for someone else shocks you like this?"

"It's probably all the 'machines are superior' talk," he quipped.

"It's not their fault they get sick, and it's not their fault they're being deprived of medicine, either. Just because I was manufactured and not born doesn't make me a careless monster."

"You just come across as one quite a lot." She was not sure she believed that. "Hold on, what's all this?" He took enough time out from questioning her personality that he noticed what she had failed to, that they had just turned a corner into a dead end, a smooth wall right in front of them. Sprite crawled up the wall and ran around in circles on its surface at her eye level. The Doctor walked past Nios to look at the wall, at which point Sprite jumped down from its surface and ran back and forth in front of it. He leant in close, then pressed his ear against it and knocked. "It echoes. I think there's something on the other side."

"Let me have a go," Adam Mitchell stepped forward.

"'Have a go'? What do you plan on doing?" Nine asked him incredulously.

"I have an idea, that's all. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work," he shrugged.

"Fine. Be my guest." The Doctor and Nios stepped aside to let Adam step up to the plate. He only needed to place his palm on the wall for it to start to freeze, presumably because he was nervous about having them watch him. The boy was just one big bag of nerves, quite honestly. "I keep forgetting about you lot and your 'abilities.'"

"And you don't think that you regenerating is an 'ability'?" Adam asked him as the wall turned to ice beneath his fingers.

"No. Just a quirky personality trait. A talent. Something wry, and appealing. There's nothing wry about freezing everything you touch."

"It's not _everything_ …"

Nios decided to check her phone again: no follow-up message. She hoped her own ineptitude didn't ruin everything with Cohen… but she was a _little_ distracted, in her defence.

Adam eventually did something a lot more impressive with his cryokinesis, however; he made a coating of ice around his fist and then punched the frozen part of the wall with as much strength as he could muster. This was not a great amount of strength, but the hardness of the ice against the weakened, fragile wall made it completely shatter – and they discovered it was not a wall at all. it was a very thin piece of glass, and behind it was a darkened area that appeared to be some kind of maintenance tunnel.

"This is just like something I saw in this game," Adam said.

"When is anything _not_ like something you saw in some game?" Nios remarked.

"No, but – the fancy two-way screens, it's transparent on the other side," he stepped through the shattered hole in the wall first, "You can see everything from inside, but not from out there."

"Well then," said the Doctor, "Let's see where this secret tunnel leads…"


	183. Through the Looking Glass

_Through the Looking Glass_

 _Nios_

Behind the hidden glass wall lay a maze of interconnecting tunnels with colourful wires running up and down the walls. Nios felt as though she was physically within a computer with all the plastic cabling and connections, many wires hanging low from the ceiling above and creating unusual shadows in the artificial lights pressed into the metal which turned on as they walked underneath and turned off again as they left the vicinity. The Doctor, at the front, was having to push the wires out of the way like they were stray pieces of foliage making the dense passage feel even more claustrophobic. It did not appear like people were supposed to be present and even she was having to stoop at some points while the Doctor was practically hunched over. Practically a crawlspace in some regards.

Was this Max? Were these cables how he kept his control of the station, the dispensary? Plumbing and transparent, slime-filled tubes also ran the lengths of the walls, slime she recognised as being part of the bland, paste rations served to the people in plastic tubs. She wanted to follow those wires and find out where the miscellaneous 'sustenance' was being source from but wasn't entirely sure she would like what she found. Probably a big vat of ambiguous gunk with bits being sucked out by those very plastic tubes she could now see – then again, maybe having nutrition paste delivered pneumatically was the height of efficiency. However, just because Nios couldn't consume food in any kind of meaningful way didn't mean she didn't appreciate it – after all, she was fascinated by the things Jenny could do with a sparse handful of ingredients, even if she would never truly know how effective the fruits of her labour were.

The Doctor and Adam Mitchell were arguing about various things, like if the stubble on Adam's face was cut short or if he just wasn't capable of growing a real beard, and about Ten and Rose's wedding. She only half-listened to Adam briefly panic about the fact he had yet to get Rose a wedding present (the Doctor suggested rather callously that he just go buy her some flash car and deliver it to her with a bow on top like she was a rich American girl having a sixteenth birthday party) and that he also hadn't heard from the girls when they were all going to get their nails done because they apparently wanted to join him. Nios's nails were made out of an incredibly resilient metallic alloy and never broke nor needed cutting, but the topic turning to the wedding was getting her mind working on other things, and those things had a name: Dr Hayley Cohen.

Her phone was still dead, and the message thread was void of any replies she had been thinking about sending. Every time she checked it her heart sank more and more, and her thoughts began to spiral as she repeatedly read Cohen's most recent words: _If you don't want to come over you should just tell me_. Still, an appropriate response escaped her, because after such a long absence simply saying that she would like to didn't feel good enough. She was certainly going to have to explain herself and it would take some time to come up with an appropriate apology and excuse for her shoddiness. Unless trying to solve a mystery on a space station in the distant future was acceptable enough as a reason why she hadn't quite managed to reply.

"Stop, stop, stop," the Doctor managed to say something important enough for her, at the back of the trio with Sprite filming hanging onto her shoulder, to listen. It was so low and narrow in there that she couldn't see what he was talking about as he pressed himself flat against the wall. Adam copied him and then she saw something which made Sprite drop down to the floor: a pair of robots.

They were little things with treadmill-tracks running around their wheels so that they looked like miniature, black tanks with large three-pronged claws protruding from the end of a metal arm on top of them. Sprite, the fast-moving many-legged curiosity that he was, approached them with a trademark scuttle. They were taller than him – though Sprite in his resemblance to a house centipede was very flat – but not much bigger overall. The robots didn't stop when he got in their way, however, which gave him a tremendous fright and he leapt back onto Nios for safety, scurrying all the way up until he was right on top of her head (which was not very comfortable for her) and cowering. She moved aside to let the robots pass and they continued on their way.

"What were those?" she asked.

"Just scutters, I think," Adam said.

"You mean all the upkeep on this space station is carried out by non-autonomous, non-sentient robots? That doesn't attest to the operators of Eutopia Bay caring an awful lot about what happens, leaving those in charge. They hardly even have basic motion detectors." She watched them disappear down the other end of the long tunnel they had been wending their way through, off to fix a leak or something. "Surely it's more useful to have something that can actually think? Make decisions?"

"The lack of thinking and making decisions is exactly what's necessary to keep this place running," said the Doctor, "You've already proven that even an AI with the coldest temperament is capable of empathising with the people in this situation." She wasn't an enormous fan of the judgement that she had a cold temperament, but there was certainly something in his logic. Just like humans, very few AIs bore the psychotic tendencies of a machine like ELLE, more likely than not they _would_ break their programming in order to end the mass suffering and inequality. She hoped that she would, at any rate.

"So, an AI can develop empathy for these humans but whoever's watching from three-hundred-thousand miles away can't?" Adam questioned.

"Of course they can, it's easy. How many people in rich countries in your century actually do something about what's going in poor parts of the world? How many rich people in your own country just ignore the homeless on the streets? And that's when they walk past them. You'd never walk past the people here. An AI couldn't avoid them like that, it would be responsible for them completely." Again, Nios thought the Doctor had a point. She actually liked the thought that an AI would care more about those people than other humans might, and the acknowledgement from the Doctor – who was usually so quick to grill her and find out her motivation for everything she did and said – that AIs were not inherently bad, when so many people were wary of them.

The wires grew more and more condensed and soon they were all trying to duck out of the way of thicker and more numerous wires hanging from the walls and above, but it was only Nios who noticed something out of the ordinary, something on the floor below them. The floor was also covered in wires, but these wires were underneath a thin layer of glass to stop them being trampled and to help aid passage. Except for in one spot where all the wires were bunched up around the edges to leave it empty. The glass seal also left this one oblong patch of metal empty, but Adam and the Doctor hadn't noticed walking over it.

"Hold on," she said, and they awkwardly turned back to try and see, "Look at that." She indicated the floor.

"Good catch," said the Doctor, elbowing Adam Mitchell out of his way so that he could crouch down and examine it. Adam grimaced, unhappy about this. Sprite leapt from her shoulder again and joined the Doctor. "Looks like a trapdoor, almost."

"A secret maintenance hatch inside a secret maintenance hatch; it's like a double cliché," Adam said.

"If it's a double cliché wouldn't that cancel out the presence of any clichés at all?" Nios challenged him.

"Would you two keep it down? I'm trying to be clever, and it's hard to be clever with all this noise."

"You can't be that clever then because we're hardly making any noise," Nios quipped. He looked at her like he was shocked, then shook his head and went back to what he was doing.

"Unbelievable…" he tutted. She couldn't be bothered arguing further. She took the opportunity to check her phone while he got his sonic out and began messing around with the panel on the floor. Adam eyed her as she did this.

"Did you text her back yet?" he asked, consciously lowering his voice after the Doctor's indignant comment about the volume. Nios clenched her jaw and, after seeing she predictably had no new messages, put the mobile away in her pocket again.

"No."

"You should. I mean, I think you should, obviously I don't know her. I don't really even know you that well… My point is, that it's okay to be nervous about someone you like. It's normal. Even Oswin gets ridiculously nervous when she's around somebody she has actual feelings for, despite her going on about being Cupid all the time."

"Open sesame!" Nine announced before Nios could respond to either Adam or, even, to Cohen herself. The trap door swung open and revealed a gloomy darkness punctuated by blinking yellow lights, as though it were infested with fireflies.

"That looks like a long drop…" Adam said warily, eyeing the space.

"You're not _scared_ , are you?" Nine mocked him.

" _No_ , but I have a bad ankle. Sprained. Doesn't heal."

"Does look like quite a narrow gap," said the Doctor.

"Well if neither of _you_ are going to go first," Nios grumbled, and lowered herself into the hole and dropped with no hesitation whatsoever. Sprite jumped onto her shoulder as she fell and landed lightly, then she called up through the square of light just over a foot above her, "Leave it to the machines to do everything." She stepped out of the way and started to look around the room, while the other two fumbled at trying to descend as well – which was quite a dramatic event considering Adam's bad foot and the Doctor's love of showboating, though she didn't pay them any notice.

The room was relatively small for what it contained, possibly no bigger than Nerve Centre on the TARDIS and the same circular shape, and full of large blocks covered in those same lights. She didn't need to be a machine herself to recognise a computer mainframe, but – like she had suspected – it wasn't nearly big enough to house an _actual_ artificial intelligence. Not one capable of controlling every part of a space station. The mainframe spread around in a circle in large chunks, all around one central point in the room which was a very bizarre piece of equipment Nios didn't recognise, a large chair with a device hanging down above it. Computers couldn't sit in chairs, and nor could those basic robots they'd seen.

Sprite crawled over to get a better look at the chair in the centre of the dark, amber room, but did not appear to find anything of much note. Something about it made Nios inherently uneasy, though, but she could not quite place her finger on it.

"Don't go near that," the Doctor suddenly warned from behind her, done having his minor scuffle with Adam Mitchell after begrudgingly helping him get down through the trapdoor without damaging his ankle any further.

"What is it?"

"An infospike," said Nine, "Pretty boy here knows all about them, don't you?" Adam suddenly looked highly uncomfortable.

"What's an infospike?"

"Backwards piece of technology. Suppose it shouldn't surprise me seeing it here, this is the year 200200, and it happens to be a brilliant way to stop any undesirables accessing this mainframe. Well, most of the time, one such undesirable happens to be right here," the Doctor looked at Adam unexpectedly, and Adam became flummoxed.

"Oh, I – no, I don't think – that's probably not a good idea…"

"Why pay to get a door to your brain surgically put into your head if you don't ever intend to use it?" Nine questioned.

"I mean, it was a whim. An impulse buy. It's not… Cathica _died_."

"She died killing the Jagrafess," Nine said, "You're just going to have a look at their computer. That's what the seat's intended for. Besides, even if you do die, you're girlfriend's so clingy she's probably got half a dozen backups of your brain saved onto hard-drives 'just in case.'" Nios had heard tell of this brain-door of Adam's, but had never had the pleasure – or displeasure – of actually seeing it. He was now torn between doing what Nine wanted and what the situation seemed to demand, considering it didn't look like there was another way to access Max.

"If I can download ELLE into my head to save you on the TARDIS, you can access this computer and try to save all the people on board," Nios said, which was perhaps not as motivational as she intended. It was a bit threatening with her deadpan tone of voice, really.

"We'll get you out if anything dangerous starts to happen," said the Doctor, very serious all of a sudden, "I wouldn't let you die, not when you're in my care."

"…You better not laugh at me, either of you," he said, fumbling around in his pockets for something. Nios could already see frost covering his fingertips as he got scared about what may happen when he used the infospike. Nios was also quite concerned, especially since it had the word 'spike' in its name; she was really imagining the worst already. Was he going to get stabbed in the brain?

Adam retrieved a little keyring from his pocket and gingerly approached the chair, getting in it and nearly freezing the arms right off in the process. Sprite returned to Nios to observe carefully from her shoulder. The Doctor crossed his arms and waited. It was when Adam clicked the button that Nios got the first of the two big shocks she was about to experience in the space of thirty seconds. A space on the front of his head opened up with four metal, silver doors and left the front of his brain completely exposed to the open air. She was at a loss as to how this was not an extreme risk of infection, and brain infections were lethal. Then she got the _second_ big shock, when Adam counted down from three and then ordered the machine to 'spike.' A vivid stream of blue energy shot out of the device hanging from the ceiling and directly into his head.

"Is that supposed to happen!?" she exclaimed.

"That's how it works," said Nine, "I think it's barbaric. Backwards technology." Nios had to agree.

"What's he doing?"

"I don't know. Controlling it, downloading information? See, he got that thing, and that's why I kicked him off the TARDIS. Abusing future technology. Hope Oswin's careful about what she tells him. He got rich using stolen technology, too." Either Adam couldn't hear them, or it was just difficult for him to hear them or talk, because he was very engrossed in the infospike and didn't both to defend himself at all. Nios began to understand Nine's reasoning behind initially getting rid of Adam now.

A computer terminal illuminated nearby. It didn't have a keyboard or any buttons to use but was set into part of the mainframe and displayed text. She and Nine both went over to it to see what it said and found that Adam had conjured up relevant files for them to read. The writing moved too quickly for even her to read but the Doctor was managing.

"What does it say?" she asked as lines and lines of text whizzed past at a hundred miles an hour.

"It's detailing a study," Nine explained, squinting at the terminal screen and its monochrome letters, "Max isn't an AI, we were right, it's just a supercomputer, capable of being remotely accessed and controlled from this infospike and from an observation station three-hundred-thousand-miles away. That's where the cameras are broadcasting to, this remote base. Primary objective of Max is to 'preserve the integrity of the experiment.'"

" _Experiment_?"

"A social experiment. Like Stanford – they randomly allocated guards and prisoners out of a group of people and saw how they changed depending on the roles they were given," the Doctor explained quickly, "That's what they've done here, only nobody inherently has any power, they keep the two classes completely isolated from each other. But all that stuff about them being assigned depending on their lives? It's rubbish. They were randomly allocated, all assigned a set amount of rations, and then slowly the diseases were spread, on purpose.

"Here, it says that 'Subject #1549, Jaleah Endem' had her 'individual failsafe protocol' initiated for 'contaminating the variables.'"

"Meaning what?"

"Meaning that she went down into the lower level and started helping people – I suppose that's not the result they want, they don't want to see people develop empathy for their fellow man."

"So what _do_ they want?"

"They want-" All the text on the mainframe disappeared for a moment, and then a new message: _Incoming Transmission_. "I suppose they're going to tell us what they want…"


	184. 200200: A Space Odyssey

_200200: A Space Odyssey_

 _Nios_

" _Well, well. It looks like some of our lab rats have found their way out of the maze_."

"Good joke, did it take you long to think of that?" the Doctor said coldly to the smarmy, male voice coming over the radio. Adam Mitchell was still locked into the infospike behind them. "If there were a ten-year-old girl here, she would have been very impressed, I'm sure." Nios didn't bother to point out that she was under ten years old. It wasn't the sort of thing she really informed people of. "Why are you not in your 'maze', then?"

" _We're merely observers_ ," said the voice, " _Besides, it's filthy there. A quarantine zone. If any of the authorities found out about it, it would probably be blown up to avoid any contagion spreading_."

"Interesting, considering vaccines and medications exist and all these people could easily be cured."

" _Population is an issue_ ," the voice said offhandedly, " _I'm sure any of the human empire's governing bodies would want to keep this under wraps and wouldn't want any of you subjects talking about it_."

"We're not your subjects," said the Doctor, "We're just tourists. And we're going to make sure that these 'governing bodies' find out about this place, and so does everybody else. What are you even experimenting on them for?"

" _Various things. If the body has developed any natural defences against certain diseases, how people react when randomly assigned classes-_ "

"If you want to know how people react, then why are you killing the ones who try to help?" Nios asked.

" _They're not the desired results the company funding the experiment wants. They want to prove that empathy is a weakness_."

"Clearly it is a weakness since you're murdering anybody who displays it."

" _It's not_ murdering _, it's just initiating the failsafe_."

"Is that what helps you sleep at night?" Nine challenged, "Failsafes? Backups?"

" _They're all expendable, really_."

"Expendable!?" Nine was getting furious. So was Nios, but she had a sudden inkling to back away from the Doctor slightly, "They're humans! Every last one of them! Individuals whose lives are worth ten times yours! At least they've shown that they care, that they can change, they're not watching people die from some observation deck a few hundred lightyears away. It's disgusting. A fake experiment risking real people's lives? Letting them die out here after making them believe it would be better? They'd be rewarded? I can't _wait_ to deal with you."

" _Sorry to tell you this, whoever-you-are, but you're probably not going to get the opportunity. There's more than a few failsafes in Eutopia Bay, it's even rigged to explode. As part of the quarantine procedure, if we deem there to be a risk_."

"You'd throw their lives away that easily? Just because we've found your mainframe?"

" _The validity of the experiment is well and truly compromised_." the Doctor paused and thought for a few moments, radiating a powerful sense of anger which finally made him command Nios's respect – and she had never really cared much for him before. Then again, she didn't consider herself to have a great deal respect for the other Doctors, either.

"What are your names, then? Who are you? What company do you work for?" the Doctor questioned, "What do they hope to get out of this?"

" _We're not going to tell you that_."

"Really? Even with your explosive master-plan? You won't even give me the pleasure of knowing exactly _why_ I'm being blown up?"

" _It's to do with population control_."

"Do you mean controlling the amount of people or just controlling the people?" Nios asked.

" _Controlling the people. To prove that it can be done through very simple means, like artificial currencies and disease and tricking them into believing in a puppet authority – in this case, Max. Despite all the laws against AI, people still seem drawn to them_ ," he said. Nios wondered if that were true.

"A true AI would care about these people a whole lot more than you would," Nine said angrily. Nios sensed he was talking about her. She didn't think Sprite was standing for it either, however. Adam Mitchell was still trapped in the chair behind them with the bright blue stream of data shovelling itself into his skull; was it painful? How would they know if he was in trouble?

" _We make them think that we have ultimate power – or that, the computer has ultimate power – but that they don't deserve it. They believe in the objectivity of the computer, so they never want to revolt._ "

"So you've brainwashed them."

" _We haven't done anything to their brains. The only one with any brain modifications is the boy messing around with the spike behind you; we didn't allow anybody with an infospike to come to Eutopia Bay in case they found their way in here. Not that they would be able to control Max, of course. You'd need to be some kind of genius to do that_."

"Some kind of genius, eh?" Nine mused, glancing back at Adam Mitchell. Nios supposed the question now was, how much of a genius was Adam Mitchell really? He didn't really compare with Oswin, but not even the Doctor compared with Oswin. And she wouldn't be surprised if these scientist-types were being very arrogant about what they did and didn't consider 'genius.' They probably thought _themselves_ geniuses, sitting thousands of miles away and pushing buttons to remotely execute people from afar, watching diseases spread with no care for the consequences or the lives they were destroying. But intelligence without empathy wasn't genius, it was psychopathy.

"You didn't tell us who you work for," Nios prompted again.

" _Rich people. The people who really run things, behind the scenes_."

"The Illuminati, you mean?" the Doctor asked.

" _No, nothing so ridiculous as the Illuminati. An ancient folklore story_."

"Right. Just sounds a bit like you work for the Illuminati, that's all."

" _We work for rich benefactors who have a vested interest in the direction of society, and who want their contributions to remain anonymous_."

"So, what you're saying is, you work for the Illuminati? You're _their_ puppets, just like Max is your puppet? Are you a fake authority, too?"

" _I assure you_ ," the voice was getting annoyed now, " _There's nothing fake about us or about our ability to blow up Eutopia Bay. The detonation is in progress at this very moment. There's very little left to draw out of the experiment anyway, it and the people involved have outlived their usefulness_."

"Is that what your masters over at the Illuminati will be saying to you once you give them the results? That people still wanted to do good, and help each other, and you killed them for their trouble? Going against Max's authority because they cared too much? Their hearts were too big? And you murdered them? Is that what you're going to tell them, or just lie?" the Doctor questioned, "Because if you lie, they'll carry out these shadow-tactics – in fact, people like them have been doing similar things for thousands of years, but people always revolt. Humanity is resilient and so many more of them are good people than bad."

" _But the bad ones are the ones with the influence and the money_."

"This is about money, then? They're going to pay you off? Buy your silence? You don't think they'll just throw you away because they don't want any loose ends? Exactly like you're trying to do to Eutopia Bay with this supposed detonation sequence?"

" _I assure you, the detonation sequence is certainly real_."

"Are you sure? Because I haven't heard any detonating yet. And I've been listening, too. Bit hard to miss."

" _You're insolent and you're going to die because of it, I hope you know that_."

"Thanks for the compliment. Make sure to tell the Illuminati I said hi. It's the Doctor, by the way – just 'the Doctor.' Tell them that, and, uh, I'm not sure they'll really want to put the fruits of your labour here into practice. They're going to get backlash if they try this on an unisolated population. Maybe the people here can't do anything, but there's no way you anybody could exercise this scale of control outside of laboratory conditions."

" _For god's sake – we don't work for the Illuminati_."

"Funny, because that's exactly what you'd say if you _did_. Oh, I know, maybe _you're_ just as stupid as all the people here you're infecting if you genuinely believe you're anything other than expendable? It doesn't take many scientists to put a kill-switch into a fake arm or order a supercomputer to dish out multivitamins. I promise you, they'll just get rid of you with a sweep of their shadowy, all-encompassing hand."

" _You don't know what you're talking about_."

"Are you going to blow me up yet? It's a bit chilly in here with your fragile mainframe, a nice explosion would would warm me up, though."

" _Oh, the countdown sequence has begun_."

"Really? Can you play it to the opening theme of _Thunderbirds_? That's my dying wish. I've always liked _Thunderbirds_. Thunderbird 5 is my favourite. What about you?" he asked Nios.

"I… what's a Thunderbird?" she asked.

"What's a-? God, and you say you care about human philosophy and culture. It's about a bunch of puppets who fly around in advanced rockets and ships and save the world. I'm sure the idea of being puppets is very familiar to these scientist boys, eh?" the Doctor continued to insult the voice over the radio. "It's set in the 2060s. They do smoke a lot, though. You know, for puppets."

"Right…"

" _You're on the brink of death, Doctor._ "

"Fantastic. It's about time. Gets so boring sometimes, with so many people threatening to kill me but then never _quite_ being able to follow through. Hope you weren't premature with your threats, though," Nine said, grinning, even though they couldn't see him. Concerned, Nios spared yet another glance for Adam Mitchell, who was now clenching and unclenching both his fists. The chair around him was steadily covering itself completely in ice; it would be encased before long. Was he going to freeze the station so that the explosives couldn't go off?

He didn't say anything anymore, just stood with his hands in his trouser pockets, waiting. The voice didn't say anything either.

Nios leant over rather awkwardly to speak: "What are we doing now? Do you have a plan?"

"We're being blown up, didn't you listen? He's right on the cusp of blowing us up. Aren't you?"

" _Yes_."

"Should hurry up with it, then. Can't be that hard to do a detonation if you have this live feed to talk to us. Can't you give us a verbal countdown? So we at least _know_ when we're going to die? What if we have to make an important phone call? Or text a girl back?" He looked at Nios very pointedly then, and she suddenly took out her phone because it didn't appear like he had any plan to get them out of the mess where there were some people literally trying to blow them up.

Finally, Nios got up the courage to reply to Dr Cohen:

 _Hi, I'm sorry I didn't text you back. I do want to come over, I was just nervous and didn't know how to reply so I've been obsessing about it all day. I never know what to say to you because I like you so much and I'm sorry I don't know what to do but I'll see you later?_

As soon as she pressed 'send', she expected the entire station to blow up. It still didn't though.

" _Something wrong here_ …" muttered the voice over the radio to somebody other than them.

"What's going on?" Nios asked. The Doctor shrugged.

"Only a genius with an infospike can work Max and potentially disable the explosives."

" _This doesn't – I don't_ -"

The voice on the radio and every single amber light in the mainframe room went off, including the vivid blue infospike. They were plunged into complete and utter silence.

"…Am I dead? Did we just die?" Nios asked. She couldn't see anything, it was pitch black. At least until her phone went off a second later. Given that she still had the ability to check her phone, she assumed that she was not dead, especially when the message was Dr Cohen telling her 'it's okay' along with her address and a time. She was over the moon.

"What was that? You look like all your Christmases have come at once," asked the Doctor, who could see her face illuminated by the glow of her phone screen, and her wide smile.

"Nothing. I just have a date. That's all."

"Finally. We can stop hearing about it now."

After just a few seconds the station rebooted. The amber lights switched back on and all the reactors kicked into gear, but the equipment the scientists had been using to talk to them with did not reconnect. The infospike didn't resume, either. Adam Mitchell began to sit up in the chair, holding both his hands to his head, groaning. The chair looked even more like an icicle now.

"It'll look just like the top floor of Satellite Five in here when you're done with it," the Doctor said, swaggering over to Adam.

"What a niche joke…" he muttered, "I hated doing that with you two here… feels like I'm naked…"

"Are you okay?" asked Nios. Sprite went to check on Adam like an obedient pet, despite the fact Adam got jittery around him.

"I'm just tired and feel a bit sick. It's sort of like a hangover." She didn't know what that felt like but took his word for it. "It's just a bit draining, you know, copying your entire personality onto an intelligence mainframe to make an all-powerful artificial clone of yourself can be exhausting." The colour disappeared from the Ninth Doctor's face.

"You what? You did _what_? You copied your personality onto Max!?" he was angrier now with Adam than with the twisted scientists. "You would do something so stupid!? Create a monstrous god-like supercomputer version of _yourself_!? And here I thought your ego wasn't nearly so inflated anymore, that maybe you'd learnt something from-"

"I'm kidding! Oh my god! It was a joke!" Adam exclaimed.

"…Oh. Well. Wasn't very funny."

"What _did_ you do?" asked Nios.

"I just hacked into Max and overwrote his programming and completely cut off any ability for that station to connect here or detonate those explosives. And I put in blocks to stop Max from doing anything to hurt anybody, including withholding medicine, and to give everything out equally by erasing the entire social currency system and the level system. Oh, and I recorded what they were saying and spliced it with all their Big Brother CCTV footage and sent it to the authorities out here. So, you know. They'll be caught and punished, and the people here will be fine. Because I'm not a piece of shit," he glared at the Doctor.

"I suppose maybe you have redeemed yourself. A bit. A tiny bit. _Maybe_."

Adam sighed, "I suppose that's basically as good as I'm going to get, for literally using my brain to hack into a supercomputer and save all these people, while exposing the corruption of this wider experiment to the general public of the entire human empire." Then he stood up and nearly collapsed. It was Nios who steadied him, used to having to act so reflexively to do the same for Oswin. Apparently, she was the de facto carer for _both_ of them.

"I texted her back," she told him proudly, because at least he had tried to help her with the chronic shyness she didn't know she had until meeting Cohen.

"Texting a girl back is almost as impressive as what I did."

"Are you being sarcastic…?"

"No, I'm… I'm pretty bad at talking to girls as well, so… yeah. Can we leave now? I'm really tired of being in a bad _Deus Ex_ fanfiction, at this point…"


	185. Just What the Doctor Ordered

_Just What the Doctor Ordered_

 _Nios_

She had had a very short life, truth be told, and she had been a mindless drone for more of it than she had not. But despite her still very limited experiences in the real world, Nios was sure that this was the most nervous she had ever been. It was something about meeting Dr Cohen at her own flat, her home, which felt to her like a frightening and loaded situation overflowing with subtle, humanistic social conventions she had not a hope of understanding. She had such little knowledge of even what kind of greeting to give that she felt as though she had been stripped bare in a public place, flung into the deepest whirlpool of human interaction without so much as the chance to dampen her feet in the shallows first.

"Hi," she said tentatively after knocking on the door. Cohen opened it almost immediately. Even in all her nervousness, she couldn't help but smile when she saw Dr Cohen.

"Hey."

"I'm sorry about earlier and not replying… I was just-"

"Is fine, dinnae worry about it, honestly," she said, stepping aside and holding the door open, "Ye can come in."

"Thanks. And it's nice to see you again. It's been a whole week."

"Feels like longer," she smiled at her feet.

Cohen's flat was a verifiable museum of medical oddities, at a much more extreme degree than the actual medical archives they had visited because the vast majority of her specimens were not of Earth at all. Nios didn't recognise any of them, which was hardly surprising given that she sometimes felt as though she didn't know anything about anything, but they lined all of the walls on dusty shelves stacked high, all turned at different angles so that their labels would be perfectly visible from the exact centre of the room (which she was sure was done on purpose.) While the petrified and pickled alien remains were kept at an impeccable level of order, however, many other things were not. There were lots of stray papers littering the coffee table, the kitchen surfaces, the sofa cushions, an armchair it was impossible to sit in because it was stacked so high with folders. There was also a wide array of books, all medical encyclopaedias and journals from what Nios could see, in tall, precarious piles leaning against the jar-laden shelves, some of them still out and half-open having been recently perused. Nios was sure, though, that if even one sheet of paper was moved just an inch from where Cohen had left it, she would know and become disturbed, so Nios adopted the air of being at a crime scene when she entered, refraining from touching anything lest it be contaminated by forensic evidence (though synthetics generally didn't have much by way of forensic evidence and were told apart through serial numbers rather than pseudo-genetics).

"Shite, ah'm sorry about the mess," Cohen said, closing the door behind her after leading Nios through her building. She quickly went to pick up some of the books and papers from the sofa and move them out of the way so that Nios could sit down, but in the process, she knocked down one of her awkward towers of books and they went across the floor. Cohen stared at the books.

"A messy place is better than no place at all. I haven't got a bedroom."

"Why not?"

"I don't know. I haven't got any possessions and I don't need a bed to sleep in, so… does this sound sad? It sounds sad, doesn't it?"

"Aye, a wee bit," Cohen was busying herself picking up her books, stacking them in order of which was largest with the largest at the bottom.

"I just don't know what I'd do if I had a room. Just sit in there?"

"That's, eh, kindae funny."

"It is?"

"Aye, like… yer still too used tae bein trapped in involuntary servitude. Dinnae even have a room, any possessions…" She finished piling up the books. "Ye dinnae jist want somewhere ye can be oan yer own?"

"I sit in the console room, I have lots of time on my own. Not many people talk to me."

"Really?"

"No. Only Oswin. Maybe Adam. Jenny, but she's away now. Everyone else… I don't know if they trust me. It's a bit like they pretend I'm not there." There was a pause where Cohen was thinking of what to say next. "Sorry – this is supposed to be a date, and I'm being mopey and talking about myself."

"Is okay, really. Ah like tae hear about you. Even though loats of things about ye are sad." It was only when she was talking to Dr Cohen that she realised how tragic the details of her existence really were, when normally when she talked to people she adopted a demeanour of repeating cold facts in a rather disconnected way, as though everything that had happened to her had actually happened to somebody else.

"Yeah… I never realise. It's hard to reconcile the two halves of my life sometimes."

"How dae ye mean?" Cohen sat down on the arm of her sofa, despite clearing it of papers, and watched Nios as she talked, Nios herself standing and thinking carefully about her words. Though she was looking at her, Cohen still pointedly avoided looking at her face and making any eye contact.

"It's just odd to remember that just a few months ago, less than a year, I didn't have any emotions. None at all. Not even pain."

"What if ye were… broken, or somethin?"

"Oh, well, I still have a pain-like simulation, but it's nowhere near as intense as human pain is. I'm not even sure pain _is_ an emotion, just a sensory response."

"Are ye lacking in other sensory responses?"

"I… I don't think I know what you mean," Nios said completely truthfully, because she did not know what Cohen meant at all. Cohen may have grown slightly flushed, but Nios couldn't quite tell.

"Forget ah said that. So – what's that like tae feel nothing? My sister thinks I feel nothing. Ye ken she's a nurse? She works with kids with learning difficulties and has havin us fae a sister oan her bloody CV, when she didnae give two shits when we were growing up," Cohen said. Nios didn't say anything, there was a pause. "Sorry. She jist goat promoted today"

"That's good though, isn't it?"

"Ah dinnae think she's good at her joab, so ah didnae congratulate her, ah didnae saying anythin, and she shouted at us over the phone. Ah'm no good at talking on the phone, otherwise ah'd ring yous," Cohen moved so that she was sitting on the actual sofa, so Nios decided she would go sit next to her and look for an opportunity to hold her hand, if one presented itself. "Ugh. She wis like, 'yer a machine, Hayley.'" It was the first time Nios had heard her say her own name out-loud.

"That doesn't sound like a compliment. Though, personally I don't think there's anything wrong with being a machine." That was a clunky joke that she didn't deliver particularly well, and Cohen didn't really react. "…Are you upset?"

"We fight a lot." Nios didn't know anything about families. The only sisters she knew were Clara and Oswin, and they weren't even really sisters – plus, they argued constantly, but meant the world to one another. Already she wasn't sure that Cohen and her sister had the same kind of relationship. "That's mainly the reason I asked ye tae come."

"Oh, really?" Nios, again, wasn't sure what she meant.

"Because ah _am_ upset. And… yer nice tae us."

"I have every intention of continuing to be nice to you," Nios assured her, "And I'd love to be the person you want to see when you're upset, though it's not good that you're upset to begin with."

"I hung up oan her after she said that. Then I asked you if ye wanted tae come see us flat, likesay, because ah dinnae wantae go anywhere else, but… yer us only friend."

"We're not more than friends, you don't think? Because we did kiss. I've been thinking about it constantly." Cohen smiled and glanced at her for a half second.

"Friends is a good place tae start anythin. Have ye really been thinkin about that, though?"

"Yes, have you not?"

"Ah dinno, ah try not to be presumptuous, ken? Like… ah wouldnae want tae assume or say anythin before things are for certain, likesay," Cohen explained. Nios nodded slowly, watching her, "Yer way out of us league, after all."

"I'm sure I'm not."

Cohen laughed, "Ye are, ye look like a Barbie or somethin. Like, totally perfect." A beam spread across Nios's face. "Are ye smiling?"

"Yes, I'm smiling. Forget about that, carry on telling me about your sister," she entreated, "You must want to talk to someone about it if you asked me to come and see your flat, after insisting it would put me off you even more. Which it hasn't, by the way."

"There isnae much more tae say. Only that she's no talking tae us again, but this happens a loat. We've never git oan. Ye ken, ah havenae been back tae Glasgow fer over a year. Apparently, us mam's getting worse."

"With the dementia? I thought you said you pay the fees for the nursing home she's in?"

Cohen frowned, "Ye remember me telling you that?"

"Of course I do. Synths remember everything, it's recorded. More efficient."

"Kindae freaky. In a good way. Might be nice tae have a girlfriend who never forgets anniversaries. No that ah've had any girlfriends who managed tae reach'n anniversary."

"Why not?" Nios was surprised. She adored Dr Hayley Cohen already.

"Ah think it's the death thing mainly. Oh – and us tattoo, that freaks people out, but ah dinnae think you will be too bothered. Since yer no a human." Nios paused, glanced around at the specimens filling the small apartment, and came to the worst conclusion.

Very slowly, she asked Dr Cohen, "It's not of a dead baby, is it?"

"No!" she exclaimed, "It's the grim reaper. With flowers growin out of his eyes. It's oan us back, a girl once said tae us that she cannae sleep next tae me because it looks like it's starin at her. But, likesay, ye dinnae have a skeleton."

"I do have a skeleton, it's just made of solid tungsten and doesn't have any fancy marrow or calcium."

"Like the Terminator?"

"Not _quite_ like the Terminator…"

"What dae you have instead've muscles?"

"Hydraulics. Hinges."

"Like a car?"

"Yes, like a car."

"Tha's no so interestin."

"I've never been more thrilled to be called 'not so interesting' before. I suppose if you _did_ think it was interesting you would want to dissect me, like all of these… things," she glanced around at the room again. It was quite gloomy in there. "Why do you fight with your sister? Sibling bonds seem… important, from what I've seen."

"Says you who didnae want tae live with any of the other synths."

"They're not my siblings."

"What's a sibling? Ye were made by the same person, people, processes. Ah bet internally yer identical. Ye dinnae have genetics, or chromosomes, yer mass-produced, what would you define a sibling of yours tae be?" Cohen challenged her, and Nios sat very quietly, considering this, for a good while. Somehow, the large silence did not grow awkward. "Every relationship is a choice, it doesnae matter what yer blood is." The pause continued. "What're ye thinking?"

"About Clara and Oswin. They're genetically identical, but they come from different points in time, and they were both born, physically, from completely different people. They're not even the same age, don't even have the same birthday. Everyone calls them 'the Twins.' I suppose you must be right, we do choose. But then – why wouldn't you choose to stop talking to Victoria completely?"

"Because life isnae that simple."

"Then why did you-"

"Tae see what ye would say. Ah like watchin yous think."

"I'm not a novelty."

"Ah know that, but what _you_ dinnae know is that yer even prettier when yer thinking." Nios didn't know how to process that. "Easiest time tae look at you is when yer no payin any attention tae me."

"I'm always paying attention to you." Cohen smiled and looked at the floor. "What you were saying, about choosing our relationships. And thinking. You haven't given any thought to our relationship, or lack thereof? You were the one who said the word 'girlfriend.' You said it twice."

"Uh…"

"Because I like you. A lot. And you haven't been successful at putting me off, no offence. Now I'm desperate to see this tattoo."

"Three dates. And _then_ we can talk about that."

"But because we went to that café-"

"No, no," she shook her head, "That wis all one."

"So, what's your prediction for the end of our impending third date?"

"Eh, speculatin about the future is as difficult tae think about as lyin."

"What do you _want_ to happen?"

"Yes, ah like you, too, obviously."

"So… speaking of _third dates_ …"

"Aye?" Cohen prompted her, perplexed.

"Rose is getting married. You don't know Rose, but I live with her, on the TARDIS, and I thought maybe you might want to come with me?"

"…Oh," Cohen seemed crestfallen, disappointed. She looked at the floor.

"What?"

"Ah cannae come tae a wedding."

"Oh, right."

"Ah'm sorry – it's jist, so many people, and ah dinno know any of'm, and fer the _whole day_ , havin tae dress up, be sociable, interact, in a new place… ah _adore_ ye asking me, though, dinnae git us wroang – is no you. Yer wonderful. It's the situation."

"It's fine. I can't blame you. I don't really want to go either. I think it's going to be unbearable. Have you ever been to a wedding?"

"Jist Vicky's, an she's divorced now anyway. Did no last long at all." Nios quietened then, thinking about whether she would be expected to get Rose and the Tenth Doctor a wedding present, and what you even normally got people for weddings. Didn't they usually publish registries full of appliances? As far as she knew, there hadn't been anything in the way of handy lists given out to those of them attending the wedding. But maybe Rose wasn't too fussed for presents. She practically had everything in the universe already, _including_ control of the actual universe. Cohen nudged her arm gently. "What were ye up to today, then?"

"We went to the 2003rd Century."

" _Wow_. Do humans still exist that far in the future?"

"Yes. And they're just as cruel as ever."

"Ye think all humans are cruel?"

"No, I think very few are, but the cruel ones are always exceptional at it and leave everybody else in their shadow." Nios went on to explain, as best she could, everything she had seen that day; Max, the prosthetics, the diseases, the experiment, the infospike, Sprite's heroics; Cohen hung on to every word of the story. She had probably never heard anybody talk about the future in so much detail before.

Once Nios was done telling Cohen everything that had happened to her, including her horror at the sight of the infospike and Jaleah Endem's untimely death, Cohen was at a loss for words. It took her a while to figure out what to say. Though out of everything Nios had told her, she was admittedly surprised by which detail Cohen picked out.

"Ye took that family medicine?"

"I shouldn't like to let somebody die when I have the means to do something about it." Cohen completely knocked her for six at that point by kissing her cheek out of the blue, Nios freezing up like a crashed computer for a moment.

"Well, yer a hero too, in mah book. Ah couldnae care less about what any men are up tae."

"…I don't know. Adam can be sweet. He's nice. He's nothing like Oswin, he hardly says a word most of the time."

"Well _she_ can talk enough for a dozen boyfriends, let alone the one," Cohen muttered, "Ah only care about you. No offence meant tae anyboady else."

"Am I heroic enough to officially date yet?"

Cohen laughed, " _Three dates_! Are ye no programmed with any patience?"

"My programming is self-corrupting when I'm around a pretty girl."

"How romantic."

"I'm trying my hardest."

"One more date, okay? Then ah'll think about it."

"Can I decide where we go for the third one, then?"

"Why? Dae ye have a good idea?"

"No. But I have a time machine, I'm sure I'll be able to think of something impressive. Maybe I can convince the Doctor to let you peruse the anatomical volumes I'm sure he keeps."

"Are ye serious? Ah wid _love_ that."

"I'll try and come up with something. But I'm not very creative."

"If it's jist the two've use, then ah'm sure whatever ye decide will be perfect regardless."

"I hope so," she beamed.


	186. Nerd Flirts XIII

_Nerd Flirts XIII_

 _Adam_

"Hey?"

"Oh, hi," he mumbled to Oswin after entering without talking to her. She was sitting on the sofa with her feet up – or foot, as it were – and there was a notable absence of an infant in the room. But his head was pounding and he had made a beeline for the freezer, hardly noticing her in his periphery.

"You okay?"

"Do we have any ice?"

"Ice?"

"I need some ice…" he opened the freezer and looked around.

"You're a walking ice cube, babe," she reminded him.

"I know, but – I have a headache…" he found very little of use to him in the freezer and switched to the fridge where his eyes fell on a can of fruit cider he had there. It was this he grabbed and pressed to his forehead, which did very little to alleviate the headache. Hopefully the alcohol in it would do better, because he intended on opening it to drink shortly.

Oswin craned her neck and watched him with concern as he left the kitchen and came to sit down on the sofa with her. She lifted up her twisted leg carefully and set it back down again propped up on his lap once he had lowered himself onto the cushions. As soon as he met her eyes properly he knew she was worrying more than she should be.

"It's nothing," he said, "I had to use the infospike today."

"You did?" she was surprised, "And it hurt?"

"It was just exhausting. And embarrassing."

"Can I have a look at it?" she asked as though she was actually qualified to examine the infospike, like it wasn't significantly more advanced than anything from her own history, and like she had any background in medicine.

He really must be tired if he was being so snippy with Oswin, even if it was just in his head… Though he was already handing over the keyring with the spike controls attached so that she could open the door and see his brain. He had to lean forwards to let her squint at it. He took that opportunity to open the can of cider.

"Well, it looks… like a brain. Hmm. Maybe we should scan it?" she suggested, pressing the button on the keyring to close his head up again. And it better stay closed for the rest of the foreseeable future, he thought.

"No, no, it's fine. I just had to do something kind of difficult with it, that's all. And I don't have any practice since I only used it once before."

"Really? What did you do?" she entreated him, growing eager, leaning on the back of the sofa and watching him fondly.

"Hacked into a supercomputer and overwrote its programming and saved the lives of thousands of people who were being used in some Illuminati social experiment," he explained, "They had this AI, see, only it wasn't an AI at all, it was just a normal computer, but all the people on this spacestation had been tricked into thinking it was a real AI. Called Max. Responsible for giving out rations of food and medicine depending on people's randomly assigned social capital. And the prosthetic deaths – all the faux-rich citizens had these kind of _Deus Ex_ style augmentations and limbs that were complete robot, cybernetic limbs. But they were rigged with poison and the scientists overseeing it could just trigger the poison to release into the bloodstream whenever they wanted."

"Right. So, you need to back up and tell me about the fact you overwrote the programming of a supercomputer with your brain!?"

"I mean, I thought you'd be interested in the fake AI and the prosthetics stuff."

"Oh, I didn't hear anything after the first sentence. That stuff sounds interesting and all, but maybe save the anecdote for a time when I'm not swooning over my incredible boyfriend?" she said, "You _reprogrammed_ a _supercomputer_ with your _brain_ , Mitchell. That is so hot I think my vagina just multiplied. Our sofa cushions are going to be soaked through in a matter of minutes."

"Yeah. I mean, you're disgusting, but, yeah."

"I'm impressed! And proud! Can't I be proud of you for being a hero? Saving people? You've got to take responsibility for how amazing you are." She was beaming at him so warmly that he thought he might defrost. Under her gaze he grew a little restless and then drank some more of his cider, thinking.

"What about you, then?"

"Oh, I'm amazing too, for sure."

"I don't mean – like, how's your day been? When did the baby leave?"

"Just under an hour ago. Juliet told me I can absolutely babysit again because I did such a good job, so you might be seeing more of Nalyt. He'll learn how to talk soon. It's kind of nice, you know? Actually being on good terms with some of my family again. Plus, I _really_ like babies. They're a guilty pleasure. Do you like babies?"

"Uh… I feel like that's a very loaded question you're expecting a specific answer to." She narrowed her eyes at him. "I don't really know."

"Would you want to have kids?"

"Erm…"

"If we could, I mean. Just hypothetically." He drank more cider and didn't answer. "I'm not trying to trick you, babe. I'm only wondering because I think you'd be a really good dad, that's all."

"Oh… do you really?"

"Yes. Because you're so calm and patient. And you know how to cook. And you're wonderful. Plus, even if you do get bored of them, you're rich so you could just, like, hire a nanny or whatever," she shrugged, "Then you could leave them alone and ruin me for a few hours."

"Wow, nice to see you care so much about our imaginary future children." She leant her head against the back of the sofa, watching him. "Honestly, I've never thought about it. Never thought I'd have the opportunity. You know, with a girl."

"The 'opportunity'?"

"That none of them would want to have kids with me. None of you. After getting to know me."

"Mitchell, you're killing me. If I was still alive I'd let you fuck me every day until I ran out of eggs, that's how willing I'd be to birth them. I mean, how painful is childbirth, really? Obviously quite painful, but I'm betting most of the women who say that _haven't_ had their brains removed and put into a Dalek. Hurts a lot getting your brain removed."

"Yeah… I mean, you'd-? What?" She smiled at him and did not repeat herself. He found himself wondering if he'd actually heard her properly. Knowing her, he probably had, but liked to think it was his brain chip playing tricks on him. "If only we weren't both undead. Though, I think I'd want to be at least thirty before I had kids. Wait until I don't have to look after my sister anymore."

"Mmm… it's good I can't have any, really," she sighed.

"Why?"

"Well, you know."

"You're really good with them, though. Nalyt and Ellie both think you're great, and most of your brothers."

"Yeah…" she smiled sadly now and looked away, growing sincere. "I just worry about me. If I had one of my episodes, and I couldn't look after them, because I just wouldn't… and then you'd have me and some kid, or kids, to worry about. I like babysitting, but at least that's not risking any longterm responsibility I might not be able to manage. As much as I'd like to. I prefer it when 'creations' of mine have off-switches." He reached over and took her hand at that moment, realising that she actually was a little upset by the fact they were never going to have children. Unless they made weird, simulation children. Or stole DNA from past versions of themselves to artificially grow a baby. Neither option was something he legitimately entertained, not even for a second; he still felt he was too young and they hadn't even been together long enough to start thinking about that. "Sorry I'm going on about kids. It's just this thing with Martha, that's all. Got me thinking."

"Oh. Her cancer."

"Her…? What?"

"She's, like, ill, right?" Oswin stared at him. "Me and Nios were talking this morning, and we figured she's terminally ill, or something."

"Terminally ill?" Oswin asked him, deadpan.

"Uh…"

"She's pregnant."

"Oh." For a moment he was only thinking about how he had been wrong, but then the true realisation dawned on him. " _Oh!_ No way! Seriously? That's so cool!"

"Yeah. That's why she's so worried. She doesn't want to shit out some mutant, alien monster. Like that cat, with the tentacles."

"I _like_ the cat with the tentacles… are you allowed to tell me? Isn't it a secret? Their business?"

"I don't know. I'm not going to tell anybody else, unless Clara reads my mind, but she never does that unless she's worried about me. I never keep things from _you_ , though. Why'd you think she has cancer? You can mind-fuck a supercomputer, but you can't work out that Mickey and Martha are gonna have a baby?"

"Well… I don't know… I thought she was being weird around the baby because she was thinking about her own mortality, or something." She laughed at him.

"You're mad. No offence."

"Is it gonna be a super-baby?"

"They don't know yet. Martha keeps scanning for mutations. Do you want to help me build an incubator?"

"Build one? Can't the TARDIS?"

She paused and then began slowly, "I don't want to sound like a pessimist, but somebody has to say that… well, maybe it'll develop some kind of powers that put Martha in danger. But we have very advanced technology, and where I'm from you can basically remove a fertilised egg and grow it externally. Which obviously sounds like a very cold kind of science and it absolutely won't be what either of them want, but what if something happens? It would be nice to have the equipment there already, just in case. Better safe than sorry." She stopped talking, but he sensed she had something else to say so he waited. "It's just that – if someone has to take on the responsibility of talking about the worst that can happen, I'll gladly do it to help Mickey and Martha."

" _Do_ you think something bad might happen?"

"Honestly? I… have no idea. Not a single clue. I think we just have to wait and see and be careful. But I hope it goes well, obviously. It'd be great to have a TARDIS baby. Apart from River. A TARDIS baby who isn't a psychopath."

"They're going to raise it on the TARDIS?"

"Oh, no, that's not what I meant. Another weird time-baby, I mean. They told me they're going to leave once they can find somewhere to live."

"They don't have anywhere?"

"Uh… they said they don't want to bring up a baby in London. Not one sort of… at-risk. I mean, you can't blame them, Amy was kidnapped while she was pregnant and had River stolen." He sat thinking to himself, turning the can of cider around his hands.

"I told Nios I was thinking of selling my house."

"You're _what_? Selling your house?"

"Thinking about it. Very recently. I was gonna talk to you about it tonight, anyway. But then… well… it's in the middle of nowhere. A ten-minute drive outside the nearest village with a train station, half an hour away from a city with a big supermarket… if they're looking for somewhere secluded to live."

"Babe, they're not going to take handouts, believe me. They're not those sorts of people."

"I could rent it to them, I mean. I own Other Clara's house, after all – I built it from scratch to keep her safe, and she's got Jenny there 24/7 to look after her as well. I could at least offer. It seems stupid having that house there sitting empty and I thought I'd get a flat in Cambridge, near the HQ, just in case I have to go down there – and so Ellie has somewhere to stay. What do you think?"

"Me? I think you're the sweetest boy in the whole world, and if you want to offer to rent them your massive fuck-off mansion, then go ahead. We're all lucky to have you here on the TARDIS. Not just me. Everyone. Although I am _especially_ lucky."

"I should do more to help people."

"Why don't you just… make a list? Let's both make a list of things we should do, even. Projects, goals, that kind of thing. A shared list. And in the middle, we'll have a cute, shared column, of things we do together. Because we should do more things together. You _did_ promise to help me with Eslilia… I think if we had a list, we'd be able to be more effective, you know? As a duo. We're both supposed to be geniuses but we never do anything genius together."

"…Okay," he grinned, "In a bit. After I've had something to eat. We can make an incubator for the baby if you think it's a good idea."

"Personally, I just can't wait to see what kind of a kid this baby turns out to be…"

"Yeah."

"I hope it's hot when it grows up."

"Yeah… although, also, no."

"It definitely will be. Martha's gonna be a MILF, too."

"I think I'm gonna go and cook something… in the kitchen… away from you."

"What do you think they'll name it?"

"I don't know."

"Maybe they'll name it after me."

"I doubt that, somehow."

"You're right. They should give it a name starting with 'M.' To keep the theme going. What about 'Moswin'?"

"Okay. I'm ignoring you now."

"I love you, too."


	187. Birthday Wishes

**DAY 6,574**

 _Birthday Wishes_

 _Martha_

An eight-hour shift in the ER of the only rural hospital in a hundred-mile-radius had left Martha exhausted. Called into work for two o'clock in the morning, it was after ten by the time she finally got home – but she wasn't going to let her tiredness show. And working in the emergency room still wasn't quite as stressful as travelling through time and hunting aliens; the TARDIS and Torchwood had really served to prepare her for an ordinary medical career; at least it was usually only the one life at risk and not the entire fate of the human race. It was probably this lack of pressure that meant she had never lost a patient since they moved back to Earth permanently, eighteen years ago – that and her rather advanced medical experience.

She turned onto a dirt road which was very difficult to spot if you didn't know it was there, and before she knew it she was pulling up in front of a decently-sized cottage out in what was certainly the middle of nowhere. It was a big change from living in the city her whole life, moving around from one isolated house to another every few years like a couple of fugitives, but a welcome one. At the very least it put her mind at ease, and it _was_ nice not to be in London's smog anymore, to be out in some anonymous bit of forestry along the English/Welsh border.

Martha had barely had the opportunity to get out of the car once she'd parked up before she was attacked by a tiny and hyperactive ball of energy who had just come crashing out of the house towards her. Martha opened her arms when the child crashed into her and lifted the girl off her feet.

"Ooh, you are getting _so_ heavy now, I can barely lift you," Martha grunted, which was true though she did strive to pick her up and balance her in her arms.

"Where did you go?"

"Mummy had to go to work," Martha said, carrying her back towards the house because it was chilly out and beginning to rain, "At two in the morning."

"You shouldn't be allowed to work at night."

"I have to work at night, Mattie. I'm a doctor, you know that. I have to go save people's lives. What if someone's life needed saving and I wasn't there to do it because I was home in bed?"

"They should wait."

"They should wait?" Martha asked, pushing open the front door awkwardly with her shoulder.

"Yes. Because I need you too. It's my special day."

"Your special day? What's special about it? Is your life in danger?" Martha asked, feigning obliviousness.

"It could be."

"How so?"

"What if a volcano erupted?"

"A volcano? In England?"

"If Yellowstone erupted, everyone in the world would die, and that's in America."

"Hmm…" Martha frowned and studied Matilda in her arms, who was licking something off the back of her hand, "Has daddy been letting you watch those documentaries again?" Matilda didn't say anything. "What are you eating? What's that on your hand?"

"Nothing," she said, beginning to struggle. Martha set her down on the floor and Matilda went running away into the living room, which was highly suspicious in and of itself. Martha closed the front door behind her and went to follow the girl into the living room.

"What is it? Come back and show me."

"No," Matilda ran all the way through the living room and into the kitchen.

"Mickey?" Martha called loudly.

"I'm in the kitchen," he called back, then she heard him add, "Hey, you, don't run in the house. You'll slip and fall."

"I wasn't running," Matilda said, "I was walking really fast."

"Also known as running," Mickey said. When Martha came into the kitchen she saw Mattie trying to climb onto one of the high chairs at the breakfast bar while Mickey was frying bacon. She dragged a large Nutella jar towards her and began scooping globs of it out with her fingers; that was the mystery of what she had been eating solved, at least.

"Nutella isn't breakfast, Matts," Martha said, debating taking the jar off her.

"It is today, because today's my special day and _you've_ forgotten so you should let me eat whatever I want," she argued adamantly.

"Really? What would today be, then?" Martha leant on the kitchen counter. Matilda glared at her, pouting, covered in Nutella. "I can't think of any justifiable reason why daddy would be letting you eat Nutella out of the jar for breakfast."

"I'm making bacon sandwiches as well," Mickey said, glancing over at them every now and then from the frying pan. Then he looked back, "Hold on, how much of that Nutella have you eaten? You're getting a cake later, you know. Put the lid back on it now."

"Can't I have some with my bacon?"

"Nutella and bacon?" Martha frowned, "I don't think so."

"But I like bacon, and I like Nutella."

"You like a lot of things," Martha told her, "But you can't just throw every food you like into a blender and drink it."

"Why not?"

"It wouldn't taste very nice."

"Can I try it?"

"No. Not even on your birthday. You see, I do know what day it is. Why don't you run all the way upstairs and wash your hands for when people start arriving? You don't want to get them covered in chocolate, do you?"

"Go on, wash your hands, do what your mum says," Mickey entreated the child, "You can open your presents when you come back down." As soon as she heard the promise of presents she went barrelling off through the house. "No running!" She didn't listen to him, they heard her thunderous steps go all the way up the stairs and towards the bathroom. Mickey sighed and then smiled at Martha, halfway through flipping the bacon rashers in the pan over. "How was work?"

"It was alright. Saw a teenager who got shot in the foot with a nail gun."

"Shot by who?"

"His friend. They were 'playing a game', apparently. 'Didn't realise the nails would be so sharp.' It was wedged underneath his big toenail, we had to remove the whole nail afterwards because the wound was unsurprisingly infected, after it had already been stuck in there for four days. He cried. He's on antibiotics now."

"Nice breakfast conversation."

"You asked, it's the most interesting thing that happened last night," Martha shrugged, gingerly putting the sticky lid back on the Nutella jar since Matilda hadn't seen fit to do so and putting it back in the cupboard. "Why'd you let her eat this?"

"She woke me up at seven jumping on the bed asking where you were," he explained. "Needed to give her something to keep her quiet, the porridge wasn't doing it. She's hyper even without the sugar."

"It's her eighteenth birthday," said Martha, "I was excited for my eighteenth."

"You weren't a half-alien mutant child who ages three times as slowly as a normal human," he said.

"Oh, well. Would you really rather she did age normally?" Martha decided to go about buttering some slices of bread for these sandwiches Mickey was promising. She was in desperate need for a cup of tea, too. "She'd be grown up by now. Moving out. Sick of us, going to university." It was the only real side-effect of Mattie being born with the corrupted strain of Manifest DNA as far as they had ever noticed; nothing to do with the fact she was also a Time Lord brimming with temporal energy, just the still-incurable Manifest virus.

"At least she'd be able to go to school," he said. It did sadden Martha, too, that it would be a bad move to send Mattie to school. Who knew what kinds of things she might say to teachers or classmates? Things that could put her at risk? At least they didn't have to move quite as often if they kept her more isolated.

"She'd have to keep re-doing years, she'd get bored," Martha said, "She's still cleverer than most other five-year-olds. Are you not up to the challenge of teaching her about life anymore? Was the alphabet and counting to a hundred too difficult?"

"I'm gonna teach her to play poker. I'm gonna groom her to be a poker champion. By the time she's visibly sixteen, she'll be making millions winning high-stakes tournaments. Just you wait and see."

"Oh, I will. With baited breath." While she buttered the bread, they heard their daughter's loud footsteps jumping back down the stairs. Martha had told her off frequently for jumping down the stairs like that, but she never listened. One day she'd slip and fall; maybe then she'd learn her lesson. "You're soaking wet," Martha said when she came back into the kitchen, "How have you managed that?"

"I washed off all the Nutella."

"…Right. Your dad wants to teach you to play poker," Martha said. Mickey glared at her and she smirked.

"A straight flush is five cards in order with the same pattern," Mattie declared.

"Pattern? You mean a suit," corrected Mickey, then he paused for a moment, "Wait, what did-"

"Who taught you that?" Martha asked her, shocked. Matilda didn't say anything, she looked away towards the window. "Matts…" she warned.

"O- _kay_. It was Jenny."

"Jenny-!? She taught you to play poker?"

"She said that you told her to play a game with me and she said it's her favourite game."

"Alright, well, I'll be having some very strong words with Jenny when she brings your birthday cake later."

"Hang on," said Mickey, slowly addressing Matilda very seriously, "Did you win any money against her at poker?"

"I won some biscuits." He thought for a moment, then spoke to Martha again.

"See? Prodigy."

" _Whatever_ – is the bacon done yet?"

"Nearly."

"Where's my presents?" Mattie persisted.

"I'll get them in a minute, I'm helping your dad make food."

"Now that I'm eighty-"

"Eight _een_ ," Mickey corrected her, picking up bacon rashers with tongs and setting them onto the three plates Martha had gotten out of the cupboard.

"Now that I'm eighteen, can I go to university?"

"What do you want to do at university?" Martha asked.

"Be a doctor. But a better one than you." Mickey snickered in the background.

"A better one?"

"Not _better_ … the ones who do the operations."

"A surgeon, you mean?"

"Yeah. Can I do that?"

"If you want, one day," Martha said, "They don't normally let five-year-olds into uni to study surgery, though. And you don't have any qualifications."

"Because you won't let me go to school!" she protested.

"Of course you can be a surgeon one day, Matts," said Mickey, cutting her sandwich in half and sliding it to her across the breakfast bar. She sceptically lifted up the bread and examined it. "What's wrong?"

"There's no Nutella."

"Jenny told me your cake is going to have loads of Nutella on it," Mickey told her, going to sit down by her side at the breakfast bar. Martha didn't sit down, she stayed standing up to eat her sandwich because she was going to have to go and fetch presents in a minute.

"Can I have some beer?"

"What kind?" Mickey asked. Mattie faltered, not knowing the names of any types or brands of beer apparently. "Beck's Blue?" Mattie frowned. "You can have a mocktail."

"You're making fun of me."

"No I'm not," he lied, "Would I do that?"

"Yes, because you think you're funny, but you're not funny."

"Don't wound daddy's ego, sweetheart," Martha told her, "It's very fragile."

"Can I drive your car?"

"I don't know – can you reach the pedals yet?"

"I could wear stilts and a big hat."

"Sorry, you can't drive the car until you can reach the pedals," Martha said.

"How can you drive then?" she said, eating her sandwich and looking innocent. Mickey snorted.

"Excuse me?" Martha asked.

"When you used to have the different car, you sat on a cushion sometimes." Martha stopped to stare at her daughter and try and think of an adequate response. Very annoyingly, Mattie was right. Mickey was smirking to himself and trying to hide it in his sandwich. "Can I have some tomato ketchup?" She knew she had won. Mickey silently handed her the bottle of Heinz.

"Do you want your presents now?" Martha changed the subject while she carefully watched the girl try to squirt the squeezy bottle. Predictably, it went everywhere, squirting a big red streak halfway across her plate and the breakfast bar.

"Oops," she said. "Yes, please!"

"I'll go do that, then…" Martha muttered, feeling understandably belittled. She paused on her way past to talk to Mickey, however, putting a hand on his shoulder and leaning down, "Would you make me a coffee? I'm desperate for caffeine."

"Was it that tiring? Pulling off someone's toenail?"

"They are quite hard to pull off," she said.

"I'll do you a coffee – go and get her present," he waved her away, smiling. She kissed his cheek and left him as he stood up to fill the kettle, going and turning the latch on the backdoor.

"Why are my presents outside?" Matilda called after her.

"You just be careful with that ketchup, now," Mickey warned her, "I hope one day you learn how to use condiments without making a mess…"

Martha took her keys out of her pocket and headed through the foggy, dew-covered garden to get to the shed. They were completely surrounded by trees on all sides, trees and an invisible boundary fence Oswin had put up to keep the Artron energy they were all imbued with off any searching, alien radars. It was nearly eleven. They had told people to arrive at twelve, but some of them were always early. Ten and Rose, she was sure, would be there early, probably bringing Donna along with them. Jenny was usually on the nose, as was Esther. And you never knew with Thirteen's lot.

She pushed open the stiff, wooden door, avoiding spiderwebs, and removed a sheet of tarpaulin from a small, child's bicycle with a set of stabilisers attached. Matilda had been begging them for a bike for a long time so that she could learn to ride, so finally they had decided to get her that. That, and a sizeable amount of chocolate. They never got her too many presents because the members of the TARDIS crew usually went all-out with their Christmas and birthday gifts for Mattie – and she had never complained. She was very mellow most of the time, hardly ever threw tantrums.

Matilda was overjoyed when Martha brought the little bike into the kitchen, she nearly fell off the stool with excitement as she attack-hugged her mother for the second time that morning.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!" she beamed, also going and reaching up to hug Mickey, who lifted her onto his knee as Martha set the bike against the wall next to their dining table. "Can I ride it now?"

"No, you have to finish your sandwich now," Mickey said, lifting up the uneaten half of her sandwich and holding it out to her, "And then we've got your family coming over, haven't why?"

"Why do you say they're my family when we're not related?"

"They're family," Martha told her firmly, "And-"

At that moment the doorbell rang.

"And that's probably your godmother now…" Like she said, Rose was nearly always early when she was going to see Matilda because she spent as much time with her as possible. "I'll go answer the door and you, finish your sandwich. No more presents until you've eaten proper food. Not just Nutella."


	188. Parents & Guardians

**DAY 6,574**

 _Parents & Guardians_

 _Martha_

An hour later, the house was swarming with people, and Martha was on her second cup of high-caffeine coffee after her busy evening of toenail lancing. Mattie's birthdays were one of the few occasions they actually got so many members of the old TARDIS crew in a room together. It was bizarre to think they had been flatmates for so long, all of them a stone's throw apart in next-door rooms or across the hall, and then they had all dispersed so suddenly… she had gone off and had a baby and finally got herself a legitimate career. Amy and Rory had done the same thing – they'd adopted a son in recent years but being without means of time travel and in the 1940s it was a bit tricky for them to reunite. She heard Donna visited them sometimes, but since Eleven's regeneration they had drifted away from the TARDIS. Though every few Christmases they could be enticed to put in an appearance, depending on who was hosting. Everybody made the effort at Christmas.

Rose had, as Martha had predicted, arrived first of all. Minus the TARDIS, she brought herself, the Tenth Doctor, Donna and Jack with her through the time vortex, a look of excitement on her face like she hadn't seen them practically twice a week every week for the last two decades. Aside from she and Mickey, Martha thought Rose was the most present adult influence in Mattie's life. Every Saturday, without fail, Rose was there for dinner, and had been ever since Matilda had been born. Even when Martha was on call and working, she would still come and eat with Mickey, and would be sure to show up again later in the week to make sure she didn't miss Martha too much. To think they had been somewhat sceptical about assigning her as the godmother – but she had taken on far more than the expected duties. Jack, too, visited fairly often, as the godfather. Nowhere near as often as Rose because he and Ianto did have an issue when it came to keeping track of time, still behaving like insufferable newlyweds. Jack was there that day, but Ianto wasn't; likewise, Jenny was there, having provided an enormous Nutella-covered birthday cake, but Ravenwood was absent. It was part of some weird truce or agreement between them and Martha had never bothered to question it. Mattie wasn't too fond of vampires, and neither was Martha – not after all the trouble with Sally Sparrow…

Clara _Oswald_ , on the other hand, was entertaining Mattie with a myriad of sleight-of-hand, telekinetic tricks, solving a Rubik's cube in mid-air (with guidance from Thirteen sitting in the chair by her side, since Clara wasn't very good at solving Rubik's cubes). Jenny was with her mother, Rose hovered near Matilda, Mickey was back in the kitchen sticking eighteen tiny candles into the top of the intricately decorated cake. Adam and Oswin lurked quietly in a corner, watching and smiling and whispering to each other – sometimes Oswin made a snide comment directed at Clara, but was otherwise placated, possibly because Esther was with them and Esther had a knack for keeping Oswin in check. The Ninth Doctor was absent and had been absent from all of their lives practically since the end of Ten and Rose's wedding, and that list of lives apparently included River Song's because she had returned to her old, roguish ways a long time ago now, but she had never missed one of Mattie's birthdays. They were both children of the TARDIS, after all, and River was concerned about Matilda having a better upbringing than she herself was allowed. Nios, also, was elsewhere, probably keeping Ravenwood and Sally company wherever they happened to be, hopefully keeping them out of blood-related trouble, though she could just as easily be hanging onto Dr Cohen.

However, as far as Martha's actual blood-relatives went – well, it was a long-standing precaution that none of her family knew where she lived. It was something she hated, but was necessary, since so many cosmic threats knew her family and how to get to them. Martha's mother was always particularly agitated by it, but Rose was set to take them to visit her tomorrow, and possibly drop by on Mattie's cousins – along with Leo and Tish.

"Now that I'm a grown up…" Matilda began, talking to Clara. Martha listened carefully.

"Mmm?" Clara asked her.

"Can I smoke one of your cigarettes?"

"No, I shouldn't think so."

"Why not?"

"They're bad for you, I'm sure your mummy's told you that plenty of times."

" _Yes_ , she says they make you stink," said Matilda. Clara raised her eyebrows at Martha across the room.

"They do," said Martha.

"She's right, you reek," Rose quipped, "You don't want to be smelly like Clara, do you, Matts? And, you might get lung disease."

"What happens when you get lung disease?"

"Lots of things," said Martha, "There's lots of different types of lung disease."

"I hope I get a lung disease one day."

"Why do you want a lung disease, sweetheart?" Martha inquired. Matilda shrugged and picked the Rubik's cube out of the air in front of Clara (who was sitting on the floor amidst Clara's many presents, the only person who hadn't managed to find some kind of chair) and twisting it around to make it mismatched again.

"It would be interesting to see what it would be like."

"I'm sure Clara will tell you all about lung disease when she inevitably develops one of her own," said Thirteen snidely. There was a smattering of laughter and Clara grimaced. "You could dissect her."

"Let's not dissect Clara," Clara muttered. Martha was surprised to see Mattie favouring playing with Clara and an old Rubik's cube over some of her other presents, but she did never seem to get tired of watching Clara do mindless 'magic' tricks. She distinctly remembered one Christmas, a decade ago now, where Mattie had asked in her babbling, three-year-old way that she wanted the superpower to fly that Christmas. So Clara and Eleven had got her a cape embroidered with an 'M' and told her it would grant her superpowers. Clara had spent all of that Boxing Day making Mattie float around the room. Martha was sure she had photographs somewhere…

"Oh, god – I just remembered, I have another present for you," said Thirteen, sitting up in the armchair she was in (Clara at her feet and Jenny on the arm) and searching through her jacket pocket. Donna was more involved in watching episodes of the 2030s _Hotel Inspector_ reboot, as was Jenny who rather fancied herself a hotelier. Despite the fact she didn't have much of a hand in running The Lost Cosmonaut as far as Martha knew – it was almost entirely operated by Ravenwood and Nios – with Sally helping out from time to time. And Esther, now that the Manifest Crisis had finally been ended two years ago by themselves eighteen years in the past. Well, not by Martha, she had been in bed with morning sickness having unknowingly been pregnant with the bundle of joy on the other side of the room.

"Hold on, what are your giving her? Is that-?" Martha stared as Thirteen pulled a watch out of her pocket. A fob watch. The kind of fob watch with circular Gallifreyan writing across the back of it.

"It's a new one, it's just a watch," the Doctor told her seriously, glancing up from Mattie to meet Martha's eyes, "Promise."

"Why have you never given me a watch?" Jenny questioned.

"Well, that would be… because I… because…" Jenny raised her eyebrows at her mother. " _Because_ … do you want a watch?"

Jenny shrugged, "Maybe."

"I'll give you a watch," the Tenth Doctor interjected from Rose's side. Jenny didn't even look at him.

"No thanks, it would be a meaningless gesture now."

"I got you that psychic paper," Thirteen told her, "And that old Gallifreyan tome."

"Mm…" said Jenny, "I'll be bringing this up again later. Try and think of an excuse before then."

"You have so much attitude sometimes… anyway. Mattie. You're eighteen now, so you're grown-up enough to have one of these." Matilda actually loved watches and clocks. It was a major issue, because she was always taking apart the clocks they had in the house that weren't digital. Resetting them so they were always wrong, sometimes breaking them, taking them apart and only rarely managing to put them back together again.

"You're not going to break that, are you, Matts?"

"Oh, don't worry," said the Doctor, "It's alien, it puts itself back together, all the cogs. Try not to damage the pieces, though."

"What else is special about it?" Mattie asked, taking the watch.

"It always tells you the right time no matter where or when you are," she explained, " _Always_. And one day, you'll learn how to always tell the right time, too." Martha was sceptical of this implication that Mattie was going to be time-travelling but didn't think now was the right moment to bring that up. As much as she and Mickey strived to protect their daughter, it was in her genes to go off adventuring like that one day. She just hoped it wouldn't be for a long, _long_ time. Mattie took the watch gratefully and hugged Thirteen, who picked her up onto her knee. Matilda distracted by the watch, the room's attention waned and was drawn back to the television again.

As Clara struggled to work out which way to turn the Rubik's cube, her phone started to buzz. Martha wouldn't have paid any note were she not watching Matilda closely to make sure she behaved and didn't break anything.

"It's for you," Clara said, holding out her phone to her wife.

"I'll answer it," offered Matilda, reaching for it.

"No, you won't," said Clara calmly, moving it away from her.

"Who is it?" Thirteen asked.

"Missy."

" _Ugh_. Don't answer. Block the number."

"I've tried blocking it, she always finds a way around," Clara said, "Won't you talk to her? She probably only wants to tell you another Penguin joke."

"Penguin jokes aren't funny, and no, I won't answer it."

"She's just going to keep ringing…"

"Let her," Thirteen shrugged, "Now, look, there's a woman on TV trying to make fried eggs in a microwave, that's significantly interesting than looking at the caller ID on your phone." Clara rolled her eyes and rejected the call, putting her phone away. A woman _was_ trying to make fried eggs in a microwave in fairness, and unsurprisingly it didn't go very well at all. The tiny frying pan made the machine explode.

"Can I put a pan in the microwave?" Mattie asked.

"Absolutely not," said the Doctor, "You just forget you ever saw that, now."

Mickey clapped his hands behind Martha and made everybody – including her – jump.

"Who wants cake?" he asked. There were resounding 'yesses' from everyone present, all of them eager to try Jenny's Nutella-flavoured birthday cake. Matilda almost dropped the watch she was so excited wriggling around on the Doctor's knee. "Help me light the candles?" he entreated Martha, who was sipping her coffee.

"You can't light candles on your own?"

"I've lost the lighter," he said. That was worrying – she hoped Mattie hadn't been at the lighter. Again. For her 'experiments.'

"Yes, alright," Martha sighed and followed him back into the kitchen where the very large cake was perched on a tray ready to be brought over to the small table in the living room and cut into. Martha personally couldn't wait, because it looked delicious. Jenny _had_ worked in that bakery in Hollowmire for a good six years, after all, and apparently had deigns to open a restaurant one day. Whenever she got bored of hunting down alien drug dealers for Scotland Yard, that was. The cake had a ring of eighteen candles perfectly arranged on top of it. "I think we'd better put the microwave a big higher."

"Like where?" he asked.

"On top of the fridge?"

"But then _you_ can't reach it if it's on top of the fridge," he pointed out, "Not unless you go get Mattie's plastic step out of the bathroom." It was a step she used so that she could reach to brush her teeth.

"Yes, but our ingenious daughter in there just watched a woman blow up a microwave by putting a pan in it, so I think we should put it on top of the fridge."

"…Alright, I'll do it later. Better light these candles." It took only a wave of Martha's hand to light all eighteen of them, flames blossoming on top of the wicks.

Swearing and a rather loud commotion started up in the next room, alarming both Mickey and Martha. The woman had probably just blown up another kitchen utensil in a surprisingly dramatic way, she assumed. Mickey picked up the cake while Martha turned to go back into the living room.

"What's going on?" she asked, entering. Eleven panicked faces stared at her. But there had been twelve people in the room less than a minute ago.

Matilda Smith-Jones was nowhere to be seen.

"Martha…" Rose began slowly. The mug of coffee slipped from Martha's hands and splashed out across the carpet.

"What is it?" asked Mickey, behind her, holding the burning birthday cake. "Where's Mattie?" Silence from the room.

" _Where is she_?" Martha asked through gritted teeth, looking at them all in turn.

River, closest, muttered, "I'll take that," and took the birthday cake from Mickey.

"She disappeared," Esther Drummond finally answered.

"What do you mean 'disappeared'? She 'disappeared'? A five-year-old girl in a room of eleven adults all with superpowers _disappeared_?"

"She was right there, and then she was – she was gone," Donna pointed at Thirteen, who was staring into space in shock.

" _Gone_?" Martha persisted, "How can she be gone?"

"Maybe she teleported?" Jack suggested, standing up, "She could just be upstairs – maybe she has another power outside of the longevity – I'll go look now."

"No, I'll do it," Esther volunteered. Esther proceeded to disappear, too, only she did it in a vivid flash of blue electricity which immediately streaked off like lightning through the air. They heard the whooshing of her light-speed movement for just a few seconds before she was back in the room in front of them looking pale. "…I looked ten times over," she said, though she had hardly been out of sight for the blink of an eye, "I'll go around the block, through the trees." She shot off again, a living lightning bolt.

"If this is some kind of joke, _Oswin_ -" Martha began very pointedly while Mickey had staggered into the wall.

"What!?" Oswin exclaimed, "I'm not going to do something like this! What do you think's wrong with me!?"

"Well you're not giving me any answers, 'smartest girl in the universe'!" Martha shouted at her. The light bulb above them exploded and the lampshade set itself spontaneously on fire, in step with Martha's fury. Clara waved a hand to telekinetically put it out then did the same to the steadily melting birthday cake at the back of the room.

"She just disappeared! She was there, then she was gone, like _that_ ," she snapped her fingers loudly.

"But how can that _possibly_ happen!? Rose can stop time! Control the universe! What happened!?" Martha demanded of her.

"I don't know!" Rose protested.

"She's your _goddaughter_!"

"I know that!" Rose shouted back at her, "And she's gone!"

"I don't think shouting is going to help anybody any," Jack said loudly.

"You can fucking talk – you didn't do anything either!" Martha yelled at him. Mickey was hyperventilating behind her. "Is this that watch!?" she demanded of the Doctor when Jack didn't say anything else, "Does it do something!?"

"No! It's just a watch, an inscribed watch that self-repairs and auto-assimilates! It can't teleport people!"

"No Doctor could possibly be involved in this," Rose said, "I'm telling you, she just vanished. There wasn't even a flash of light, it was like a bad special effect. Just gone."

"I gather that she's _gone_ , I'm asking why _none of you_ were capable of doing anything!"

"For god's sake, pay attention to Mickey," Donna said, waving a hand at him as she stood up from her chair. Martha turned to look at him – he was losing his mind, and Martha didn't know what to do.

"It's gonna be okay," Jack stepped up to the plate and held Mickey's shoulders, "Just breathe. People don't just cease to exist, she has to have gone somewhere, been taken – we'll get her back."

"Yeah – if you two just stay here, then the lot of us can-" Clara began.

"Absolutely not," Martha cut across her coldly, "You were all here. You didn't do anything."

"There was nothing to do, I'm telling you-" Rose reiterated, and then the chair behind her spontaneously set itself alight, engulfed in flame almost immediately. Rose teleported a few metres away in horror.

"Fucking hell!" Clara shouted. Donna came to the rescue this time, using her dimensional powers to cover the chair in a blue, static-like mirage, and then restoring it to its former, unburned state. Jack was telling Mickey over and over again that they were going to get Mattie back if it was the last thing they did.

"What about you two?" Martha turned on River and Jenny, "You're always hanging around criminals."

"I work for the police," said Jenny. Martha lit a fireball in the palm of her hand. "I haven't done anything! I've babysat her her entire life, she's practically a sister to me, you two are some of my best friends – and you're accusing me of betraying you like this?"

"She's right, you need to calm down," said Rose.

" _CALM DOWN_!?"

"You're going to set your house on fire!" River shouted at her.

"How could this possibly happen!? There are defences, measures in place – this should be impossible!" She glowered at Oswin as she spoke, the so-called genius who had designed all the security around their house, and who notably refused to meet Martha's gaze

"Well it's happened now," Rose declared, "So? We need to do something about it."

" _We_ need to do something about it," she indicated herself and Mickey, "Not you lot."

"Don't be rash," Rose argued, "We all want to help-"

"Martha's right," Mickey said hoarsely.

" _What_?"

"You should have helped when you had the chance. I can't believe you'd let this happen."

"Nobody _let_ anything-"

"No, just… leave. All of you. _We_ are capable of protecting our own daughter, when you lot obviously aren't," he said quietly.

"That's just not sensible," River told them, "We should all work together, we'll have more ideas, we can cover more ground – you can't go to the police, so this is the best chance we have."

"You've _all_ proved that you're incapable," Martha continued.

"Well you two were only in the next room!" Donna said. _That_ clinched it. It was the worst thing she could have possibly said, and everybody else knew it.

"You're implying that we can't look after our own daughter?" Martha asked, moving on from shouting to an ominous, grow-like way of talking. "Right, get out. I'm serious. All of you. Every last one. And you," she indicated Jack, "Hand over the vortex manipulator." He narrowed his eyes at her, protective of his wrist band. Martha stepped towards him. "Hand it over willingly or I'll take it. Don't think I won't. That's my little girl who's gone missing without any of her family or either of her godparents doing a single fucking thing about it." Jack hastily unstrapped the vortex manipulator, handing it to Mickey rather than her.

"…I don't want you melting it…" he mumbled. "Look, what are you going to do? Where are you going to go?"

"To the only person cocky and amoral enough to waltz into this house and steal a child under our noses," Mickey said, on exactly the same page as Martha, "If 'person' is even the right word…"


	189. The Collector

**DAY 6,574**

 _The Collector_

The purple jewel in his collection sat at the highest point atop a podium made of an old and cleaned up nuclear waste barrel. There it was, beautiful, in all of its plush glory, amidst the rainbow-coloured array of Beanie Babies. The Shadow observed them proudly, his hands – not that he technically had hands – on his hips – not that he technically had hips – the mass of plush toys crating a vibrant and soft crush in the hollowed-out cave of the asteroid he called home. It drifted aimlessly in a wide and messy orbit around a nearby star in a very desolate area of space, the perfect dead zone to hide out from the Shadow Proclamation. He'd been living there for a fair few years without anybody undesirable finding him.

Until that day, apparently. He heard a clatter behind him with his one-million separate and microscopic ears – which were not quite 'ears' in the same way those macro organisms thought of them – and hushed voices. In response, he turned off the light coming from his old oil lamp set decidedly far away from the Beanie Babies and allowed himself to melt into the darkness.

* * *

 _Mickey_

Jack and Rose had made one contribution each to the search and that was all anybody was going to be allowed to do. Jack had provided the vortex manipulator, Rose had provided the coordinates after a few minutes of attempting to strongarm the time vortex into doing her bidding. The only creature who would do something so heinous as kidnap Matilda, their little girl, from inside their house on her eighteenth birthday was the Shadow. The Shadow would do anything for money. What he used the money he accumulated for was a mystery, but he was more embroiled in the universe's vast criminal empires than even Jenny and River were.

But they were both almost fifty and the unstable teleportation of a vortex manipulator didn't get any more pleasant with age, just rougher and rougher – like hangovers. It was also made worse by the fact they appeared in pitch darkness and the freezing cold and he hit his foot on something; it wasn't exactly helping the fact he was losing his mind with worry about Mattie, _or_ that they were trying to be discreet and sneak around.

Martha made a ball of flame in the palm of her hand and held it aloft in order to illuminate their surroundings and warm them up a bit. Mickey still didn't necessarily understand long and complicated twenty-something-digit space coordinates, so was surprised to find them in what looked like a cave. But it was a very weird-looking and porous cave, the walls having a strange greenish sheen to them as they shone in Martha's fire. He stayed very close to her side (and the warmth.)

"I think we're inside a meteor," Mickey said.

"Can you live inside meteors?"

"We're still breathing," he pointed out. They weren't wearing spacesuits, though he wished he was because at least they were climate controlled – it was very cold in outer space. He wrapped his arms tightly around himself. It hadn't even been half an hour since Mattie was taken by unknown assailants, seemingly snatched out of reality itself. "What if he's out? What will we do then? Wait? We can't wait, we have to find her."

"We _will_ find her," Martha told him firmly, "We will. And this is the best place to start. She could even be in this space-caves somewhere." Mickey hoped she was right.

There were all kinds of bizarre amenities crammed into the 'rooms' of what certainly was an asteroid. These rooms were all strange shapes, very circular, and he suspected they had been carved out with controlled explosives of some kind rather than drilled or dug. The rocky, crooked ground rose and fell, and he tripped more than once. The very first room they landed in was full of high-tech weaponry and tools. It must be where the Shadow did maintenance on his deadly arsenal and advanced suit. Mickey debated maybe picking up one of the guns but wasn't sure he needed to when his wife could blow things up with her mind. Fire would _definitely_ kill Vashta Nerada.

"Can you smell that?" Martha asked as they crept through the funny-shaped caves.

"Smells like meat. He's a carnivorous swarm, it's probably just food. It's cold enough not to need a fridge." Already he was wishing that he didn't have to see the Shadow's pantry, however, that wish was not going to come true because it was the next room they came across. And yes, it was just a large, hollowed-out meteor shell absolutely full of meat. An enormous quantity of dripping, raw, predominantly alien meat, as well as what he thought was an entire, skinned cow. He desperately hoped nothing in there was human. A lot of it was yellow. He had never seen yellow meat before and certainly didn't fancy it – perhaps it came from some kind of insect. He covered his mouth and nose with his hand and tried to hide his gagging. The only way forward was through the makeshift meat-locker.

"It's not that bad," said Martha, "Whenever we go to the butcher's and you see all the raw meat there you're practically drooling. That farm shop had a whole freezer of frozen rabbits and you were like, 'Why don't we have rabbit for dinner?' and then Mattie cried because we had that pet rabbit a while ago."

"Yeah – well – this is different. At least those ones were frozen and in bags, not just… eurgh…" The floor was wet with meat drippings and blood. "He better know something after all this."

"The Shadow knows everything," Martha assured him. She had calmed down now that they were actually doing something – and that people had stopped telling her to calm down. Mickey certainly valued his life enough not to tell her that.

A light was extinguished from within the passage beyond, creating a looming darkness ahead. The Shadow could easily traverse pitch darkness without ever being seen, the creature was _made_ of darkness.

"What if he eats us?" Mickey hissed.

"He won't eat us. If he eats us he knows Rose will come after him and make him cease to exist. She's literally a god."

"A god who couldn't stop Mattie from vanishing. Maybe I don't have as much faith in her as I used to."

"Just stay close to me, we'll be fine. He doesn't need to kill us with all this meat in here, anyway."

"I hope you're right…"

They continued their advance through the low-ceilinged asteroid caves, Mickey only now wondering where the atmosphere and gravity was coming from that was keeping them alive, Martha using both her hands to create as much light as possible to force the Shadow to keep its distance. But if he was out of the suit, Mickey worried, he could be anywhere, a hive mind spread across all of the walls, bearing down on them in the heavy emptiness of space. At least they were out of the meat room now.

But if Mickey thought the meat room was bad, nothing could have prepared him for what appeared to be the third and final space in the tiny cave network: it was the Shadow's trophy room. His eyes were first drawn to a myriad of artefacts and precious objects. Jewels, diamonds, relics – and at least half of the room was overflowing with a mountain of neatly arranged Beanie Babies, organised in the colours of the rainbow with a purple bear at the front. There was a large, golden container adorned with wings and inscriptions on the opposite side with an unlit oil lamp sitting on top of it.

"How many of these things are there?" Martha wondered, enthralled by the Beanie Babies, stepping towards them.

A hand grabbed her wrist as she approached, stopping her from going any closer. Seemingly from nowhere the Shadow had appeared, stepping out of the darkness and existing as a living silhouette.

"Don't take an open flame anywhere near those," he warned with his metallic, synthesised voice. It was the only time Mickey had heard the Shadow display an emotion vocally aside from sarcasm or mild-annoyance; he had previously assumed that the swarm just weren't capable of advanced feelings, but maybe it was just that deadpan. Now, though, the Shadow was worried. Clearly the heat of the fireball in Martha's hand wasn't doing anything to his suit, either. "I've only just completed my collection." He had no eyes or features, but still managed to conjure up an expression which bored dangerously into Martha.

"Fine," she said coldly, stepping away from him as he let go of her hand, "Thought you'd be hiding since you put the light out."

"Until I realised Kaboom was in here with all my treasures."

"Don't call me 'Kaboom'," Martha said. It was a stupid name Jack had tried to give her decades ago; god knew how the Shadow had found out about it.

"Kaboom and Techno Boy. To what do I owe the pleasure?" The Shadow retrieved the oil lamp and re-lit it, which was when Mickey finally realised what the golden object beneath actually was.

"Is that-? Is that the Ark of the Covenant?" he gawked. Martha elbowed him.

"Is that really what's most important right now?" she snapped at him.

"But-"

"Yes, it is," said the Shadow.

"The _real_ one?"

"Very real."

"The one God put the 10 Commandments inside of?"

"Oh. No, this is the original prop from _Raiders of the Lost Ark_. It's much more valuable than any religious knick-knack. I keep my work contracts and receipts in there."

"What do you need receipts for?" Martha questioned.

"For my taxes, obviously."

"…Right…"

"What do you want?" the Shadow asked them pointedly.

"I think you know what we want," said Martha.

"Honestly, people come to me for all kinds of reasons. Assassinations, bounty hunting, sometimes fetish play – although, I always turn down the last one so if that's what you're after I'll have to point you in another direction. Someone paid me half a million credits to get them a packet of Szechuan sauce. I still have a few spare if that's what you want."

"Our daughter is missing," Martha said. The Shadow didn't speak. "Do you know something about that? You're the primo, master-kidnapper of the universe."

"I see. You think I have absolutely no loyalty."

"Quite frankly, no. You just care about money to… what? Buy Beanie Babies?" Martha stepped towards the collection of plushies again.

"Don't go near those," the Shadow warned suddenly, "You're volatile. I don't trust volatile, emotional pyromaniacs around highly flammable teddy-bears. I have not kidnapped your daughter."

"Why should we believe you?"

"Why would I do it?" he asked.

"Money, obviously," said Mickey.

"And have you two coming after me? All the Doctors? The Bad Wolf, the remnants of the Gutkeled Brood, the Lightning Girl? It's hardly worth the risk. Hundreds of people have come to me to try and get me to snatch that girl over the years, you know, and I've never bitten."

"Maybe this time the price was right," said Martha, slowly advancing towards the toys.

"Don't," the Shadow continued.

"Maybe that's how you got this fancy purple one," she said, reaching out towards it.

"Do _not_ touch that, Jones. I have not sold out your child for any of the Babies, so leave them – no!" She picked up the purple bear, aiming her other hand, aflame, right at it. She could vaporise that thing in a second, Mickey knew. "You put that down right now, that's Princess the Bear."

" _Princess_?" Mickey frowned.

"She was made for the Princess Diana of Wales Memorial Foundation, in 1997. That's the especially rare Indonesian version, in this century that's worth _millions_ of credits. It's like trying to sell the Mona Lisa."

"Then I guess I'm threatening to set fire to the Mona Lisa," Martha threatened, "If you know anything at all about what's happened to my little girl-"

"I don't!"

"I will _burn_ this teddy-"

"DON'T!"

"The pellets will be melted all over this floor-"

"She was the people's princess, Jones – how could you do something like this!? It's treason. High treason. I could have you beheaded."

" _Tell me what you know_."

" _I don't know anything_!" the Shadow pleaded, reaching out his arms in the dim hope that Princess the Bear might come to life and leap towards him to safety. Martha lit flames in the palm of her hand. Mickey was debating telling her to cool it a bit considering how stressed the Shadow was getting at the prospect of Princess the Bear being destroyed. "How many times have I saved your life!? I've saved you from the Slitheen, from the Time Lord Xenomorph, I've rescued everybody on your ship one time or another. And I try my best to warn people away from trying to hurt Matilda."

"You're going to have to do better than that," Martha continued, "You must know something."

"Fine! I know where the Master is! Just put Princess down, please." Could sentient swarms of space-piranhas cry? It sounded like the Shadow was on the brink. Martha didn't put Princess down, but she did extinguish the flames in her other hand.

"The Master has something to do with this?"

"I don't know. But she's got a history of kidnapping members of your family as part of an elaborate flirting game with the Doctor."

"…He's got a point," Mickey said, "Clara was saying earlier that Missy kept ringing her."

"She's more than reckless enough to kidnap Matilda," the Shadow continued, "Probably did it for a joke." Martha was finally convinced that the Shadow had not had anything to do with Mattie's vanishing. She put Princess the Bear back down on the podium at the centre of the collection, unharmed. "There's nothing in the universe worth the trouble of having you chase me down, and especially not kidnapping a child. I do have a moral code. And you're the only ones capable of finding me out here on this wasteoid – the Shadow Proclamation haven't managed to do it yet."

"And you know where she is?" Martha persisted.

"I have reports of where she's been recently," he said, "She's very reckless, leaves a trail, not unlike your Doctors."

"Time Lords are all idiots, what do you expect?" Martha said.

"I'll give you the best information I have. I'll put out my own feelers, search as well – just don't destroy any of my things."

"It's a good deal," said Mickey. The Shadow was notoriously good at finding things.

"Fine, fine, do whatever – just tell us how to find the Master, and we'll be on our way, alright? And don't think we won't come back if you're lying."


	190. Deal or No Deal

**DAY 6,574**

 _Deal or No Deal_

 _Mickey_

A run-down multi-storey carpark in 2011 wasn't exactly the place where they expected to find the Master – or, Mistress. Mickey had been half expecting the Shadow to send them to Somalia where she'd become a brutal modern warlord, or to the Dark Ages where she'd become a brutal medieval warlord, or to the distant future where she was, again, a warlord. Anything related to being a warlord he could seriously picture Missy involved in. However, they were in a damp and derelict parking garage in the middle of the night while it rained heavily outside. He and Martha hid behind one of the few cars that were actually in there and saw her, dressed up like a Victorian dominatrix with a fancy hat and a cane, arguing very loudly with a gang of tall and threatening teenagers about the contents of a paper package.

Missy took out a switchblade and cut open the paper packet after placing it on the car boot of an old sedan the youths must have brought with them. They were definitely the type of boys Mickey would cross the street to avoid, and he'd grown up in a working-class London council estate. He could have sworn he saw one of them with a gun stuck into the side of his jeans.

"What's this, then?" Missy asked, glancing between the boys and the packet once she cut it open. Mickey squinted and thought it was full of white powder. The boys said nothing. "This better be what I asked for this time, Robbie. We don't want a repeat of last week." She dipped one of her fingers in the powder and proceeded to rub it into her gums for a few seconds, frowning and thinking. Then she spat onto the floor. "Are you kidding me? Did you honestly think I'd believe that this was good shit? This is sub-par. You expect me to peddle this to those blasted PTA 'mummies' and give you a cut of the profit? Do you know how much ket it takes to scroll through a Mumsnet forum without committing suicide? A _lot_. You might think you can get away with screwing _me_ over – and trust me, I can certainly see the appeal of screwing me – but I'm not going to screw _my_ customers over. I'm an honourable business woman."

"That's not right – this is good product, mate," Robbie argued with her, while the other two boys bowed their heads like they were afraid.

"Excuse me?"

"I said this is good product."

"Good product…" she tutted, shook her head, then laughed, "This is such low-quality shit it wouldn't be enough to anaesthetise a dog for a boil lancing, and that's its intended use. And I'll tell you what you get for answering back to me, you little turd," she reached inside her coat and pulled out what Mickey clearly recognised as a tomahawk, "You might be standing there thinking of all the money you're going to make exploiting what you think is a defenceless but very attractive and incredibly young Scottish lady-"

" _Young_?" Mickey muttered to Martha.

"-but you're going to find it very difficult to count said money after I chop off your fingers with this axe I stole from a CIA operative, who thought he could assassinate me in a coup to seize control of a poor South American country I was democratically elected leader of." Missy grabbed the wrist of the closest boy, Robbie, who had been the only one to answer back, though he was now as terrified as his peers.

"Ah – what the fuck are you-" She held his hand against the boot of the car next to the packet full of powdered ketamine and was just about to literally chop off one or more of his fingers when Martha left their cover behind the car.

"Erm – you can put that down right now," Martha shouted at her. Missy paused, tomahawk raised in the air. Mickey followed after Martha and regretted that he hadn't brought out one of their guns, since they kept a fair few in the house on the advice of Gwen and Rhys.

"Martha!" Missy exclaimed, grinning, not letting go of Robbie's arm, "Fancy seeing you here! Quick question, is Jenny in the nearby vicinity and does she have her special teeth-pulling pliers with her?"

"Jenny has special teeth-pulling pliers?" Mickey questioned.

"Of course she does. It's her second-favourite torture method, after individually breaking all the major joints in a person's body. She _certainly_ knows how to carry out an interrogation. Stop squirming, boy," she snapped at Robbie. "Keep on like that and it'll be more than your useless bloody fingers I chop off."

"We need to talk to you," Martha said.

"Can it wait? I'm in the middle of a business transaction."

"Let him go," Martha ordered her. Missy paused, debating the risks that came hand-in-hand with getting on the wrong side of Martha Jones and her pyrokinesis. Finally, she rolled her eyes.

" _Fine_ , whatever. You've taken all the buzz out of a good dismembering by showing up here like this. Go on, get out of here." Robbie tried to grab the packet of drugs once she released him, "Erm, I don't think so."

"You haven't given us any money for it," he said.

"What a mouth on this one, eh? Chatty for a wannabe drug dealer. Listen, my gift to you is the gift of your continued ability to wank yourselves off into oblivion, which I know is all teenage boys do. If this happens again you're going to be castrated by my own fair hands, and don't think I won't do it. I wouldn't even blink. Now get out of here and don't come back until you have some real, pure shit for me to sell, alright?" They finally took their leave, hurrying away as fast as they could from the psychotic alien and her tiny axe. "Well, then. What can I do you for? Do you want to buy some ketamine?"

"No, we don't want any ketamine – why are you buying ketamine from teenagers? What are you going to do with it?" Martha questioned her. Missy shrugged.

"Probably just hang around outside the school gates and see who fancies a nosh," she winked at Martha.

" _School gates_!? You're selling ketamine to kids!?"

"No! Don't be absurd! What kind of monster do you take me for, Martha Jones?" She shook her head indignantly and put her hands on her hips. "I'm selling it to their parents. I need the money to fund an investment to mod a car, so I can enter a drag race – it's a long story, involves a rogue Raxacoricofallapatorian and some nerve agent. Complicated. I might be in to win a jetpack, though."

"Well, I think we'll just ignore all of that you just said…" Mickey muttered.

"Suit yourselves. If you don't want any ketamine, what do you want?"

"This, for a start." Then Martha, unafraid of the tomahawk, took the parcel full of ket from the car boot and set it on fire in her hands. It erupted into a foul-smelling pile of ash and smoke she let drop to the floor at their feet. "And then you can tell me what you've done with Mattie."

"Firstly, there was no need to burn it, I would have given you a friends and family discount if you just _asked_. Secondly, I don't have a clue _where_ little Matthew is."

" _Matilda_."

"Whatever," she scoffed, "I almost paid good money for that ketamine. If I don't win my race now I fully expect to be compensated for my lost jetpack. Unless you want to sit and the back of the car and give me a turbo boost with your fire-hands?"

"That's not actually how cars work," said Mickey, "This isn't a video game."

" _Where_ is my daughter?" Martha again resorted to threatening bodily harm with her pyrokinesis, though Missy was much less perturbed than the Shadow had been.

"I don't know. Where did you see her last?"

"My living room."

"Best check there first, then? Although, in my experience, things are usually in the last place you look."

"Don't take the piss," Mickey said.

"How is it anything to do with me if you can't keep track of your own toddler? She's probably just wandered off to play on some train tracks or whatever it is kids do. You know what they're like, the little… creatures."

"She hasn't wandered off, she was taken," Mickey explained, "Right in front of everyone, she vanished."

"Oh, I see. And you think it was something to do with me. Have you tried the Shadow? That thing's always taking what doesn't belong to it. Just a few months ago he stole my entire stash of Szechuan sauce, can you believe it? _Now_ what am I supposed to dip my chicken nuggets in? Ketchup? Dream on."

"It wasn't the Shadow."

"I can't believe you think it was me. _I'm_ not the one on ket; _never touch your own product_ , that's the golden rule of drug dealing. Why would I take her? I don't have the time to deal with Shark Boy and Lava Girl coming after me. Even though _Shark Boy & Lava Girl_ is a cinematic masterpiece."

"Everyone knows _Shark Boy & Lava Girl_ is rubbish," Mickey argued.

"Excuse me? It's the highlight of Taylor Lautner's acting career."

"You clearly haven't seen the 2028 all-male remake of _The Devil Wears Prada_ , then," Mickey said.

"Not helping," Martha snapped.

"Hold on, what do you mean 'in front of everyone'? Who else was there?"

"Just, you know, everybody."

"Everybody?"

"Yes."

"The Doctor?"

"Two of them."

"Why? What's the occasion?"

"Her eighteenth birthday."

"She was snatched right in the middle of her eighteenth birthday party!? What kind of fiend would do something like that?" Mickey and Martha both raised their eyebrows at her. She rolled her eyes. "Apart from me. It wasn't me. I didn't even know it was her birthday – but I can't believe I wasn't invited! Here," she again reached into her coat, and this time took out a Desert Eagle.

"Bloody hell!" Martha exclaimed.

"Oh, relax, it's just a loaded weapon, it's not going to hurt anybody. Consider it a birthday present. For the girl."

"A _gun_!?"

"Maybe if she had a gun she wouldn't have been kidnapped," Missy pointed out. "Don't you want it?" Mickey snatched it out of her hands then cocked it and aimed it at her. "Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. I haven't kidnapped the brat. I've never even met her."

"You have met her, because ten years ago you climbed in through her bedroom window one night and told her you were the Tooth Fairy. Then you tried to give her a briefcase full of counterfeit Soviet currency and we moved a month later," Martha said.

"Oh, _yeah_ ," Missy reminisced fondly, "Do you still have that briefcase, by any chance?"

"No. Thirteen wanted it."

"Typical. She's always a slut for the Soviets."

"I will shoot you," said Mickey.

"Do I look bothered?"

"Well… if the Shadow didn't take her, and you didn't take her, then who the hell _did_ take her? _Where_ is my daughter!?" he demanded, brandishing the gun which would certainly kill the Master instantly if it went off. He'd better be more careful with it in case he ended up doing a _Pulp Fiction_.

"I'm bored of this conversation now, so I'll tell you where she probably is, as long as you don't overact and shoot me in the face," she eyed the gun, though he did seem unamused by the situation by this point. Probably wanted to go and find herself some more ketamine. "The reason I'm hiding out here in Earthling slums is because I'm on the run."

"As usual," said Martha.

"Yes, well, at the moment I'm on the run from a pretty nasty group of Daleks."

"DALEKS!?" Mickey shouted, and then the gun went off. Luckily, he had been flailing his arm around at the time and the bullet just ricocheted off the roof of the carpark and then shattered the window of a nearby car, but the noise was deafening. Missy clamped her hands over her ears.

"Bloody hell!" Martha exclaimed.

"Brilliant, just when I thought I'd shaken off the last bout of tinnitus. I did tell you not to overreact," Missy complained. "I heard that some fanatical little gang of Degradations are trying to hunt themselves a Time Lord for whatever twisted reason, so I've been on the move."

"Hang on. You knew that a group of crazy Daleks are going after Time Lords, and you didn't warn anybody!?"

"Now hold on a second, I've been trying to phone the Doctor about it for weeks to warn her, but her useless, jealous wife never calls me back. I've left a dozen messages. You can't pin this on me. There have been people scheming about how to get their hands on Matilda ever since she was born, but I always thought it wasn't worth it. Not to get my head almost shot off in the middle of a carpark drug deal. I want to die in a blaze of glory, or while paragliding, or at least get eaten by a shark. Something cool. Not in here. The weather's not even nice.

"Anyway, Daleks are the only things both stupid and clever enough to do something like this. If you ask me, what happened is they've got their little plungers on some time-stopping technology. Wheeled in, bagged her up, wheeled right back out again. See, if my other half had any critical thinking skills, maybe they would have worked it out. But they're too distracted, by women, the pesky creatures."

"Wouldn't Rose have picked up on that?"

"Apparently not," said Missy, "Daleks know all kinds of tricks, they _can_ be quite ingenious though I hate to admit it. They've managed to keep tracking _me_ down. God knows what they actually want, I've never stopped to chat to them long enough to find out."

"You said Degradations, what's a Degradation?"

"Mutant Daleks. They're like regular Daleks, only angrier. Very pent up. Sexually repressed. Spend their time building war machines. Heavily armed. An unfortunate product of the Time War. Nuclear lunatics, the lot of them, much more dangerous than the normal bloodthirsty ones. I'm keeping tabs on their ship to make sure it doesn't move."

"You're-? Well, where is it?" Mickey asked urgently.

"Sort of, behind the moon. You know, with all those Nazis."

"Nazis?"

"The ones who live on the moon. The moon Nazis. Hopefully they haven't come to an alliance – though both Nazis _and_ Daleks are terrible for reneging on their deals. Very untrustworthy, that Hitler fellow. And I should know, once lost a bet to me and never paid me my winnings. Listen, I don't know for sure if those Daleks have stolen the child, but if I were a gambling man – and I certainly am – I'd go all in to say that they _are_ behind it, and I'll do everything in my power to help. Aside from actually going with you because they really are _incredibly_ insane."

"So, what _will_ you do?"

"Your vortex manipulator coordinates? You may not like it, but Matilda is a member of _my_ species, too. A Time Lord. I won't stand idly by and watch someone destroy my people. Except for, obviously, the time the Doctor destroyed our people and I did sort of… well. I survived, that's all that matters. But, eh, you can keep that gun there if you're really heading off to knock some sense into an army of deformed salt shakers."

"Great. A cult of trigger-happy mutant Daleks have kidnapped my five-year-old daughter and taken her to the moon," grumbled Martha, shaking her head, "That's so bloody typical."


	191. In the Hornet's Nest

**DAY 6,574**

 _In the Hornet's Nest_

 _Mickey_

It was a testament to their dedication to rescuing Matilda as quickly as possible that they were both actually willing to trust the Master. At the very last second, he began worrying that the information and the coordinates she had provided may be grossly inaccurate, may leave them stranded in the vacuum of space – behind the moon as intended – to instantly die with all the air sucked out of their bodies. He almost tried to escape from the vortex manipulator in Martha's hands as it dragged them painfully back through time-space, Missy smugly waving them goodbye with a grin plastered across her porcelain face.

"No, no – wait, wait, WAIT!" he panicked.

But it was too late.

They dematerialised and then promptly arrived, feeling winded and a little bit seasick, in the shiny, bronze-coloured corridor of what was quite clearly a Dalek ship. It had those impeccably buffed floors and oddly organic-looking, curved walls. Plus, they had appeared directly behind a pair of slow-moving Daleks, that was the biggest giveaway. Their eyes widened as they tried not to make a sound to alert the Daleks to their presence; it took all of Mickey's willpower not to swear or accidentally fire the stupid Desert Eagle he was still carrying.

Horrified, Mickey and Martha tried to hurry away, looking for any possible outlet to get away from the creatures. As luck would have it there was a door nearby, just as one of the Daleks yelled at the top of its screechy voice modulator, "DID YOU HEAR SOMETHING!?" to its companion. The issue was the door was only accessible by Daleks, it had one of those spherical interfaces next to it meant to be interacted with via a plunger. It took Mickey that long to remember that for nearly twenty years he had been a technopath.

Placing his palm across the sphere the door opened in an instant, he and Martha ducking inside and into cramped darkness just as the Daleks rotated their heads enough to see a completely empty corridor.

"YOU ARE HEARING THINGS AGAIN," said the second Dalek as Mickey and Martha prayed that they didn't come to investigate. Mickey could probably prevent them from opening the door, but wouldn't put it past them to use one of their supposed deadly weapons to blow the door to pieces and kill them in the process. "YOU SHOULD GET YOUR EARS CHECKED."

"I DO NOT HEAR THINGS."

"IN WHICH CASE YOU SHOULD DEFINITELY GET YOUR EARS CHECKED."

"Sounds like if someone put Sally Sparrow into a Dalek," Martha whispered.

"They can be snarky when they want to be," Mickey muttered back.

"I HAVE SPENT TOO MUCH TIME LISTENING TO THE CHILD COMPLAINING," the first Dalek whined. It was very hard to distinguish which one of them was talking at a given moment.

"IT IS NOT OUR JOB TO LISTEN, WE ARE NOT THE NANNY," the second explained. The voices were getting quieter and quieter as they moved further away and out of earshot.

"IT SPEAKS IN TONGUES. WHAT IS A NOOT-ILLER?"

" _Nutella_ ," Mickey and Martha said together; their daughter's favourite food. Of course she would be asking for Nutella, even if she was stranded in outer space.

"NOT IMPORTANT."

"IT SHOULD BE EXTERMINATED."

"THE CHILD MUST BE ALIVE FOR THE HARVEST," the second Dalek finished. Sound was cut off from them completely after that; they must have passed through another door. Or maybe just shut up – though they could be obnoxiously talkative sometimes. Not unlike Sally Sparrow.

"How convenient of them to come past and provide us with all that exposition," Mickey quipped.

"Be quiet. What do you think they mean – 'harvest'?"

"Maybe… they've been growing some plants?"

" _Growing some plants_?"

"Missy said they were crazy, so maybe instead of world domination they're… gardeners."

"You think our daughter has been kidnapped by farmer Daleks?"

"Well, no, that sounds stupid, when you say it like that. Where are we, anyway?" It was pitch black and very small, he could see nothing. "A storage cupboard? Why are there always storage cupboards everywhere _just_ when you need to hide from somebody? What could Daleks possibly be storing?"

"Seeds, for all their crops, probably."

"Yeah, alright, I was just… hoping for the best. Seriously, though." Martha made a noise of annoyance and moved in the dark, then heat and light wrapped itself around the room as she had summoned another fireball in her hand, alarmingly close to Mickey's head. He had to duck out of the way of it.

It certainly was storage, though; the high shelves and the walls lined with bronze orbs.

"These are the, uh…" he began.

"The…?" she prompted.

"The, you know. The eggs."

"The eggs?"

"The Dalek eggs."

"The Dalek eggs?"

"Rory calls them eggs. Those round things. They're all covered in them." Martha reached to pick one up. "I think they're explosive." She thought better of picking it up and retracted her fiery hand.

"Well, anyway, whatever this 'harvest' is, it's obviously not happened yet, which means we've still got time to…" Martha couldn't bear to finish her sentence and suggest that something bad might happen to Matilda. She was right though, Mattie must be safe – the question was for how long? "Look, we need a plan, okay? Neither of us are equipped to fight any Daleks, they're impervious to everything."

"Except massive guns," said Mickey.

"But _we_ haven't got a massive gun; that pistol might be able to kill a human stone-dead, but those things are bulletproof," Martha said.

"Yes, but Missy said they're obsessed with war machines and advanced weaponry," he said, "Surely the Daleks have stuff here that can kill a Dalek? We just have to find their armoury."

"Not sure that, out of the entire ship of heavily-armed Daleks, the room with _even more_ weapons it quite the best place to go."

"We just need to get _one_ big weapon and then they're at our mercy," Mickey said.

"Yeah, unless we're in a situation where we're grossly outnumbered – _oh wait_ , we are."

"Might not be. Maybe those two were the only Daleks here?" She glared at him. "Alright, it's unlikely, I'll admit, but you always have to hope for the best."

"And expect the worst. _So_ , what do we do if we manage to find this alleged armoury and then there's a hundred Daleks in there all with their exterminators pointed at us?"

"Blag it."

"Blag it? A hundred armed, psychotic, alien mutants and you want to _blag it_?"

"It usually works for the Doctor," he shrugged, "We've got superpowers, a gun, and a teleporter; that's more than he's ever got. And the motivation of _our daughter_ being in danger. I heard he once defeated the Daleks with a Jammie Dodger."

"Missy said these ones are angrier and more dangerous than normal ones, though," Martha whispered.

"Is it politically correct to say 'normal' Daleks? If they're mutated, isn't that a bit offensive?"

"Excuse me?"

"Like, ableist?"

" _To the Daleks_!?" Mickey didn't say anything more. "You're ridiculous. I'm leaving. If they try anything, I'll blow them up. They should know better than to mess with a mother looking for her missing child." Mickey touched the plunger-panel in order to re-open the door, revealing the now-empty corridor. Martha beckoned over her shoulder for him to follow her in the direction the pair of Daleks had come from earlier.

"Maybe we should ask somebody else for help?" Mickey hissed, beginning to panic in the face of the unsurmountable odds of the two of them versus an entire battalion of Daleks. "Strength in numbers, and all that."

"She's our daughter. Having all those numbers earlier didn't help her."

"But if that Master told us the complete truth and she's right about them stopping time, what _could_ anyone have done?"

"Thirteen could've answered the bloody phone, for starters – given us some warning. Could have just gone and dealt with the Daleks before they resorted to kidnapping a defenceless child. Mickey, _we_ have saved the world from alien threats just as many times as the rest of them. Twenty years of being a house-husband has made you forget that _we_ are formidable. We're so formidable that both the Shadow _and_ Missy said that taking Mattie wasn't worth it to have _us_ come after them. Not Rose, not the Doctors, not Clara – the two of us. We can take a measly couple of Daleks, alright?"

"You'd better hope so…"

But it wasn't a 'measly couple of Daleks.' Not by a long-shot.

Once they came up against another door he only had to touch it to trick it into opening, which revealed the full might of the Dalek fleet hidden behind the moon. The room was enormous, a cavern in outer space, overflowing with floating platforms and layers of hovering, busy soldiers. The one thing it certainly was, however, was an armoury. Huge cannons, robots, guns – a goldmine of things they could use to get their daughter back.

"Over here," he took Martha's hand and led her towards a rack full of what were definitely firearms of some kind. They hid behind it, luckily unobserved by the many Daleks. It wasn't so hard to stay out of their sight though, they did all only have the one eye each and it was rather lacking in peripheral vision. Plus, everything they saw was blue. "Look at these, big guns." He lifted one off the rack and examined it.

"What is it?"

"Particle gun," he said, "Saw one of these at Torchwood. Torchwood One. _God_ , that was a long time ago… You remember when they tried to destroy the entire universe with a reality bomb?"

"Do I remember how I met my husband, do you mean?"

He smirked, "Yeah, that. Anyway, this works like one of those, on a much smaller scale. It'll obliterate them with one shot, just wipe them out, vaporised. Eats through forcefields, too."

"Great. You've got one of those, I've got my pyrokinesis." The particle guns were huge, nearly three feet long.

"Problem is they'd only take one at a time. There must be a thousand in this room alone. We shoot one and the rest will get us before we can do any damage."

"At least we've got a last resort if we get cornered. I hope Matilda doesn't see us with guns, I don't want to set a bad example…"

"I think saving her life first is a bit more important," he said, crouching down and holding onto the enormous particle gun. "Alright, they said it was the nanny's job to look after 'the child,' so they're keeping her somewhere else – so we should try and get a map. Do you see a computer console around here anywhere?" With Daleks buzzing all around them it was difficult to see what else was in the chamber.

"Shit, no, I can't," she said, "But – hold on. Look at that." She pointed something out, something sitting on the floor nearly a hundred feet away. It looked like a regular Dalek, only with a body twice as big and even more formidable. It had six enormous, metal legs protruding from its body. It did not move, and its eyestalk hung low and dark, no light within. Other Daleks convened around it, some of them floating and others on the floor beneath its tall legs. Mickey could see the lights on top of these Daleks flashing as they talked, but they were too far away to be heard properly amidst the noise of the thousand other shouting Daleks in the chamber. "It looks like something out of _War of the Worlds_."

"I've got an idea," he announced, taking his mobile out of his pocket. He dialled simply the number '1' and then clutched the phone as it rang tightly in his hand, until he could divert the signal and intercept the Dalek comes with it. Martha couldn't hear the screeching of the entire Dalek ship which rang in his ears, but it was his job now to find the correct channel. It gave him a headache to fight through so much angry, robotic static, but finally (by pointing the phone in the direction of the many-legged Dalek monster) he cut through and heard only a few select voices.

" _THE EXTERIOR IS COMPLETE, PREPARE FOR GENETIC IMPLANTATION_."

" _SUITABLE GENETIC MATERIALS WILL BE MATURED IN FIVE-HUNDRED RELS_."

"It's empty, that thing up there," Mickey explained to Martha, "I think it's a mech. They haven't put the actual, Dalek alien inside of it yet." It was a one-way channel, so the Daleks couldn't hear him talking inside their heads.

"Oh yeah?"

"They said it needs 'suitable genetic materials' but it's going to take 'five-hundred rels.'" As he talked, the front panels of the mech split open, revealing the empty casing inside, all ready for the genetic implant it was shortly going to receive.

"Five-hundred rels is about ten minutes, I think," she said, "Ten minutes until that big, dangerous spider-mech full of weapons isn't empty anymore. And it really is _quite_ big, you know."

"Mmm. Big enough for two, do you think, Dr Jones?"

"Mr Smith, you read my mind. Now, there's at least a hundred Daleks that could turn on us between here and there-"

"We need a distraction," Mickey decided, "You should blow something up on the other side of the room, keep them occupied. It must be full of explosives here. Make the right thing go bang and they'll all have to go and work out whether something malfunctioned." He put the phone back to his ear and began messing with which Dalek comms he was tapping into, trying to find an appropriate target for Martha since it was so tricky to actually see what anything was in that gigantic, overpopulated room. "That side of the room they're keeping fuel canisters. Flammable, but not flammable enough to blow a hole in the ship and kill everything."

"Yeah, I think I see them," said Martha, indicating some bronze cylinders with digital readouts – though the readouts themselves were illegible from such a distance. Especially now that Mickey suspected his eyesight was failing him in his old age.

Martha squinted and focused intently on the canisters far away from them. He usually told her she looked constipated when she actually tried to detonate anything; usually she only did it accidentally and had never had much time to practice at making things psychically combust. This time, however, her dedication to Matilda was lording itself over her chaotic superpower, and he instinctively ducked when the explosion of the canisters rocked the room.

"WHAT WAS THAT?"

"WHAT WAS THAT?"

"WHAT WAS THAT?"

A thousand voices rang out in unison, all of them turning to the source of the flames, many beginning to move in that direction and abandoning their posts.

"Go, go!" Mickey hissed. They made a break for it. They fled from the cover of the rack of particle cannons straight for the gigantic, empty mech. They would only have a few seconds to try and make it inside before the other Daleks began to swarm and attack them, but luckily for them the Daleks weren't even aware that they had a security breach. Too arrogant to think that anybody would be able to find them, probably – let alone a pair of insignificant human parents looking for their kidnapped child.

But it was taller than it looked from a distance when they finally drew close, right behind the hoard of Daleks flocking towards the explosion. Martha made a motion which he recognised as meaning she wanted him to give her a boost. Slinging the particle gun over his back he crouched down so that she could step onto his shoulders, a manoeuvre they hadn't needed to do for a long time.

"HUMANS!" The nearest Dalek screamed, finally blowing their cover.

"Shit!" Mickey exclaimed. He almost threw Martha upwards towards the mech, but she managed to grab onto its hull while he immediately ducked out of the green blast of the metal exterminator. Martha struggled to scramble inside while he rolled across the floor to dodge another blast that came straight after, the Dalek repositioning itself. He primed the particle cannon, but when he tried to fire it jammed.

"EXTERMINATE!" Quite honestly, faced with that many Daleks, Mickey thought it might be the end of him. Then the Dalek itself exploded, its top half ripped to pieces. He turned his back to it to shield himself from some of the shrapnel, realising that Martha had just saved his life after finally managing to get into the central capsule of the six-legged mech. The bottom half lay smoking, full of metal and the goop of the organic Dalek within.

"Get in here!" she shouted. He tossed her the particle gun and then climbed on top of the wrecked Dalek – the only way he could think of to gain the necessary height to make it into the mech with Martha. He leapt the short distance and grabbed onto the metal carcass, Martha holding onto his arms to keep him from slipping.

"EXTERMINATE!"

"EXTERMINATE!"

"EXTERMINATE!" Rang the Daleks around them. Green energy blasts whooshed past his flailing legs as Martha helped pull him in. He landed on top of her finally, his legs inside.

"How do we shut the door!?"

"Uh – here!" He managed to get onto his knees, elbowing her a few times in the process, and put his hand against the controls the Dalek embryo was supposed to be wired into. The doors closed themselves and they were plunged into hot, cramped darkness.

"Well," said Martha from somewhere right next to his head. He could feel her against him as he tried to work out how to use the controls with his technopathy. "This is intimate, isn't it?"

"It's enough to make me fancy you."

"You're very easy then, aren't you?" she quipped.

"Hey!" She laughed slightly, once.

"Come on, get the thing working."

"I'm _trying_." Finally, a blue screen lit up brightly in front of him; the visual feed from the eyestalk. With it, the comms also activated, allowing them to hear the conversations of the Daleks outside which had been mostly blocked out as the shell of the mech had closed on them.

" _WE CANNOT ATTACK THE PROTOTYPE_."

" _THEY WILL HAVE TO LEAVE EVENTUALLY; A HUMAN COULD NOT PILOT THE MACHINE_."

" _IT IS NOT WORTH DAMAGING IT_." Then they began talking about tracing the route of their security breach.

"That's good then, if this is the only one of these mechs," Martha whispered, "We've got a massive advantage."

"Yeah, they want to smoke us out."

"You _can_ pilot it, right?"

"I… hope so?" he said uncertainly. He usually only used his talents to get rid of viruses from the computer or fix the smart fridge when it started acting up. Not for piloting gigantic, alien war-machines. "Uh-oh, here we go." The machine rocked as he finally got it to activate, standing up on its tall, long legs, whipping the Daleks into a frenzy. A few of them began to shoot at it, but the Daleks' own forcefield was more than a match for the exterminators. He supposed that was to stop friendly fire from being an issue in warfare, but it worked tremendously to their advantage.

Mickey kept both his hands firmly on the control panels on either side, having to communicate entirely telepathically with the ship to get it to obey him. He glanced at Martha by his side, bathed in the blue light of the camera feed.

"I reckon you'd better hold on tight."


	192. Metal Gear Solid

**DAY 6,574**

 _Metal Gear Solid_

 _Jack_

"How about another cup of tea for the big, bad wolf?" Jack offered. Rose Tyler was sitting in one of the armchairs in Mickey and Martha's living room, the house empty aside from the two of them. Smith and Jones themselves had whooshed away nearly two hours ago, as soon as Jack had given away his vortex manipulator. Everyone else had stuck around for a while, waiting, seeing if they returned. But they hadn't. Even Ten and Donna had left to go and use the TARDIS to do something substantial; suffice it to say, none of them were obeying the strict instructions not to get involved in Matilda's disappearance. Everybody was trying to do something, even if he and Rose were the only ones still in the house. Esther was off searching the ends of the Earth, stopping by to drink about a litre of water every half-hour to replenish her energy.

"Yeah, go on then," Rose sighed, picking up her empty mug and holding it out to Jack. She was trying to commune with the time vortex to pluck out Matilda's location, the issue being that the time vortex was not very forthcoming with information. It often told Rose things she would need to know at one point or another but mining it for something specific was enormously difficult. In the last two hours she had suffered no fewer than four nosebleeds from the effort, the floor around her surrounded by bloody tissues.

"You're gonna hurt yourself," he warned her again as he rinsed her mug.

"I can't just do nothing. I have all the information in the universe at my fingertips, I just have to access it."

"Like you did the first time? When you committed genocide and brought me back to life permanently?"

"That's different, I can control it now."

"It's hurting you."

"I heal as well, you know," she pointed out.

"Within reason – don't let it burn you up, Rose."

"She's my goddaughter. _Our_ goddaughter-"

"And as your god-husband, I'm just looking out for you as well. We've got other methods in play – even the Gutkeleds are doing… well, I don't know what they're doing, some kinda blood ritual."

"A _blood ritual_?"

"Believe you me, I'm not thrilled about the idea either. If only the Eleventh Doctor hadn't thrown the damn Singularity into the Eye of Harmony – that's the kind of thing we could really use right now."

"It has all the powers of the time vortex, just like me. If I can just get it to _cooperate_ … not having those vampires try to rescue her. I don't trust them. Well, I suppose Other Clara's not so bad, but I wouldn't trust Sally to even make me a coffee without trying to kill me. Besides – how could they rescue anybody when they have to be invited in everywhere?"

"It's a fair cop," said Jack, crossing his arms and leaning against the counter.

"Look at you, being domestic, making tea."

"Ha, ha."

"Where's Ianto?"

"At home. Trying to feel useful, looking through UNIT's archives. Hasn't found anything yet."

"Esther must have searched the whole planet by now," Rose sighed, leaning back in the sofa as the kettle steadily boiled behind Jack. "I don't understand how they could have taken her like that, with none of us… it's like she just stopped existing."

"Maybe Mickey and Martha have found something. They went to talk to the Shadow, he knows all kinds of stuff," Jack continued to comfort Rose. Like he himself didn't want to be doing everything in his power to rescue Mattie as well – though he couldn't very well let her kill herself in the process. What good would that do? None. And besides, his first idea would have been to take the vortex manipulator and interrogate the Shadow as well, or maybe try and work out where the Master was hiding those days. Mickey and Martha had stolen his vortex manipulator, and he'd opted to keep an eye on Rose rather than slide his way onto one of the TARDISes. Good that he did, too, watching her as she closed her eyes again to try and extract information out of the tight lips of the universe like a rotten tooth.

He finished making Rose her fresh cup of tea and tapped her on the shoulder when he handed it over so that she would open her eyes.

"Thanks," she said quietly. "Sorry for snapping. It's just – I'm so worried about her, you know?"

"Yeah."

"And they were right, I should have done something." She sniffed and drank her tea, a bead of blood underneath her nose. Jack handed out yet another tissue, especially when she froze and made a weird face.

"…Rose? Are you gonna sneeze? That tea's hot and you'll get nose-blood in it." She said nothing. "Rose? Okay, how about I just take that…" he lifted the mug carefully out of her hands, then she gasped deeply and did an almighty sneeze into her hands, covering them in blood and spit. Jack was glad he took the tea away.

"I know where she is," she announced.

"Where who is?"

"Matilda! Why are my hands covered in blood?"

"Because you just sneezed into them and you have another nosebleed, _here_ ," he forced her to take the tissue, "What did the time vortex tell you?"

"It doesn't _tell me_ things – how many times do I have to explain it? I just _know_. And right now I know that Matilda is behind the moon."

" _What_!? You're kidding me! Is it the Nazis?"

"Excuse me?"

"The moon Nazis. Have they taken her? Classic Nazis…"

"No, not – is that a thing? Are you making it up?" He began to talk but she cut him off, "Actually, I don't care. She's been taken by Daleks."

"Oh, thank god."

" _Thank god_?"

"I thought the moon Nazis would have her. Daleks is a relief. We know how to fight Daleks. I mean, this is 2031, they've been on the dark side of the moon for ninety years, who knows what kinds of technology they could have?"

"I literally don't care – we have to go," she stood up and dashed over to the sink so that she could wash her hands properly before they embarked upon their rescue mission. Jack picked his coat up from where it had been draped over the back of one of the chairs. "Ship full of Daleks? And just Mickey and Martha against them? Not to mention, what do Daleks want with Mattie?"

"And how did they take her right from under our noses?" Jack added while Rose scrubbed the snot from her palms. He drew his gun from the inside of his coat to check if it was loaded.

"What good's _that_ gonna do against a Dalek?" she questioned him.

"It's just a little security. Not all of us can punch through solid Dalekanium like it's made of wet tissue paper." Rose rolled her eyes and shook her hands, wiping them dry on her jeans rather than using a tea towel.

"Don't think bullets can get through Dalekanium either."

"Well… are you gonna teleport us or not? That's our little girl out there in space with a bunch of one-eyed salt shakers." Rose rolled her eyes and grabbed his arm.

Jack still wasn't used to Rose Tyler's particular brand of teleportation, having not been subjected to it very often, but it was a damn-sight more pleasant than the vortex manipulator he'd been wearing on his wrist for thousands of years. It was more like time and space moved around them rather than them moving through time and space, which was always quite violent because time generally resisted things moving through it. Mickey and Martha's house disintegrated into the same golden particles which curled off Rose's skin like embers in a fire, and then reformed just as quickly into the bronze and sickeningly familiar interior of a Dalek ship. Polished floors, bronze walls, they were dropped into the middle of an empty, quiet corridor.

"Right then," Rose began, putting her hands on her hips. Then she looked expectantly at Jack, "What next?"

"Finding a map would be good so we know the layout. Probably don't need to go hunt for weapons since you're the Bad Wolf and I can't die. I suppose the main question is whether we want them to know we're here or not?"

"Might make them get desperate and do something to Mattie if they know I'm coming after them. Stupid things are more scared of me than the Doctor."

"With good reason; the Doctor can't wipe entire species from reality with a thought. What do you think? Left or right?"

"Probably…" Rose paused to think, then frowned. "Can you hear that?" He strained his ears, and picked up on high-pitched, electronic noises. He drew out his gun again. "Would you put that thing away?"

"That's what she said."

"Unbelievable."

"Sounds like Daleks," he said, not putting the gun away, "Sounds like a whole bunch of Daleks. Sounds like a whole bunch of Daleks heading right this way…" They were wailing, screaming something – though Daleks did have a habit of screaming _everything_ – and coming right towards Jack and Rose.

They rounded the corner, flashing, shrieking, going as fast as their little wheels would carry them.

"ESCAPE!"

"ESCAPE!"

"ESCAAAAAPE!"

Jack and Rose backed against the opposite walls to get out of the way of the Daleks, who didn't seem remotely interested in drying to exterminate them. In fact, with their appalling peripheral vision, Jack would say they didn't even notice them at all. He pressed himself against the wall, Rose copying, as half a dozen Daleks rushed past and went off down the other end of the corridor, disappearing.

"Were they saying 'escape'?" he asked Rose, stepping out into the open again, perplexed, still holding up his revolver.

"It did sound like that. What could scare a Dalek that much? Apart from me. Or the Doctor."

"I, uh… think we're about to find out…"

A monster rounded the corner. A gigantic mech, a body at least twice the size of an ordinary Dalek suspended on six huge, metal legs. It crawled towards them, eyestalk waving chaotically as well as what he recognised as a very powerful photon cannon situated centrally on its body, rather than the typical exterminator and plunger. And it was _fast_ , a terrifying, robotic Dalek-spider, hardly even fitting in the corridor with them.

"Oh, shit."

"Sounds about right," nodded Jack, "I think we should, uh?"

"Escape?"

"Yep."

They took off. He'd run from a lot of alien threats in his time, but few things scared him more than a gigantic Dalek with spider's legs. It was pure, unadulterated nightmare fuel and made him glad he didn't need to sleep. If he did he would certainly never sleep again. It twisted and turned, crawling on the walls, the ceiling, clinging to everything, chasing them in a circle across every available surface. Rose was right about his gun being absolutely useless; he fired a handful of bullets but they ricocheted off the body dangerously.

"HURRY UP!" Rose yelled at him, "IT'S RIGHT BEHIND US!"

"WHY ISN'T IT SHOOTING!?"

"I DON'T KNOW! BUT I DON'T WANT TO STOP TO ASK IT!" The photon cannon wasn't even active. If _he_ managed to find himself a photon cannon he'd blow that thing right out of the water, blast it into a million pieces. Why was a Dalek attacking other Daleks though, he wondered? Why chase them and not kill them? And didn't Daleks love themselves so much that destroying each other was basically a war crime?

"TURN LEFT, TURN LEFT!" They veered left and saw, to their horror, the troupe of fleeing Daleks still shrieking their intention to escape. "NOT LEFT, NOT LEFT!" They turned back, faced with the Dalek spider almost on them, then changed course completely and headed to the right, Rose knocking into Jack and almost slamming him to the floor because she didn't know her own strength. Unfortunately, the Dalek troupe knew their own ship a lot better than Jack and Rose did, because they found themselves at a dead end. And the spider-mech didn't go for the others, who were running further and further away, it came for he and Rose.

"This isn't good!"

"Oh, really!? 'Cos I thought it was bloody brilliant! I love being chased!" Rose yelled at him.

He ran right up to the wall with no alternative, no other doors built deceptively into the walls, no hidden passages, no conveniently-situated air vents. And what would Daleks do if they got their hands on him? They could drain his blood for their own nefarious purposes, just like what had happened with the Blessing only a million times worse if used to immortalise the scourge of the universe.

"Some Bad Wolf energy would be really helpful right about now, Rose," Jack said, getting desperate.

"If it gets any closer I'll rip that cannon right off it," Rose promised him, though she looked about as scared as the Daleks in the face of this killing machine. But it didn't come any closer, it stopped moving completely. The eyestalk waved up and down and side to side ridiculously, but the lights above didn't flash and it didn't make a sound. "…Maybe it's just malfunctioned…?"

"Go and do something about it before it works out how to shoot us with that cannon," Jack hissed at her, "I don't know if you've ever been vaporised into a tiny pile of ash and had to regrow your entire body, but _I_ have, and I'm really not in the mood to do that today."

"Alright then, Dalek-thing," Rose began, attempting to sound like she knew what she was doing, waving a fist like an old man shooing kids off his lawn, "I'm the Bad Wolf and the wife of the Doctor, and you're in for a world of pain, so-"

"- _the speaker on!_ " it said suddenly, making Jack and Rose both jump. " _What? Oh, bloody – Rose!_ "

"Martha!?" they both exclaimed.

" _Yes! Sorry! It's a nightmare trying to get this thing to work_."

"Oh my god," Rose said, horror-struck, "Martha, have they…? They've turned you into one of them! Just like they did Oswin! They'll pay for this, I promise-"

" _No, no. We're just inside it. It was empty_ ," said a second voice, Mickey Smith.

"Looks, uh, kinda cramped in there," Jack commented, "Don't suppose either of you are feeling hard objects in all the wrong places?"

"Shut up," Rose elbowed him with such force he slammed into the wall.

"Stop doing that!"

" _What are you doing here?_ " Martha asked.

"Trying to find Matilda, obviously," said Rose, ignoring Jack completely, "Took me this long to get her whereabouts from the time vortex, we literally came here just a few minutes ago. What about you two? How'd you get here?"

" _Talked to the Shadow, the Shadow told us where to find the Master, interrogated her at gunpoint until she got bored_ ," Martha explained.

"She has something to do with this?" Jack asked, "Shoulda known…"

" _No,_ " Mickey began, " _She said that she was on the run from this group of Skaro Degradations hiding behind the moon who have been looking for a Time Lord for months. Said she kept trying to warn Thirteen about it but Thirteen ignores her and never calls her back_."

"What's a 'Degradation'?" Rose asked.

"Bad news," Jack explained, "Mutant Daleks, hell-bent on military prowess and developing superweapons. They're a lot angrier and crazier than the regular kind who are just plain evil. These ones are twisted. Hence the big mech here. Can you imagine how dangerous this thing would be if they put a Dalek in it? So dangerous the other Daleks ran away when it went rogue."

"Not if they can't even make it shoot," quipped Rose.

" _I'm working on it_ ," Mickey argued, " _Alien telepathic controls are tricky_."

"Have you found a map in there?" Jack asked. Silence. "You know that all their technology connects to one big, hive-mind mainframe? So you should be able to access some kind of floorplan, work out where Mattie is?"

" _Doesn't Rose know_?" Martha asked.

"I got us to the ship, I'm not a miracle worker."

" _You're the god of the entire universe_."

"Yeah, well the universe doesn't want to play today. It took a lot of effort to get here and I just want to help you get Mattie back. We both do. And you've definitely got more of a chance with Jack and I here."

" _The Daleks said they need her alive for the 'harvest'_ ," Mickey said, " _We don't know what that means, but it's definitely bad._ "

"They probably want her regenerations, or the regeneration energy. Work out a way to mine it or replicate it for themselves. Pretty basic Dalek scheme, trying to make themselves as durable as the Time Lords are," shrugged Jack.

"Not artron energy?" Rose asked.

"They could get that from any rogue time traveller, wouldn't need Mattie."

" _Like when you woke up that Dalek and made it heal, or when I accidentally activated the Genesis Ark_ ," Mickey addressed Rose from within the mech.

"Exactly," Jack nodded, "The Daleks will know we're coming after them by this point, so those ones who ran away have probably gone to stand their ground near the last hope for Dalek regenerations. Meaning we should follow them. And you guys should really work out how to use the big photon cannon."

" _Speaking of cannons_ ," Mickey began, then fell quiet. The front compartment on the mech opened up slowly to reveal them both crammed right in a frankly tiny pod. Martha lowered herself down carefully, not risking the big drop now she was getting on a bit in years (which Rose still often forgot), holding an enormous particle gun.

"Here you go," Martha held it out to Jack, "Have a proper gun."

" _Holy_ …" Jack breathed, taking it from her, "This is one powerful piece of equipment, rips things to atoms and scatters them never to reform. Brutal. I got shot with one once. Don't you need it?"

"I can make things explode with my mind," Martha reminded him, "I really don't need a compensator. Now, can we please save my daughter? I can't imagine the hell she's going through."


	193. Our Little Girl

**DAY 6,574**

 _Our Little Girl_

 _Matilda_

"I drew you," Matilda Smith-Jones said to the big, pink salt-shaker sharing her glass room. Her hands covered in ink from various felt-tip pens, she held up a large sheet of paper with a squiggly likeness of the salt-shaker etched onto it. She was sitting on the floor in a circle of toys and soft-furnishings, with more salt-shakers visible on the other side of the glass observation wall. She did not know what they were, but they were very loud and shouty.

"THIS IS SUB-PAR," the one in her room said.

"Don't be mean, Pinkie."

"MY NAME IS NOT 'PINKIE'," it screeched.

"But 'Pinkie' sounds cute."

"I AM NOT CUTE."

"Why are you pink but all of your friends are boring-colours?"

"DALEKS HAVE NO CONCEPT OF FRIENDSHIP, WE ARE SOLDIERS."

"Soldiers can make friends," Mattie said knowingly.

"WE KNOW ONLY WAR."

"That sounds sad." Pinkie did not say anything more, merely stared at her with its vacant eyestalk, looking at the wonky drawing she had done of her new babysitter. Mattie dropped the picture and jumped to her feet. "Can I do an experiment, please?"

"WHAT EXPERIMENT?"

"I want to make slime. I got a slime-making pack for my birthday. Today's my birthday. Can we make slime?"

"FOR WHAT PURPOSE?"

"It's fun."

"DALEKS HAVE NO CONCEPT OF FUN. IT IS A WASTE OF TIME."

"You won't let me do _anything_!" she whined. It was worse than when Esther babysat her, Esther wouldn't let her have any fun, either. "There's only girly stuff in here." There was a doll's house, a plastic tea-party set, more teddies than you could shake a stick at – but nothing to make slime or do anything cool.

"OUR SCANNERS INDICATE THAT YOU ARE A FEMALE OF THE INFERIOR SPECIES, AND THESE ARE ACTIVITIES WHICH FEMALES ENJOY." Mattie glared at the salt-shaker.

"Can I watch TV, please?"

"THERE IS NO TELEVISION, SOURCES INDICATE THAT TELEVISION MAY HAVE ADVERSE EFFECTS ON THE BRAIN FUNCTIONS OF SOME MINOR SPECIES."

"No TV!?" It really _was_ worse than hanging out with Esther. "You're boring, too. You think you're not boring because you're pink but you're still boring. Please can I go home now? I like seeing space outside but this isn't very fun."

"YOU MAY NOT LEAVE, YOU ARE NECESSARY TO THE CONTINUATION OF DALEK-KIND."

"But I want to go home."

"OUR HOME WAS DESTROYED IN A WAR. YOU MUST REMAIN TO ENABLE US TO CREATE A NEW SKARO."

"But I don't want to. I don't even know what that is. How am I meant to do something when I don't know what it is? You haven't even got Nutella. I don't want to help people who won't let me have Nutella."

"IT IS NOT A MATTER OF WANT: YOU WILL HELP US, OR YOU WILL PERISH." Matilda scrunched up her face and began to cry. "DO NOT MAKE THIS NOISE." She continued to cry, covering her eyes with her hands and sitting down on the floor; she just wanted to go home. "STOP THIS. THE INSUFFERABLE SOUND SERVES NO PURPOSE, CHILD. EMOTIONS ARE USELESS." It was to no avail; Mattie did not stop crying.

Over an intercom system, another salt-shaker addressed the room.

" _IF YOU CANNOT CONTROL THE SPECIMEN YOU WILL BE REPLACED WITH A NEW NANNY-DALEK_ ," it warned.

"CHILD-CARE IS MUCH HARDER THAN INITIALLY SUSPECTED," Pinkie argued, "YOU SHOULD TRY TAKING CARE OF A CHILD."

" _DALEKS DO NOT HAVE YOUTHS; IT IS WHY WE ARE SUPERIOR_."

"I AM PERFORMING AN UNDERVALUED ROLE IN DALEK-SOCIETY. SURROGATE PARENTHOOD DOES NOT COMPUTE WITH PRE-PROGRAMMED DALEK RULES AND PERAMETERS."

" _YOUR REPLACEMENT IS IMMINENT. MAKE IT CEASE THE NOISES._ "

Pinkie did not scare Mattie. None of the funny salt-shakers scared Mattie, they just upset her when they wouldn't let her leave. But it was part of the way through the comm-based arguments that a monster exploded through the wall. The solid metal door was blown to pieces which flew across the room on the other side of Mattie's glass window, and in came another salt-shaker, but three times the size and crawling on six legs like a robot spider. Remarkably, this didn't scare Matilda, either: she kind of liked spiders, and thought robot spiders were _especially_ cool.

"Yay! Mummy!" Mattie's crying stopped almost immediately as she bounded over to the glass, seeing her mother enter the room in the wake of the monster. Martha shouted something, but no sound came through from the other side of the glass. "Aunty Rose! Uncle Jack!" Martha came up to the glass: Jack had an enormous gun and when one of the salt-shakers flashed at him he shot it. It exploded. "Cool!" She put her hands on the glass. Behind her, Pinkie was shouting. Martha carried on making sounds Mattie couldn't hear, then Rose said something, and then Rose disappeared.

"Get away from her," Rose had, in Mattie's eyes, magicked herself from once place to the other and was glowing slightly gold. She held out a hand to threaten Pinkie, though she wasn't holding a gun like Jack was. "Matts, c'mere, sweetheart – are you okay?" Rose crouched down as Matilda ran over and hugged her, Rose still glaring at Pinkie, who didn't say a word. "Did they hurt you?"

"No, but they wouldn't let me watch any TV," she complained, "And he said I did a rubbish picture." Mattie pointed at her drawing on the floor.

"I think it's a brilliant picture," Rose said, picking her up and holding her with one arm, watching Pinkie carefully. "Are you going to stop me from taking my goddaughter home?"

"That's Pinkie, he's my friend, even if he's mean."

"DALEKS HAVE NO CONCEPT OF FRIENDSHIP," Pinkie repeated.

"Do you have a concept of who the Bad Wolf is?" Rose asked darkly, "Because that's who you've crossed. Not the Doctor, he's not here, but I am. If you stand in my way, or I found out you've hurt Matilda, you'll pay."

"OUR ORDERS WERE FOR THE SPECIMEN TO REMAIN UNHARMED," Pinkie said. Rose magicked them again, vanishing from inside the glass and reappearing with the robot spider and Mattie's mother and uncle, and now she could hear what was going on. Jack was threatening the large group of salt-shakers.

"Oh my god, Mattie," Martha took Mattie out of Rose's arms and hugged her tightly, so tightly Mattie thought she might be squashed. "We were so worried about you, baby, we've looked everywhere for you. Are you okay? Did they hurt you?"

"Why would they hurt me?"

"They're cruel," Martha told her, "They're called Daleks, and they're evil. Do you understand? They kidnapped you from us."

"Where's daddy?"

" _I'm driving the big robot, Matts, I'm right here_ ," her dad spoke in a metallic tone from within the big machine; she thought it was _even cooler_ now.

"C'mon, give it up," Jack said, brandishing his gun a mutant little thing in a blue tank. Mattie thought it looked like an octopus with one eye, floating in the liquid with wires attached to its wrinkly skin. "It's over. Tell us what the 'harvest' is and why you took this little girl away from her family." Martha stepped underneath the mech and kissed Matilda on the top of her head, while Matilda wriggled and tried to see what was going on.

"That's icky," she mumbled. Martha smiled the tiniest amount, holding her close.

"WE NEEDED A TIME LORD," the crusty one in the tank answered, bubbles rising to the top of the liquid, lights above the tank flashing when it talked just like on the rest of them. "THE YOUNG ONE HAS HAD NO REGENERATIVE CAP IMPOSED YET. SHE WILL BE ABLE TO HEAL THE DALEKS FOR GENERATIONS IF THE ENERGY IS HARVESTED."

"Immortality of the Daleks – a little bit boring, don't you think?" Jack remarked, "I'd expect something a bit wackier from Degradations such as yourselves. Instead you've kidnapped a kid while you cower behind the moon. It's pathetic. Time was, you guys would've had the whole universe running in fear."

"AND WE WILL AGAIN, CAPTAIN. YOU CANNOT STOP THE PROCESS OF THE HARVEST; THE CHILD BEIND ALIVE IS PREFERABLE, BUT NOT NECESSARY. ONE SHOT AND SHE WILL BE FORCED TO REPAIR HERSELF."

"You can't do that!" Martha shouted in horror, "She doesn't know how!"

" _You even try and I'll kill you all with the photon cannon_ ," Mickey threatened.

"What?" Mattie asked, "Killing people is bad. Daddy can't say things like that."

"Martha," Rose hissed when Martha was at a loss for what to say to Matilda, "We need to get her away from here. We know this isn't going to end with anything a child should witness. I'll take her home."

"Take her to the TARDIS," Martha decided, "They won't be able to get her on there."

"Okay, if you're sure," Rose said, taking Matilda again.

"I'm eighty now. I can stand up, you know," she argued, still squirming, disliking being handed around like a baby. "What's going to happen that I can't 'witness'? What's 'witness'?"

"Something you shouldn't see, you're too young," Rose said.

"I'm-"

"I'll make sure she's okay," Rose interrupted Matilda to address Martha.

"What? No, I want to stay with mum!" Matilda protested, but Rose did not care what Matilda wanted, because she was one of those grownups who thought she knew best, even though Matilda was an adult now. She was eighteen.

She nearly began to cry again as the world disappeared around her, turning gold, then nothing, then gold again, then something brand new. A place she had never seen before. The inside of an engine or another machine with a vivid purple glow about it, silver chrome finishings, flashing buttons, a balcony high up and a lot of passages and bookshelves. The colours amazed her and the new world hummed slightly in the background. Rose did not seem happy, however.

"Urgh – this is the wrong one…"

"Matilda!?" her aunt Clara exclaimed from atop the balcony, almost falling out of a very large armchair which had initially had its back to the rest of the room. "Oh my stars, are you alright? Is she alright?" Clara, too, could magically move from one place to another, only she did not turn gold but made plumes of black smoke behind her. First she was on the balcony, then she was in front of them, as Rose set Mattie down on the ground again.

"Daleks took her," Rose explained quickly, "I meant to go to _my_ Doctor's TARDIS, but – you'll make sure she's safe here, won't you?"

"I – well – I mean, yes, of course we will, the Doctor's just in the next room, Matts will be fine here – but I thought Martha doesn't want her on the TARDIS?"

"A TARDIS is the best place right now," Rose said, "I have to get back, they can't face all those Daleks without me, we just didn't want Mattie to see what…"

"See _what_?" Matilda repeated pointedly, changing Rose's unfinished sentence into a question.

"Yeah, no," said Clara, "Go, hurry up. We'll watch her, she'll be fine." Rose disappeared in the blink of an eye, leaving Matilda alone with Clara, who she did not see nearly so often as Aunty Rose and Uncle Jack. "Are you okay, sweetheart?" Clara stooped to talk to her.

"You don't have to lean down, you're short already," she said. Clara didn't react for a second, and then laughed.

"That's a good point. You'll be taller than me soon, I'm sure," she straightened back up, then held out her hand for Matilda to take, which she did, "Come on, the Doctor's through here. She went to make us some tea. Is there anything you want?"

"I want some Nutella, please, if there is any."

"I'll tell you a secret," Clara whispered, "We've got _loads_ of Nutella. You can have as much as you want, sweetheart. It's still your birthday, after all." Mattie beamed as a set of doors opened in front of here, to reveal another purple-themed room. The girly Doctor was there pouring milk into mugs. "Look who just showed up out of the blue."

"Huh?" the Doctor looked over, then she dropped one of the spoons on the counter in shock. "Matilda!"

"Rose just brought her here, we're to watch her and keep her safe."

"Are you alright, Mattie?"

Mattie pouted, "Why does everyone keep asking me that? I'm fine. If I wasn't fine I'd just say that I'm not fine." She let go of Clara's hand and crossed her arms.

"We're just worried about you, Matts, that's all," Clara told her softly, "Come on, let's go sit at the table and the Doctor will get you some Nutella, won't you?"

"It would be my pleasure," the Doctor smiled, picking the spoon back up to resume making her tea.

"What is it that people don't want me to see?" Matilda implored Clara once she was sat down.

"Uh…" Clara faltered, "They're just going to make those Daleks go away, that's all."

"Daddy said he would kill them if they hurt me. But killing is bad. Isn't it? And Uncle Jack had a gun. He blew one of them up."

"Did you say Daleks?" the Doctor asked, "They're the ones who took you?"

"They said they needed 'energy' and to 'harvest' me and that they didn't need me alive."

"Oh, sweetheart…" Clara sighed, the Doctor setting tea in front of her, "Daleks are… they're not nice. They're like wasps, they're just cruel and will hurt people for no reason, and they'll never change. Your dad's just very worried about what they might have done to you, do you understand? You were in terrible danger, but it's okay now. They can't get onto the TARDIS, they've never been able to get on here. Nothing bad can." The Doctor retrieved a jar of Nutella from one of the cupboards and a spoon, giving these to Matilda and then sitting down next to Clara.

"They're monsters, designed to kill anything that isn't one of them, built by an evil scientist."

"I didn't think they were scary. They let me draw pictures."

"Then you're the bravest girl in the whole universe, and everything your parents and your family do is to protect you. You and every other living thing in existence," Clara said, "Because they scare me."

"Maybe you scare easily."

"Well, maybe I do," Clara smiled, "But I still think you're brave."

"Listen, Mattie," the Doctor began, "You know how I'm an alien? I'm from another planet? Just like the other Doctors? And there aren't any more of us left who came from that planet?" Mattie nodded. "The reason for that is because of those Daleks, and a horrible war that threatened to destroy everything in existence. It's… their fault that I'm alone now. You're still too young to know any more than that, I'm sorry, we just need you to understand how dangerous they are."

"…Okay," she said eventually, licking Nutella off the back of her spoon, "If that's what you say."

"Try to forget about today," Clara said, "There's still a few hours left, yeah? You can still have a good birthday. Your parents will be back soon."

"Where are we?" she asked.

"The TARDIS," said the Doctor, "Somewhere you're not ordinarily allowed to be because your parents want to keep you away from all this."

"They tell me stories. Is this the time-machine?"

"Yes, sweetheart, it's a time machine," Clara said.

"Time travel sounds dangerous."

"It can be. So, if you _don't_ want to time travel, what do you want to do?"

"Do you know how to make slime?"

"Slime!?" the Doctor exclaimed, "Of course we can make slime! We can make tons of slime, in every colour. See, you don't even _need_ a slime-making kit, you can make it with regular household ingredients. You just need cornflour and shampoo." She got out of her chair to return to the kitchen.

"Mickey and Martha are going to kill you for teaching her this," Clara advised, then her words caught in her throat, "I mean – not _kill_ – they won't…" Matilda looked at her blankly.

"They don't mind me making a mess as long as I help clean it up."

"Well then, they must be the best parents in the world," Clara said, "Because god knows I'd get sick of the Doctor if she made half as much mess as you, Matts. Although she is rubbish at cleaning up after herself."

"Too busy cleaning up after you, darling," the Doctor quipped as she sorted out a mixing bowl and various ingredients. Mattie was half focused on what the Doctor was doing and half focused on her Nutella.

"Why did you decide to marry a girl and not somebody else?" Mattie asked.

"Great question," said Clara, "She was actually a boy when I married her, though."

"So what do you like more?"

"On the whole, I'd have to say girls have nicer hair. And they smell better."

"That's true," Matilda nodded. "I thought it might be because you don't have to use different toilets. You can use the same toilets and won't have to stop talking or anything, but daddy would get shouted at if he went into the girls' toilet."

"Another good reason," nodded Clara.

"You humans make way too big a deal out of who uses what bathroom," Thirteen said as she returned to the table with a plastic bowl of water, some cornflour and some shampoo – though Mattie didn't understand why they had shampoo in the kitchen (maybe Rose was right when she talked about how they were weird.)

"Everyone should share one big toilet. Like a whirlpool," said Mattie, "Then it wouldn't be as hard to fix for the plumbers."

"The Romans used to have big cesspits, and they'd have toilets which were basically wooden benches with holes cut in them and they'd poo into the hole and it would all go into one big ditch in the ground. In fact," Thirteen continued as she mixed her concoctions, "Cesspits carried on being popular for generations, in the Tudor period they had what were called gong farmers. They were the people who would dig out the poo and take it to the outside of the of the city and dump it. Even worse, the cesspits were built in people's cellars and sometimes they only got cleaned every _two years_ , or longer."

"Did they ever find anything good in the poo?" Mattie asked, enthralled.

"Oh, sure – lost heirlooms, gold, dead bodies."

" _Really_?" her eyes widened.

"Uh-huh. And sometimes the gong farmers would choke on the fumes and die." Clara eyed Mattie very carefully as she listened to this story.

"Can't believe you're listening to her go on about poo and you're still eating that spread," she said, nose upturned. It didn't bother Matilda in the slightest, however.

"In London, they dumped it in the Thames, and it became such a huge issue that parliament were called to do something about it. And you know what they did? They covered their curtains in potent chemicals to try and mask the smell and ignore it, before the sewage system was invented." She squeezed a few drops of purple food-colouring into the sludge in the plastic bowl.

"Can we go see it? In the time machine?"

"…Maybe when you're older," Clara said unsurely, "Much older. I mean, what if you passed out on noxious fumes? I don't think your mum would be very happy if we let that happen to you."

"In Tudor England they also used to throw poo and wee into the streets out of windows, with buckets. They'd shout 'gardyloo' before they did it, and in fact your mother and I once went to Tudor London and we almost got a bucket of waste thrown at us from a window."

" _Wow_! She never told me that."

"I wonder why…" Clara said quietly.

"Why did they say 'gardyloo'?"

"It comes from the French, _gardez l'eau_ , meaning 'mind the water.' It's a Scottish phrase, really." She carried on mixing.

"It's beyond me why you people are so interested in all this gross stuff," Clara muttered.

"Well, Coo, it's all to do with a guy called Sigmund Freud, who had a couple of ideas about-"

"NO!" Clara shouted at her, "No Freud! She's absolutely not hearing about Freud."

"Who's that?" Matilda asked eagerly.

"Mattie, listen," Clara told her seriously, "The longer you go not knowing who Freud is, the better." Matilda didn't have the opportunity to question them further, however, as the Doctor proceeded to lift out a mess of purple slime and plop it on the table in front of Matilda. "Do you see my point about the mess?"

"You love me really," the Doctor flashed her a smile. Mattie pushed the Nutella jar aside and lifted up the slime to play with: it was really lining up to be one of her favourite birthdays ever. It was made even better when, some ten minutes of her playing with her new slime later, her parents, Rose and Jack returned. Jack still had the big gun. Her father ran over to hug her immediately, and she got slime on him by accident.

"We looked everywhere for you," he said, kissing her head, which she still thought was gross. Much more gross than poo and slime. "They didn't hurt you, did they? The Daleks?"

"No, I drew some pictures," she answered.

"Does she seem alright?" Martha asked the Doctor.

"Oh, yeah. No worse for wear, surprisingly. Soon as she got some Nutella."

"What's all this?" Mickey asked, realising he was now covered in sticky, purple hand prints.

"We made slime with shampoo," Matilda answered with a grin, "And then the Doctor told me about _real_ poo."

" _Real_ poo?" Martha asked, "How exciting for you. We had a burst colostomy bag earlier this week on one of the wards. The nurses said it was one of the worst bursts they've _ever_ seen. Went _everywhere_."

"Did they take any pictures?"

Martha bit her lip, "Sadly not. Sorry. Next time I'll tell them I have a little girl who's just dying to find out all the gory details of the medical profession and would love photos of every nasty thing. Had to remove an infected toenail last night, you know."

"Eurgh, do you have to?" Rose asked, quite disgusted.

"I agree with Rose, this is grim," said Clara as Mickey let the struggling-Mattie go from his arms so that she could carry on toying with the sticky slime.

"Oh, come on," said Jack, "She wants to be a surgeon! She's got a healthy appetite for blood and guts."

"Literally no such thing as a 'healthy appetite' for blood and guts. That's why cannibalism is illegal," Clara commented.

"In the Siege of Leningrad loads of people resorted to cannibalism," said the Doctor.

"That's true, they used to dig up corpses and eat them," Jack added.

"Cool!" said Matilda, "Really?"

"I think you've had enough excitement for the day already," Mickey said to her.

"What happened to Pinkie?" Mattie asked.

"To…? Do you mean the Dalek?" Rose frowned. Mattie nodded. "…They're gone."

"Gone where?"

"Away. You don't have to worry about them anymore."

"I wasn't worried about them anyway," she mumbled. She wasn't scared.

"Well _we_ were," Martha said, "Which is why we're moving again."

"But we only moved a few months ago!" Matilda protested, "I like the new house!"

"I know, Matts, but it's necessary," Martha controlled her, but tears formed in her eyes. It was the worst birthday she had ever had.

"Why do we have to move so much?"

"I'm sorry," Martha said, "One day, you'll understand that it's for the best."

"Why does everyone always say that? 'One day' I'll understand. 'One day' I'll be old enough. I'm old _now_ -"

"I know, baby, but-"

"How old is old enough? I'm going to be an old lady before anybody tells me anything."

"Matilda," Martha said sternly, "I promise we're doing what's best. We don't like moving either."

"Then why do it?" she continued to argue while everybody else watched, Martha crouching in front of her and taking both of her slimy hands.

"Because those Daleks just stopped time and came in and took you. It's not safe."

"But you said they're gone."

"There's… a lot of things out there, people, that want to hurt you."

"Why?"

"Because you're special, sweetheart. You're very special. And that means you're in a lot of danger, but mummy and daddy and all of your family are doing everything we can to protect you," Martha said, "And we didn't do enough, so we'll have to move and try again. One day you'll see that this is all for the best."

 _One day_ , Matilda thought to herself, unable to quite work out if she actually believed them…

 **AN: Just to clarify: YES, Matilda will be back in a big way later on, when she's older and a teenager.**


	194. Whodunnit?

**DAY 161**

 _Whodunnit?_

 _Rose_

"You have _got_ to pay attention to this," she implored the Tenth Doctor, "It's _important_. It's not rubbish with napkins or what the ratio of champagne to buck's fizz – this is the _seating plan_. We don't want people falling out about it because they're sat next to someone they don't like, or they _aren't_ sat next to someone they _do_ like."

"But _Rose_ , this is our _last day_ together," he said, "Before, you know. The chaos."

"It's not our 'last day', we're getting married, and then… I don't know, it'll probably be basically the same as it is now, to be honest. We already live together. The seating plan is important, Doctor," she told him. They were in their bedroom sitting on the bed eating bacon sandwiches. Rose's was absolutely drenched in ketchup and she'd already got more than a few stains on the sheets but couldn't say she really cared. Not when in just over forty-eight hours she was tying the knot at a wedding she had had less than a month to plan. She took another huge bite of bacon.

" _Fine_ ," Ten relented with his mouth full. On her lap she had a sheet of paper with a crude drawing of the table layout, which she had badly tried to cram all the seats onto so she could write around them.

"Top table first," Rose began, "There's me and you in the middle, obviously, then mum next to me, then Jack next to mum, and Donna next to you. Which means one more seat on Donna's other side potentially, if we think of someone we want there."

"…Mickey?" he suggested.

"No, can't have Mickey, he'll want to be next to Martha."

"The Ninth – no, actually, definitely not him… You know, I really don't mind having one less person than you up there. Unless…"

"What?"

"Maybe Jenny would…"

"Uh…"

"What?"

"I don't think, erm…"

"She's my _daughter_ …"

"Yeah, but…" The Doctor didn't know about Rose's discreet deal she had made with Jenny where Jenny would bake the cake and not kick up any kind of fuss in exchange for a very nice sword (also called Jenny.) _He_ thought she was baking the cake out of the goodness of her hearts. "I just… she won't want to be up there. You know, with Jack." She didn't think Jenny would actually care about being seated on the same table as Jack, not when there were four people between them, but hoped Ten would believe that lie. "And, you know, she asked me for a plus one, to bring Other Clara-"

"But she's a vampire, she can't do a wedding."

"It's not a religious wedding, and I said she can miss the ceremony," Rose explained, "Jenny won't sit on the top table. What about Martha?"

"But you just said Mickey and Martha will both want to be together. Unless you want them both on the table?" Rose paused and thought, and though she would _love_ to drag Martha up there and have her around – to try and clinch the godmother-deal with her incoming bundle of joy – she knew that Martha probably wouldn't want that. "Is your dad not going up there? Father of the bride? Is he making a speech?"

"Bloody hell! Forgot about dad… Right, I'll ring him in a bit, ask him if he minds sitting on your side next to the best man just to, like, balance everything out. I can't have _three_ people next to me and then just the one next to you."

"Unless you got both Mickey and Martha next to Donna."

"No. _No_. I'll ring dad, he'll probably be alright, and if not… maybe Jack could go next to Donna instead of next to me? And then mum and dad on my side?" Ten shrugged.

"Could work."

"I'll ring and see what they think… right, anyway, other tables. Small tables, only six people on a table, who are we having?"

"I suppose… Mickey and Martha, like you said, and… is Francine coming?"

"No," said Rose, "You know that. Because we're trying to keep it sort-of small. Why would we invite Martha's extended family?"

"Well, I don't know. She might want to come. So Mickey and Martha, and then who?"

"Uh… Nine and River and then Amy and Rory. That works, that's six. So then elsewhere we've got Eleven and Clara, then Oswin and Adam Mitchell. The issue is, do you think Jenny will want to sit with them?"

"And where's Ianto going to sit?"

"Well, Gwen and Rhys are invited."

"Why are Gwen and Rhys invited and Francine isn't?"

"Why are you so desperate to have Martha's mum at our wedding? I thought she doesn't even like you that much? Since Martha's involvement with you is what got them all, I don't know, enslaved for a year, or whatever?" He didn't have much of a response for this and Rose just rolled her eyes and went back to her bacon sandwich again. "Look, do we put Jenny and Other Clara on that table or do we put them somewhere else? Like… with Sally and Esther?"

"Are they coming?"

" _Yes_ , Sally's doing the photos."

"Is she? Are we paying her?"

"Yes, we're paying her. She's a photographer, you know. She needs a seat even if she's up taking pictures, we can't be starving her," Rose continued, "So Sally's sat next to Esther, then who do we want with them?"

"Why don't you put them with Gwen, Rhys and Ianto?"

"Hmm… Esther knows Gwen, doesn't she? Through Torchwood? So, yeah, that makes sense… that leaves one seat spare. Now, the issue is, Christina de Souza – who I'd rather wasn't there at all-"

"She saved my life!"

"Yeah, okay, she's New Torchwood and she's apparently bringing James Elliott as her plus one, she told me. But because you and Donna told me that James Elliott has, like, something going on with Sally, do we have them on the same table or not? It'd mean splitting him up from Christina which we can't really do if he's her guest."

"We haven't even resolved where Jenny's going yet."

"Right. Clara, Eleven, Adam, Oswin-"

"Nios," Ten said, "She can go with them."

"And then we've got two tables both with _one_ empty seat and a bunch of bloody couples…"

"Hang on, are Gwen and Rhys bringing the baby?"

"Are…? Urgh, I don't know… okay, so I'm ringing dad, and I'll get Jack or Ianto to ring Gwen and ask about the baby. Meanwhile… you know what? Eleven will want to sit next to Jenny and Clara basically fancies herself anyway, so they can sit there and just, you know, deal with it. Now, I'll tell you what I don't know, is Elton bringing Ursula?" Ten looked at her blankly. "Because, you know. She's a big bit of concrete. Does she need a chair?"

"I… wouldn't she need a high chair? Like the baby?"

"God, this is a nightmare, I don't even know what the numbers are!" she complained, "He's _definitely_ coming, so if he does want to carry a bit of concrete around with him all day, that's his problem. We can always just shuffle the chairs around. Gwen and Rhys might not even bring the baby."

"I don't think she is a baby anymore, isn't she three?" Ten questioned.

"Oh, maybe… they probably won't bring her. They're trying to keep her away from, you know, alien stuff," Rose said, then thought, "…I'm still gonna ring."

"Well, what about Tony? He's six, isn't he?"

"Seven. And he's not coming, mum said he's confused about why I'm apparently marrying the same person again and making such a show of it. Besides, he was ring-bearer at the last one and he _hated_ it, wouldn't behave at all," Rose sighed, "Best if we just say, you know, no kids. So what if there's no ring-bearer or flower girl? We'll be fine. Now, then-"

"Wilf!" Ten exclaimed suddenly.

"Who?"

"Donna's grandad."

" _Oh_. Right, so, Donna's on the top table, right? Which means Shaun isn't. So Shaun can sit next to Wilf, then?"

"And Sylvia, I invited her."

"Who's _that_?"

"Donna's mum."

"Why are you inviting everybody's mums!?" she exclaimed.

"Mums love weddings!"

"Look, just… Nios has lost her seat now, shit. Well, she'll just, have to sort of go over with Undercoll," Rose said. She knew, thanks to the time vortex, both that Nios had a thing going with one of Undercoll, but also that that girl didn't want to come to the wedding (which was fair enough, after all, she'd never met Ten or Rose.) "Donna's family are alright, aren't they? Do you think she'll freak them out? Shouldn't we keep her, like, with Oswin? Urgh – I shouldn't have let Jenny bring Ravenwood, if Ravenwood wasn't coming we could just have Nios on _that_ table."

"Move Elton away from sitting next to Sally and have Nios go there and him with Donna's lot. Elton doesn't know anybody anyway."

"Nios thinks Sally's an arsehole, though."

"Everyone thinks that," Ten reminded her.

"Good point… okay. Elton can be next to Shaun, Nios is next to Sally and Ianto. And Sally'll be taking pictures anyway, like I said, so… now, what about Sarah-Jane's-"

A klaxon sounded in the hallway. It made them both drop their sandwiches and clamp their hands over their ears, wincing, as the noise grew and grew and grew until finally becoming what Rose recognised as an air raid siren. _In the hallway_. They both scrambled to the door, Ten nearly knocking Rose over in his rush to grab the handle first. What horror could await them now, she thought? The last time noise like _that_ had been coming from the corridor had been when ELLE had tricked them all and tried to take over the TARDIS.

They wrenched the door open and were greeted with cheering and clapping and the abrupt end of the dreadful siren. Jack and Donna stood there, Donna holding a wireless speaker and a phone, applauding Ten and Rose and grinning. Nobody else had left their rooms despite the enormous racket.

"What's going on?" Rose asked, "We're busy."

"You sure are," said Jack, "You two are getting married the day after tomorrow, but do you know what today is?" Neither of them said anything, both at a loss.

"IT'S YOUR STAG AND HEN PARTY!" Jack and Donna shouted together, resuming their cheering. Rose put her fingers to her temples.

"I don't believe this… it's ten in the morning. That's way too early to start drinking. And I'm already meant to be spending tomorrow getting a manicure, along with _both_ of you," she indicated Jack and Donna.

"Oh, don't worry, there's no alcohol," Donna said. If there was one thing worse than being dragged out for a hen party without any warning, it was being dragged out for a hen party without any warning _or booze_.

"Sorry, how can you have a hen without alcohol? The entire point is to get as drunk as physically possible. You know, like on Christmas, or birthdays," Rose said.

"Because you need to have your wits about you," said Jack.

"And because at least half of the people who live here can't even drink," Donna added, "We wanted to do something that included _everybody_."

"There's been a murder," Jack began, growing very theatrical and pulling out of his trouser pocket an old-fashioned pipe and a scrunched-up deerstalker hat, which he promptly put on, "A devastating crime. The Lady Elise Wellington has been struck down in her own mansion by a devilish fiend – and it's up to you two and catch the culprit."

The Tenth Doctor beamed, "This is brilliant!"

Rose glowered, "You have _got_ to be kidding me. Who the hell is Elise Wellington?"

"The murder victim! And you're the detectives, we're just the lowly stable-hands, or something, sent here to fetch you for your expertise," Jack continued.

"Hopefully you'll be able to deduce who the killer is," Donna said, "Gather all the clues, interview all the suspects, get to the bottom of things. Come on, everyone's involved. They're already in costume."

" _Costume_?" Rose asked, not happy about this at all. Maybe she could be the trademark hardboiled detective who won't admit to having a severe drinking problem – all she needed for _that_ was to get her hands on some whiskey…

"You two don't need a costume, don't worry," Donna assured them, "Although, you should get dressed, you've got ketchup on you."

"We're trying to to do the bloody seating plan, for god's sake…" she muttered.

"Come on, Rose! Murder mystery party! Sounds fun!" the Doctor grinned, "Everyone's playing! This is gonna be great. Here I thought I was going to get forced to go out to a bar and drink myself silly."

"I _wish_ I was getting forced to go out to a bar and drink…" Rose grumbled.

"Don't be like that, it'll be great," Jack said, "I promise. It's _hilarious_. Wait til you see the costumes. Everyone chose their characters at random, see – just wait. And Donna and I wrote the whole thing! So we know it's good."

"Now hurry up, get dressed, before the body gets cold. And before Clara gets carpet burn on her face from having to lie on the floor."

"Hang on, _Clara's_ the murder victim?" Rose asked. They nodded. "You should have started with that!"

"Well, get going!" Donna implored.

And then Jack announced theatrically, "The game, my friends, is on!"

 **AN: So, I was originally going to do a complicated scavenger hunt (and before that another prank war), but neither of those ideas were really working, and two nights ago I decided that a murder mystery would be very funny if they were all involved. So the next few chapters are doing to be more script-chapters because it makes it a lot easier with so many of them involved. In other news, for people who don't follow me as an author and may not have caught the last Author's Note update, the Clarteen side-fic "Retrograde" is now live. The first storyline of it, "Brighton Rock", is written in its entirety and will be uploaded on Saturdays (as in, later today) until it's done. The whole thing follows them working as teachers and the setting and period has been changed from an unnamed village in the late 2020s (which is where it's implied they live in earlier storylines of the the main fic) to Brighton in 2064. While the first storyline features only Clara and Thirteen as main characters, later storylines will feature Rose in a major role and will also be where Mickey & Martha's daughter Matilda will eventually return as a teenager - as well as various OCs who work with them in the school. It's also going to be where the fic Thirteen will meet the canon Thirteen in a crossover storyline I've been planning for ages, and where the story will continue (along with "Jenny Who?" and "Spook Watch") after the main fic wraps up (three storylines left, including the murder mystery.) Apologies for the long author's note, but I hope you enjoy the upcoming, zany ****_Clue_** **homage!**


	195. Whodunnit? II

_Whodunnit? II_

[ _An area of the TARDIS has been modified to look like the well-furnished interior of an archetypical 20_ _th_ _Century mansion, complete with plush leather chairs and sofas, well-varnished mahogany furnishings, ugly maroon curtains and an antique rug. Through the windows a simulated night-time rainstorm is visible. In the centre of the room lies the corpse of_ **LADY ELISE WELLINGTON (CLARA OSWALD)** _, splayed out on the floor in full view. On the left is_ **MADAME WOOWOO** **(OSWIN OSWALD)** _, a well-known spiritualist dressed in many sequined fabrics and sitting in a wheelchair; nearest the body is_ **LUCIENNE WELLINGTON-BLYTHE (IANTO JONES)** _, step-daughter of the recently deceased_ **LADY ELISE (CO)** _and biological daughter of the less-recently deceased Lord Albert Wellington II, dressed in an expensive dress and equally expensive furs; sitting side-by-side on a sofa are_ **THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ABRAHAM ROOSEVELT KENNEDY JR. (MARTHA JONES)** _dressed in a tailored, diplomatic suit, and his imposing, secret service bodyguard,_ **BUTCH HARDCASTLE (AMY POND)** _; finally, dressed in a revealing outfit made primarily of repurposed lingerie and strips of leather is the infamous Soviet assassin_ **KG-BEAUTY (MICKEY SMITH)** _, real name Jekaterina "Katja" Yanovich_ ]

[ _Enter_ **JACK** , **DONNA** , **ROSE** _and_ **TEN** ]

 **ROSE.** [ _Bursts out laughing_ ] Oh my god! Mickey! You're-!? [ _She can barely contain herself._ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** _is notably uncomfortable_ ]

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** Yeah, alright. Just wait until you see Rory.

 **ROSE.** Why? What's Rory wearing? It can hardly be more embarrassing than this.

 **BUTCH (AP).** Trust me. You want to wait until you see Rory.

 **TEN.** [ _Loudly_ ] So, then! What's going on here? A dead body? And one of you lot did it?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** We don't know _who_ killed my mother.

 **ROSE.** [ _Alarmed_ ] Your _mother_?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Step-mother.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Well, I'm a psychic, and I have it on the authority of the deceased that she actually came so hard she died.

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _From the floor_ ] Fuck off, Oswin.

 **JACK.** Hey! You're supposed to be dead.

 **ELISE (CO).** My dignity is dead.

 **ROSE.** Your dignity's been dead for a long time, mate.

[ **ELISE (CO)** _turns her head and glares at_ **ROSE** _, remaining on the floor_ ]

 **TEN.** [ _Really getting into it_ ] A woman is _dead_! And someone in this room is responsible! We won't rest until we find whoever's responsible. Detective Sergeant Tyler and I haven't lost a case yet, not in our entire career.

[ **ROSE** _is glad he is enjoying himself_ ]

 **DONNA.** [ _Interrupts_ ] Not necessarily. Someone in this room, I mean. I told you, everybody's taking part. Except me and Jack, because we know who did it. We're just here to make sure they all follow the rules. The rules like _dead bodies can't talk_.

 **ELISE (CO).** Well I'm bored! It's not my fault I drew the short straw of being the victim and just have to lie here for however long this takes…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** She can talk through me. I'm a spiritualist, I commune with the dead, it's my whole thing. Says so on the piece of paper you gave me an hour ago and told me to memorise. Right now, I can tell you that the ghost of Elise is thinking about porn.

 **ELISE (CO).** Stop reading my mind.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** [ _Laughs_ ] I didn't even read it! You outed yourself! Pervert.

 **ROSE.** Right, whatever. First thing's first. How did she die?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** We don't know. We were all in the room, us and the butler, and all the lights went out. We heard a scream, a gunshot, a bang, and she was dead when the lights came back on.

 **BUTCH (AP).** The lights have been iffy. Power cuts, from the storm outside; the house has bad wiring.

 **ROSE.** Well… if you're psychic, [ _addresses_ **WOOWOO (OO)** _directly_ ] can't you talk to her and ask her who did it?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Oi, corpse-face. Who did you in?

 **ELISE (CO).** No idea. It didn't say on my piece of paper. I, uh, I mean… it's very foggy. I can't recall.

 **TEN.** [ _Looking around_ ] Did you say butler? There's a butler?

 **ROSE.** Butler probably did it.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** He's making a tray of tea for us all.

 **ROSE.** Or he could be, like, fleeing the scene of the crime!

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** [ _Doing a frankly masterful impersonation of a haughty, twenty-something, cold-hearted heiress_ ] Shall I summon him with my little bell? [ _Indicates a bell on the table next to her_ ]

 **BUTCH (AP).** If I were you, I'd wait. Mainly because he actually is making tea and we're all going to need it to get through this ordeal. [ **BUTCH (AP)** _is wearing a black turtleneck, black blazer, black jeans, and sunglasses, like a nightclub bouncer, and feels like an idiot_ ]

 **TEN.** Just introduce yourselves then. Who are you all? Why are you here?

 **ROSE.** And why is Mickey dressed like a prostitute?

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** I'm not a prostitute, I'm a Russian assassin, called KG-Beauty. But my real name is Katja. It's short for… something I can't pronounce.

 **ROSE.** Obviously the trained assassin killed her.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** Pfft. No I didn't. I'm here on other business. Business that doesn't involve… Elise.

 **TEN.** What business?

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** I couldn't possibly say.

 **JACK.** [ _Whispers to_ **ROSE** ] _Psst_. Ask her how she kills people.

 **ROSE.** …How do you kill people?

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** [ _Notably annoyed_ ] I garrotte them. With my specially modified garters. After I seduce them. Which is exactly why I couldn't have killed her! I didn't seduce her in this room in front of all these witnesses.

 **ROSE.** You could've done. Clara'll shag anything.

 **ELISE (CO).** Oi!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Sorry, but she'd _definitely_ cum so hard she died if a half-naked woman tried to garrotte her with a garter.

 **JACK.** [ _Wistfully_ ] Wouldn't we all?

 **ELISE (CO).** Can we just stop making fun of me when here I've been tragically murdered? You shouldn't speak ill of the dead.

 **DONNA.** Clearly, the dead are capable of speaking enough ill of themselves. _Be quiet_.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** My point is that if Mickey tried to choke _me_ I'd squirt _everywhere_.

[ _Unanimous groans from everyone in the room_ ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** What!? Don't act like you don't know what I'm talking about. I know _you_ get it, Mr President. [ _Winks at_ **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** _, who glares back at her_ ]

 **TEN.** Hang on, _president_? What do you mean?

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** That's me. I'm Abraham Roosevelt Kennedy Jr., the President of the United States. This is my bodyguard, Butch Hardcastle. [ _Indicates_ **BUTCH (AP)** _, who grimaces_ ]

 **ROSE.** Your name is _Butch Hardcastle_?

 **BUTCH (AP).** Yep, don't wear it out.

 **TEN.** But wait, why would the President be in the same room as Soviet assassin?

 **BUTCH (AP).** The president will be fine. I'm guarding her. Nobody's taking off their garters on my watch.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Do you often watch people take off their garters?

[ _On the floor,_ **ELISE (CO)** _snickers_ ]

 **TEN.** So, we've got an assassin, the president, the president's bodyguard, the daughter of the deceased, and…? A psychic?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Renowned spiritualist. Think Ouija boards and crystal balls and sooth stones. I'm also of Greek descent, apparently, my name's supposed to be Agneta Siska. But, uh, seemed a bit dicey to try and do a Greek accent.

 **TEN.** Why are you all here? In this house?

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** We just happened to be here. It's a coincidence.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** Yep. Coincidence. We all came into this room, realised the others were here, and that was when the lights went out.

 **DONNA.** [ _Whispering_ ] Maybe you should have a look around the room?

 **TEN.** Why? Are there clues? [ _she nods_ ] Brilliant! Clues! Come on, Rose. [ _Goes to search some of the drawers_ ]

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _While they search_ ] Can I get, like, a cushion, or something? My neck's hurting.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** You know why that is?

 **ELISE (CO).** Why?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Because you need to perform more oral sex, that's why.

[ **BUTCH (AP)** _picks up a cushion and throws it at_ **ELISE (CO)** _where it hits her on the head_ ]

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Annoyed_ ] Thanks. [ _Puts the cushion under her head and lies down again_ ]

 **ROSE.** Oh my god. [ _She has just opened a drawer and retrieved a photograph. She holds the photograph up high, squinting, facing towards the others so that nobody else in the room may see it_ ] This is the weirdest thing I've ever seen. Is this porn?

 **ELISE (CO).** Porn?

 **ROSE.** Definitely looks like porn. Gay porn. Only with Martha and Amy's faces badly photoshopped onto it. [ _She shows it to the room. It is exactly that._ **ELISE (CO)** _sits up to get a good look at the photograph_ ]

 **KG-BEAUTY.** Here I've been trying to charge people millions of dollars to get their hands on that photo, and now you've found it for nothing.

 **ROSE.** You what? This rubbish photoshop?

 **JACK.** You have to imagine that it's not an edit I just threw together in ten minutes earlier, and that it's like, a genuine photo. Of the President and his bodyguard. Boning each other. Well, I guess the President's the one getting boned.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** [ _To_ **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** _and_ **BUTCH (AP)** ] Did you know about that?

 **BUTCH (AP).** Fine! I admit it. We had a _liaison_.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** But it only happened once!

 **BUTCH (AP).** KG-Beauty has been blackmailing us for months. That's why we came here tonight, to try and put an end to it. The CIA found out that KG-Beauty was coming here tonight to meet with Lady Elise, and we came to try and get back the evidence so that she can finally be arrested for her crimes.

 **TEN.** This just gets better by the minute! All these secrets! You two are having an affair, but _you_ were already here [ _indicating_ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** ] – why's that? And that photo being hidden in the room instead of being kept on your person! It's intriguing…

[ _Noise in the corridor. Enter_ **JOHN SMITH (NINTH DOCTOR)** _, the butler, carrying a large tray of tea and wearing a tuxedo he is not happy about._ **ROSE** _wonders what_ **JACK** _and_ **DONNA** _said to get him to agree to this. He divvies out the mugs of tea._ **ELISE (CO)** _sits up to drink hers_ ]

 **TEN.** The butler!

 **ROSE.** Did you know about this porn?

 **SMITH (9).** [ _Looks up. Looks away from the photo immediately when he sees what it is_ ] I've never seen that before. [ _To_ **JACK** ] Did you do that?

 **JACK.** In, like, ten minutes! What do you want me to do? Get them to pose for it? Borrow one of Jenny's strap-ons?

 **ROSE.** Jenny has strap-ons?

 **JACK.** A whole collection.

 **TEN.** I don't want to know!

 **ELISE (CO).** How much were you charging people to get a look at the picture, anyway? I'd totally cough up loads for a photo of Amy and Martha going at it with a strap-on.

[ _Silence in the room_ ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** And people say _I'm_ inappropriate…

 **SMITH (9).** I've never seen the picture. It didn't say anything about that on my paper, so I've never seen it. I'm just the butler for this waste of space. [ _Indicates_ **ELISE (CO)** ] What is that picture supposed to be?

 **ROSE.** The, uh, KG-Beauty over there has been blackmailing the President and the President's bodyguard with this picture. And was here in the house for an unknown reason…

 **SMITH (9).** [ _Looks directly at_ **JACK** ] This is the stupidest thing I've ever been through.

 **TEN.** If you're the butler, didn't you let them all in? What reason did they all give?

 **SMITH (9).** They all said they had a pre-existing engagement with Lady Elise. And Lady Elise informed me earlier this evening to expect guests. Lucienne's the only one who's _not_ a guest.

 **TEN.** [ _To_ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** ] Have you ever seen the assassin here before?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Never. But Elise is only my step-mother, and we've never been close. Not since my father died, seven years ago. That's Lord Albert Wellington II.

 **TEN.** How did he die?

 **SMITH (9).** I'm afraid that was never established.

 **TEN.** So her husband died seven years ago of unknown causes? What else can you tell us about him?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** My father was a scientist who belonged to a very prestigious family. Old money with a well-paying government job.

 **TEN.** Who inherited the money?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Elise got every penny.

 **TEN.** And in the event of her death? Who gets the fortune?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Me.

[ _Artificial thunder rumbles outside. The lights flicker and go out again, just for a second. Everyone freezes. When the lights come back on, a ghostly face is at the window. Everyone screams. A pale, white hand raps on the window outside._ **SMITH (9)** _goes to open the door. In staggers a_ **BOY (JENNY YOUNG)** ]

 **BOY (JY).** [ _To_ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** ] You're wrong. _I'm_ the rightful heir to the Wellington fortune!

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Who are you!?

 **BOY (JY).** I'm Albert Wellington III. A seven-year-old boy. Elise's only biological child under this roof and your half-brother. The money for her death belongs to _me_!

 **ELISE (CO).** Wow. This is, like, crazy. There wasn't any of this stuff written on my character sheet. Is there any chance of getting some popcorn?

 **AN: It would be cool if you guys would leave reviews for "Retrograde" as I upload the new chapters! Thanks!**


	196. Whodunnit? III

_Whodunnit? III_

[ _In the study. They are all in shock after the appearance of_ **ALBERT WELLINGTON III (JENNY YOUNG)** _, the seven-year-old male heir of the Wellington fortune_ **LADY ELISE (CLARA OSWALD)** _previously inherited after the mysterious death of her husband Lord Albert Wellington II, a well-paid government scientist from a rich, bourgeois family, seven years earlier. It has been discovered that_ **LUCIENNE WELLINGTON-BLYTHE (IANTO JONES)** _, the daughter of Albert Wellington II and step-daughter of_ **ELISE (CO)** _thought she was the rightful heir to the family fortune, but this is cast in doubt after_ **ALBERT'S (JY)** _discovery._

[ **KG-BEAUTY (MICKEY SMITH)** _, the Soviet assassin and seductress, has been blackmailing_ **THE PRESIDENT (MARTHA JONES)** _and the president's bodyguard_ **BUTCH HARDCASTLE (AMY POND)** _with a photo of them engaging in illicit, sexual activities, threatening to release the photos to the highest bidder. However, these photos were discovered in a drawer in_ **ELISE'S (CO)** _study, where she was murdered. Also present is mysterious spiritualist_ **MADAME WOOWOO (OSWIN OSWALD)** _, whose presence has yet to be explained, and_ **JOHN SMITH (NINTH DOCTOR)** _, the butler_ ]

 **ALBERT (JY).** By the way, Jack, I heard what you said about the strap-ons from outside, and I do not have a 'collection,' I have three, and only one of them vibrates. And technically the third is strapless, so-

 **TEN.** [ _Covers his ears with his hands_ ] I don't need to hear this!

 **ELISE (CO) & WOOWOO (OO). **[ _Together_ ] I do.

 **ALBERT (JY).** [ _Glares at them_ ] You're lucky I'm a seven-year-old boy right now and I'm not allowed to punch you in the face.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** You're about the same height as a seven-year-old boy. [ **ELISE (CO)** _laughs_ ]

 **ALBERT (JY).** Whose brilliant idea was it to let you two be in the same room for this?

 **ROSE.** So, both of you have a motive to kill her for the inheritance, then? But – why have you been gone for seven years if you're her son?

 **ALBERT (JY).** I was given away.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Father's will stated that his money should go to Elise second and his male heir first. I happened to be on a long holiday at a Swiss ski resort at the time, with the girls.

 **ROSE.** [ _To_ **ELISE (CO)** ] You sent away your only kid so that you could claim an inheritance!?

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Indignantly_ ] I don't know! All that was written on my paper was my name and that I'm Lucienne's stepmother and I'm the murder victim. I'm hearing all this stuff for the first time. Maybe I can help solve my own murder from beyond the grave, or something.

 **TEN.** Well, it does sort of look like she did exactly that. Got rid of the secret baby so that she could get her hands on the money. So, Lucienne could have killed Elise to get the money. Albert could also have killed Elise to get the money.

 **ALBERT (JY).** I'm a seven-year-old boy.

 **TEN.** Did you kill her?

 **ALBERT (JY).** No.

 **ROSE.** Yeah, but, everybody just says no. You can't just say 'did you kill her?' and have them say 'yes', because it would be over too quickly.

 **TEN.** Hold on… how long have you been the butler here?

 **SMITH (9).** Me? Twenty years.

 **TEN.** So you were here when the father died?

 **SMITH (9).** Yep.

 **TEN.** And when she was pregnant?

 **SMITH (9).** Nope. I was dismissed for a few months, given 'leave.' She's never given me leave before, I always thought it was something to do with the murder, didn't really notice that she'd been putting on weight for seven months…

[ _At the talk of pregnancy and putting on weight,_ **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** _shifts uncomfortably. The only ones who notice this are the ones looking for it when it comes to mention of a secret baby:_ **JACK** , **ROSE** , _and_ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** ]

 **ELISE (CO).** So, do you think I killed my husband, too? [ _Thoughtful_ ] Maybe I ought to kill my actual husband…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** What would you gain from that?

 **ELISE (CO).** Peace and quiet.

 **DONNA.** I'll show you peace and quiet in a minute.

 **ELISE (CO).** Sounds hot – I'm excited.

[ **TEN** _goes back to searching the room_ ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** You should show Jenny the porn, she hasn't had a chance to see it yet. Or, sorry, _Albert Wellington III_.

 **ALBERT (JY).** What porn?

 **ELISE (CO).** You can't go showing porn to seven-year-old boys, Oswin.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Why? Because you want it all to yourself? You'd love that.

[ _Ignoring the argument,_ **ROSE** _shows_ **ALBERT (JY)** _the poorly-edited, pornographic photo._ ]

 **ALBERT (JY).** Wow. This is basically the worst thing I've ever seen in my life.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Jenny! [ _Stage-whispers, indicating_ **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** _and_ **BUTCH (AP)** ] _They're sitting right there_!

 **TEN.** [ _Exclaims_ ] Ah-ha! [ _They all jump_ ] A clue! [ _He triumphantly holds up a small, plastic pill bottle, still half-full of medication_ ] It's a prescription!

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** What sort of prescription? Show it to me.

 **JACK.** [ _Clears throat_ ] Don't remember the president having any medical training.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** I don't remember anybody saying the president _doesn't_ have any medical training. [ **TEN** _brings_ **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** _the small bottle and shows it to him_ ] These are intense antibiotics, says here they're prescribed in the treatment of STIs usually.

 **ROSE.** Must be Clara's. She's got loads of STIs.

 **ELISE (CO).** Barely. I've not even had half a dozen.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Most of us here haven't had _any_. But they are in your study, in your mansion, so they could be yours, _Elise_. The name on them has been covered up with a marker pen. [ _Hands the bottle back to_ **TEN** ]

 **ROSE.** Which STIs?

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Bad ones. Late-stage gonorrhoea, some forms of syphilis – they're intense.

 **ROSE.** Maybe she overdosed. On like, STI pills.

 **ELISE (CO).** Then why would I only take half the bottle? If you were gonna kill yourself, you'd want to be sure.

 **DONNA.** Yeah, otherwise the corpse might get up and start talking, and who wants to deal with that? [ **ELISE (CO)** _sticks her tongue out at_ **DONNA** ]

 **ELISE (CO).** You could have just used a dummy, or something.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Not much difference between you and a dummy.

 **BUTCH (AP).** Dummy would be more interesting to talk to.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Look, Clara's right, nobody commits suicide by only taking half a bottle of random antibiotics. Obviously, they belong to somebody in the house. And they're not mine. The president's, I mean.

 **BUTCH (AP).** So they can't be mine, either. Otherwise we'd both have it. Since we're shagging.

 **TEN.** [ _To_ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** ] What about you? You live here. Do you have any STIs?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Certainly not! If you suggest anything of the sort ever again, why, I'll – I'll kick you out.

[ _An enormous crash comes from elsewhere in the house. They all look towards the empty doorway_ ]

 **ROSE.** Are there more rooms than this one?

 **JACK.** Oh, yeah. We've done a whole house. All-out for your joint stag-and-hen.

 **SMITH (9).** Sounded like it came from the kitchen.

[ _They all proceed to get up to venture towards the kitchen._ **ELISE (CO)** _remains behind to help_ **WOOWOO (OO)** _out of the room, taking the handles of her old-fashioned wheelchair and pushing it, trailing behind the others_ ]

[ _In the kitchen. The cook,_ **RICKY CYANIDE (RIVER SONG)** _, is a hardened and grizzled ex-con. He has just dropped a metal pot on the floor, which caused the crash. The wooden door to the pantry in the corner is ajar. Enter_ **JACK** , **DONNA** , **TEN** , **ROSE** , **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** , **BUTCH (AP)** , **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** , **SMITH (9)** , **LUCIENNE (IJ)** , **ALBERT (JY)** _, and finally_ **ELISE (CO)** _pushing_ **WOOWOO (OO)** _._ **CYANIDE (RS)** _is surprised to see_ **ELISE (CO)** ]

 **CYANIDE (RS).** Aren't you supposed to be dead?

 **ELISE (CO).** Someone's got to push her chair. Just act like I'm not here.

 **DONNA.** That's what we've all been trying to do…

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** [ _Berating_ **CYANIDE (RS)** ] Unbelievable! This is the third time this week you've made this racket! Once more and you'll be thrown out and we'll get a new cook. _Again_.

 **TEN.** So. You're the cook.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** That's right. Ricky Cyanide's the name.

 **ROSE.** Hang on, that's your name? And you're a cook? And your name is _Ricky Cyanide_?

 **CYANDIE (RS).** Jack's the one who wrote this crap. Take it up with him. Yes, my name is Cyanide and I'm a cook. People let me cook their food.

[ _Noise in the hall. Enter_ **CLAUDETTE ARCENEAUX (RORY WILLIAMS)** _, the maid of the household, who is wearing an incredibly racy maid outfit. She is French and cannot speak a word of English, except for the phrase, "I only speak French"._ **ROSE** _, again, cannot contain her laughter at this sight._ **CLAUDETTE (RW)** _looks incredibly uncomfortable. Discreetly,_ **BUTCH (AP)** _takes out his phone and quickly snaps a photo_ ]

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** You promised you wouldn't take any photos! [ **BUTCH (AP)** _laughs at her_ ]

 **JACK.** What was that you said?

 **SMITH (9).** This is the maid, Claudette Arceneaux, she only speaks French.

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** [ _While glaring at_ **JACK** ] I only speak French.

 **ROSE.** What's your name?

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** Claudette Arceneaux.

 **ROSE.** Did you say "arse"? "Arse-eneaux"?

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** It's spelt with a "C"!

 **ALBERT (JY).** [ _Goes to_ **CLAUDETTE (RW)** _and whispers something in her ear in French_ ]

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** [ _Repeats, poorly, what_ **ALBERT (JY)** _said_ ]

 **ROSE.** What did you say?

 **ALBERT (JY).** She said she was just dusting the library when she heard all the noise and came running.

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** [ _Awkwardly_ ] Oui.

 **TEN.** [ _Scanning the room. Spots something on the large table in the centre of the room, near_ **CYANIDE (RS)** ] What's _that_!?

 **CYANIDE (RS).** [ _Panics_ ] Nothing. [ _It is a bottle_. **CYANIDE (RS)** _tries to hide it_ ]

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Show the detectives the bottle. I order you, as your employer. [ _All the while,_ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** _is fanning herself with an antique fan_ ]

[ _Begrudgingly_ , **CYANIDE (RS)** _hands over the bottle. A hand-written label on the side reads: "arsenic"_ ]

 **TEN.** Arsenic!

 **ROSE.** Lots of "arses" at the moment.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** You could have murdered her with this! You could have put it in the food!

 **SMITH (9).** Just like the last time.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** How dare you!

 **TEN.** The last time? What do you mean, _last time_?

 **SMITH (9).** Before tonight, we had a certain understanding. Elise has never even _met_ any of the staff except for myself and Claudette, she doesn't know what our last ten cooks have looked like, or any of the gardeners. Including the gardener who was here seven years ago. On the night that Lord Albert Wellington was murdered. Who was none other than Ricky Cyanide! And who clearly committed this murder as well! With this very poison!

 **ROSE.** [ _Gasps_ ] Oh my god!

 **CYANIDE (RS).** I did not such thing.

 **SMITH (9).** He's been in prison since then, the last seven years. Arrested with a charge of attempted kidnapping of an infant. _Seven years ago_.

 **ALBERT (JY).** That's me! I'm seven years old! You tried to kidnap me!?

 **CYANIDE (RS).** I tried to rescue you from Elise. She didn't want you anyway, she was going to put arsenic in your baby milk and kill you! She reported you missing, but the police never found where I sent you and I went to prison for seven years.

 **SMITH (9).** Where she worked in the kitchen.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** Gaining relevant experience because I never wanted to be a gardener. I want to go to Paris, and become a _real_ chef, in a restaurant.

 **SMITH (9).** But you thought you'd come back here and finish the job you started seven years ago, when you really wanted to kill Elise for her mistreatment of the baby, when instead you killed Lord Albert!

 **CYANIDE (RS).** I've never killed anybody, and certainly not Albert! They've never determined his cause of death, nobody knows whether it was poison or not. And besides, this arsenic isn't even mine. This arsenic was left here by Madame Woowoo! [ _points dramatically at_ **WOOWOO (OO)** ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I've never seen that bottle before in my life.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** Neither have I.

 **SMITH (9).** Nor I.

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** [ _Pauses, thinks_ ] Uh… non. Non moi. Or something.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** The maid could have easily poisoned Elise, she was the one who took her her supper, barely an hour ago. That's more than enough opportunity.

 **TEN.** But you could have done it, too.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** Or the butler.

 **SMITH (9).** Please! It wasn't me.

 **ROSE.** I mean, I'm tempted to say it's the one called 'Ricky Cyanide' who has a clear motive who poisoned her. We haven't even got a murder weapon or real motive for anybody else right now. Except Ianto.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** How dare you! I did not kill Elise.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** You don't even know if she was poisoned! And I told you, the arsenic was left here by Madame Woowoo! I have it on good authority.

 **TEN.** Whose 'good authority'?

 **CYANIDE (RS).** [ _Pauses. Meets_ **LUCIENNE'S (IJ)** _eyes, who glares back_ ] I couldn't say.

 **TEN.** But if you didn't see her yourself-

 **CYANIDE (RS).** You're all forgetting a vital piece of information! We also all heard a gunshot.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** And the thump. Could have been a blow to the head, or something.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** And I'll tell you the only person in this household who carries a gun: It's John Smith! The butler!

 **ROSE.** You've got a gun!?

 **SMITH (9).** I have no such thing.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** He must have shot her! I heard the gun, too.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** Keen to avert suspicion from yourself.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I didn't kill her! I wouldn't kill anyone who was so hot!

 **ELISE (CO).** Thanks. [ _Winks at her_ ]

 **DONNA.** No incest during the murder mystery, thanks.

 **ROSE.** [ _To_ **SMITH (9)** ] You said you weren't here when Elise had the baby, when she was dismissed. So how would you know what happened with River?

 **SMITH (9).** Well…

 **CYANIDE (RS).** He was here. He's lying. It could have been _him_ who accidentally killed Lord Albert.

 **TEN.** Turn out your pockets.

 **SMITH (9).** No.

 **TEN.** Pockets!

 **SMITH (9).** Fine! [ _Everybody watches with baited breath as he slowly goes through all of his pockets individually and then, finally, pulls out a small revolver, just as_ **CYANIDE (RS)** _has said. Everyone gasps together_ ] Just because I have a gun doesn't mean I killed her! She was poisoned!

 **CYANIDE (RS).** She was shot! By you!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Yeah!

 **SMITH (9).** But why would I do it!?

[ _Silence_ ]

 **ROSE.** Good question…

 **SMITH (9).** You want a motive!? I'll show you a motive. [ _Marches purposefully over to the ajar, pantry door. Throws the door open, revealing to all of them a_ **GIRL (NIOS)** _, sitting and attempting to hide among the sacks of potatoes. She has been there the entire time_ ] Here's your motive! So, Lucienne, do you want me to tell everybody about your secret lesbian lover here, or shall I!?

[ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** _gasps in horror_ ]


	197. Whodunnit? IV

_Whodunnit? IV_

[ _In the kitchen. It has just been discovered that_ **RICKY CYANIDE (RIVER SONG)** _, the cook, went to prison seven years earlier for the attempted kidnapping of_ **ALBERT WELLINGTON III (JENNY YOUNG)** _as an infant, while working as the gardener for the Wellington household. Was also accused of poisoning Lord Albert Wellington II, either by accident while trying to murder_ **LADY ELISE WELLINGTON (CLARA OSWALD)** _or possibly even on purpose. These accusations were made after_ **TEN** _and_ **JOHN SMITH (NINTH DOCTOR)** _discovered a bottle of arsenic in the kitchen, the label on it written by hand, which_ **CYANIDE (RS)** _says actually belongs to_ **MADAME WOOWOO (OSWIN OSWALD)** _and that she killed_ **ELISE (CO)** _though the motive remains unclear._ **CYANIDE (RS)** _also forced_ **SMITH (9)** _to reveal that he carries a revolver, and that_ **ELISE (CO)** _could have been shot and killed just as easily as poisoned._ **SMITH (9)** _also knows all about how_ **CYANIDE (RS)** _went to prison. Both_ **SMITH (9)** _and_ **CYANIDE (RS)** _had the opportunity to poison the food, as did the French maid,_ **CLAUDETTE ARCENEAUX (RORY WILLIAMS)** _, though she currently has no motive_ ]

[ _Previously, in the study, a bottle of antibiotics intended for advanced STIs was discovered, though the prescription name on the bottle was illegible. Along with this was the pornographic photograph of_ **THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (MARTHA JONES)** _and his bodyguard_ **BUTCH HARDCASTLE (AMY POND)** _, which the infamous Russian assassin_ **KG-BEAUTY (MICKEY SMITH)** _was potentially blackmailing them with, though it is unclear why it was discovered in the study of_ **LADY ELISE (CO)** _or why_ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** _was visiting her to begin with_ ]

[ **SMITH (9)** _has just revealed the presence of a_ **GIRL (NIOS)** _in the pantry, whom he has declared as_ **LUCIENNE'S (IJ)** _"secret lesbian lover"_ ]

 **GIRL (NI).** [ _Awkwardly_ ] …Hi…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Have they had you locked in that cupboard all this time, Ni!?

 **GIRL (NI).** No, only since River dropped the pans. I was texting before that. Anyway, uh, I'm… Katie. I don't know anything about this lesbian stuff. I'm an exterminator. I've just been in here setting rat traps.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** It's true.

 **SMITH (9).** No it isn't. If it was, why would Lucienne look so scared when I revealed her?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** I'm terrified of rats. You'd better exterminate all of them.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** [ _In a robotic voice_ ] _Exterminate_! [ _Everybody turns to look at her_ ] What? That was a perfect opportunity for some Dalek-based humour from the resident Dalek.

 **KATIE (NI).** And murderer.

 **ROSE.** Do you have any credentials? ID? That prove you're pest control? Or even, could you show us one of the traps? Or a rat?

 **KATIE (NI).** The traps are all in the pantry.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** This is ridiculous. She's certainly pest control. I called her.

 **ROSE.** So, what? You keep a dirty, rat-filled kitchen?

 **CYANIDE (RS).** I certainly do not.

 **ROSE.** Not used to the dirt? From your time in prison? Maybe you have low standards to let a rat infestation get out of hand.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** There's no rat problem in this kitchen.

 **ROSE.** Then why did you call an exterminator to deal with the rats?

 **CYANIDE (RS).** I just wanted her to check. If there were any rats.

 **ROSE.** You can't see rats with your own eyes?

 **SMITH (9).** I told you. She's no exterminator.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** I admit it! Since my stepmother is dead, I can finally admit it. Myself and this poor, working class girl are very much in love. Katie Chapman is no exterminator. Now that Elise isn't here to enforce her homophobic views, we're free to admit our relationship.

 **ELISE (CO).** I'm a homophobe? Wow. Didn't see that coming. But sure, fuck the gays.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** What, all of them?

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Smirks_ ] I wish.

 **TEN.** So you murdered your stepmother so that you and Nios could be together, presumably after getting your hands on the inheritance!

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** It's rightfully my inheritance!

 **ALBERT (JY).** It's _my_ inheritance!

 **ELISE (CO).** Maybe Nios killed me? You know, for love, or something? Like, _we will be together!_ …Are there any biscuits in here? [ _Distracted, she wanders off to search the cupboards_ ]

 **KATIE (NI).** It wasn't me _or_ Lucienne who killed Elise. It was Madame Wooowoo. I'm the one who saw her bring the arsenic and leave it in here, while I was hiding in the pantry.

 **ELISE (CO).** Oswin! I can't believe you'd try to kill me!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I did not. It's not my arsenic.

 **KATIE (NI).** I saw you! I saw you do something with it! You could have put it in the food, or the tea! Before the maid took the supper!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** How can you believe someone who's been hiding in a cupboard!? How do we know it's not _her_ arsenic? Clara's right, she could have done it so that she could be with Lucienne.

 **TEN.** You haven't even explained what you're doing here in this house. Do you even know her? [ _Indicates_ **ELISE (CO)** ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Of course I know her. She's my identical twin sister.

 **TEN.** No, _Elise_.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I've never met Elise in my life. Why would I want to kill her?

 **TEN.** You tell me.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Well, I don't want to kill her. And I didn't.

 **TEN.** So why are you in the house!?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Just… needed to use the phone. Call a cab.

 **TEN.** That's a lie if I've ever heard one.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** If I'm lying you'd better show me some proof, other than the non-credible testimony of one girl with far more motive and opportunity than me who's been hiding in a cupboard for the last hour. [ **TEN** _and_ **ROSE** _both pause, because they do not have any proof, or a motive_ ] Besides. I'm sure the CIA _and_ the KGB have both been known to poison people, not that Katja's explained why she's here, either. And she's much more suspicious than a poor psychic in a wheelchair.

 **ROSE.** [ _Turns to_ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** ] You _have_ been pretty quiet since we came in here and found the arsenic.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** I told you, I garrotte everyone. Not poison them.

 **TEN.** But it would be easy for you to kill her in a different way and then just say that like it's an alibi, when none of you have any kind of alibi whatsoever and most of you have a motive.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** What's _my_ motive, then? [ **TEN** _and_ **ROSE** _both fall silent again_ ]

 **ELISE (CO).** God. Everyone wants to do me in.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Just like in real life.

 **ROSE.** …We need more clues is what we need.

 **TEN.** [ _Turns to_ **CLAUDETTE (RW)** ] Did you say you were dusting the library when you heard the crash in here?

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** …Oui.

 **TEN.** Well, then! Somebody show us to this library!

 **SMITH (9).** I'll show you. As long as you stop accusing me of murder.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** You'd like that, wouldn't you? Probably because _you're_ the real killer.

 **SMITH (9).** It's this way…

[ _Leads the entire party out of the kitchen and down the ornate, stately hallways, towards another door. However,_ **SMITH (9)** _finds he is unable to open the door. He rams it with his shoulder and looks at_ **CLAUDETTE (RW)** ]

 **SMITH (9).** Did you lock this?

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** [ _Shrugs_ ] Non.

[ _They hear a noise inside the room_ ]

 **ELISE (CO).** It could be my killer!

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** We have to get in there!

[ **SMITH (9)** _continues to struggle with the door until_ **ROSE** _taps him on the shoulder_ ]

 **ROSE.** I'll deal with this. [ _With ease, she proceeds to kick the door down. She kicks it so hard it splinters from its hinges, and a rudimentary barricade made up of chairs and one sofa pushed against the wood is forced across the room. Someone is climbing through a window on the opposite side, a shadowy figure. After seeing_ **ROSE** _break down the door, the figure is terrified and falls out of the window_ ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Oh my stars! Babe, are you okay!?

 **JACK.** He'll be fine, we're on the ground floor.

[ **ELISE (CO)** _phases through the crowd – much to their displeasure – to go and see what has become of the strange figure at the window. She peers through into the simulated rainstorm and then helps him back to his feet_ ]

 **BUTCH (AP).** Robbie! What are you doing here!?

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Who's he supposed to be?

 **BUTCH (AP).** My brother!

[ _With the help of_ **ELISE (CO)** _,_ **ROBBIE HARDCASTLE (ADAM MITCHELL)** _climbs back through the window_ ]

 **ROBBIE (AM).** Yep. Just me. Amy's brother.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** [ _Gasps theatrically_ ] Oh my god! That's Robbie Cums-A-Lot! The gay porn star!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Excuse me!?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** Yeah, I mean, like… a bit.

 **TEN & ROSE.** _Gay porn star_?

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** He's taken over a thousand dicks.

 **ROBBIE (AM).** Sometimes I wish I was dead.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Babe – dead, gay sluts are totally my type. That's why I'm so into Clara right now.

 **ELISE (CO).** You be quiet.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** _Me_ be quiet!? I'm supposed to be here! You're just some zombie wandering around trying to ignore your cigarette craving. Anyway, give me a break. I just found out my boyfriend is a renowned porn star called Robbie Cums-A-Lot, it's very exciting for me. [ _To_ **ROBBIE (AM)** ] You're doing great, teddy-bear. [ _Gives him a thumbs-up. He is very uncomfortable_ ]

 **TEN.** Why are you in here climbing out of the window? Did you barricade the room?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** Uh… I was looking for something, that's all. For my brother.

 **BUTCH (AP).** But how did you know I'd be here?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** _Because_ …

 **SMITH (9).** Not very good at improvising, are you? Me and River have been doing a great job.

 **ROSE.** They have, to be fair. Them and Ianto. Clara's shit, she won't shut up.

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Reminiscing_ ] I lived with a porn star at uni, you know…

 **ROBBIE (AM).** I haven't even been in any porn for almost a year. Off the circuit completely. Not even, you know, the… solo stuff. [ _He is struggling to remember the terms_ **JACK** _told him earlier_ ]

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** And why is that?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** [ _Uneasily_ ] Personal reasons.

 **TEN.** Like what?

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** _I_ heard a rumour that this capitalist sex-worker contracted VD.

 **ROSE.** [ _Exclaims_ ] VD! Like those pills we found!

 **BUTCH (AP).** You got VD!?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** And you're sleeping with the President! I've seen the photo Mickey-

 **JACK.** KG-Beauty.

 **ROBBIE (AM).** –the photo KG-Beauty and Elise have!

 **TEN.** _And_ Elise!? They were _both_ conspiring to make money from that photo!?

 **ROSE.** That's why the photo was in Elise's study! Maybe KG-Beauty wanted to kill Elise to increase their share of the blackmail money! Only one person to blackmail means twice as much cash.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** I never betray anybody I work with, and definitely did not kill her. It's true though that she was the one keeping the photograph safe for _me_. But it wasn't for the blackmail money, she never saw a penny of that.

 **TEN.** [ _Pulls the pill bottle they found earlier from his pocket_ ] And are these yours!? These pills with the prescription name blacked out!?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** No, that's Elise's – I was looking for it, though. For proof.

 **TEN.** Proof of what?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** I'm… I'm sorry about this, Clara, but the character sheet said I have to reveal that you're the one I contracted an STI from.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Clara! I cannot believe you'd sleep with my boyfriend!

 **ELISE (CO).** Me either. God, this is so exciting. I'm a nasty piece of work, aren't I?

 **ROBBIE (AM).** I need proof that Elise has the disease so that I can claim compensation for her ruining my career.

 **ROSE.** Why? What disease is it? Is it AIDS? I bet it's AIDS.

 **ROBBIE (AM).** It's donovanosis.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** [ _Winces visibly_ ] Ooh, that's, uh, unlucky. Sorry about that. Horrible.

 **ELISE (CO).** What is it? Is it worse than chlamydia? Because I've chlamydia and I barely even noticed.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Aside from the fact that your sexual history is _atrocious_ , donovanosis is a flesh-eating STD rarely found in England. Gives people genital ulcers. Honestly, it's horrific, we had someone in with it once when I was a student – it took the doctors three days to find out what was wrong with him. They had him in quarantine, thought it might be some weird form of the bubonic plague at one point. You can cure it, but it takes a _lot_ of drugs. Although, what year are we supposed to be in for this mystery? Maybe they haven't developed a cure yet.

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** [ _To_ **JACK** ] Did you have to give him that one? The one that makes your groin rot away? It's a bit cruel.

 **JACK.** Here I thought you could only speak French.

 **ALBERT (JY).** [ _To_ **CLAUDETTE (RW)** ] Say, "je te déteste."

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** Je te déteste.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Savage.

 **ELISE (CO).** You know, if a porn star does get AIDS or HIV, then like, the entire porn industry has to go on pause while they check all the performers.

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** I'm not sure they are 'performers.' Not _really_.

 **ELISE (CO).** You don't think having sex with someone on camera doesn't count as performing? It's not an easy job, you know.

 **ROSE.** How do you know? Have you done it?

 **ELISE (CO).** No, but I told you, I lived with a girl in university who did some porn. It was how she made her money while she studied business. You've met her.

 **ROSE.** You what?

 **ELISE (CO).** When we went dress shopping the other week, the girl whose family owned the shop who we met, _she_ used to do porn.

 **ROSE.** Rudi? Who gave me that discount?

 **ELISE (CO).** The one who won't sleep with me, yeah. Very hard to seduce a girl who sleeps with people professionally. Who are all also professionals. She's just not interested. Anyway, yeah, she did a bunch of porn. It's really safe. They get full STI checks every fortnight and it's all, like, consensual. They have forms and they tick boxes.

 **ALBERT (JY).** Sex workers are underrepresented. Which is exactly why it should all be legalised, make it safer.

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** Do you hang out with porn stars as well?

 **ALBERT (JY).** No, but my ex-girlfriend was a prostitute.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** She charge you a lot?

 **ALBERT (JY).** [ _Glares at her_ ] _No_. We were in love. Until she got pregnant and moved away. It was a long time ago.

 **TEN.** Can we get back to the murder mystery?

 **ROSE.** This might be relevant! I mean, maybe he didn't break in here to get proof for his cock compensation-

 **ROBBIE (AM).** Great…

 **ROSE.** Maybe he killed her! As revenge! For giving him the disease!

 **TEN.** Oh _yeah_ … but how? With what?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I bet he fucked her to death. With his giant, rotten, putrefying porn dick.

 **ROBBIE (AM).** Thanks, Oswin…

 **TEN.** _Or_ the president and the bodyguard killed her to try and get their hands on that photograph!

 **ROSE.** Oh my god… how are we even supposed to work out who did it? Literally anybody could have!

 **TEN.** Well, there's only one person left we haven't found yet.

 **SMITH (9).** Ah. You want to talk to the lunatic.

 **TEN & ROSE.** The lunatic?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** [ _Uneasily_ ] Lunatic? Sounds ridiculous…

 **SMITH (9).** The lunatic who lives in the attic!


	198. Whodunnit? V

_Whodunnit? V_

[ _It has been discovered that_ **LUCIENNE WELLINGTON-BLYTHE (IANTO JONES)** _was in an illicit and secret lesbian relationship with a girl named_ **KATIE CHAPMAN (NIOS)** _, who was briefly hiding in the kitchen pantry and claims to be witness to_ **MADAME WOOWOO (OSWIN OSWALD)** _, the wheelchair-bound spiritualist who says she was only in the house to call a cab, planting arsenic in the kitchen, potentially poisoning_ **LADY ELISE WELLINGTON (CLARA OSWALD)** _, a statement trusted by the cook_ **RICKY CYANIDE (RIVER SONG)** _, who previously spent seven years in prison on charge of kidnapping and is also the Wellingtons' ex-gardener._ **CYANIDE (RS)** _kidnapped baby_ **ALBERT WELLINGTON III (JENNY YOUNG)** _, who has since returned, aged seven, to claim – which_ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** _previously believed to be hers_ ]

[ _As well as this, it was found that the famous gay porn star_ **ROBBIE "CUMS-A-LOT" HARDCASTLE (ADAM MITCHELL)** _had to end his lucrative porn career after contracting an as-yet-incurable STI, donovanosis, from_ **ELISE (CO)** _, during a secret liaison nobody else knew about._ **ROBBIE (AM)** _claims he was at the house looking for proof_ **ELISE (CO)** _gave him the disease so that he could claim compensation, but some speculate he was aiming to kill her out of revenge. He is also the brother of_ **BUTCH HARDCASTLE (AMY POND)** _, the bodyguard of_ **THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (MARTHA JONES)** _, who also had an affair with one another. Photographic evidence of this affair was acquired by femme fatale_ **KG-BEAUTY (MICKEY SMITH)** _, which was being kept by_ **ELISE (CO)** _in her study, though_ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** _claims that_ **ELISE (CO)** _never saw a penny of the blackmail money she was claiming from_ **BUTCH (AP)** _and_ **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** _, and they also revealed that they knew_ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** _was at the house that evening and followed her there_ ]

[ _But the butler_ **JOHN SMITH (NINTH DOCTOR)** _has also been accused of_ **ELISE'S (CO)** _murder, after_ **CYANIDE (RS)** _revealed that when he was working as the gardener they knew each other, and that_ **SMITH (9)** _knew who took the child. He is also in possession of a revolver, and at the time of_ **ELISE'S (CO)** _murder, all the witnesses claim to have heard a gunshot when the lights went out. Like_ **CYANIDE (RS)** _and the French maid_ **CLAUDETTE ARCENEAUX (RORY WILLIAMS)** _who speaks no English, the butler also had the opportunity to either shoot_ **ELISE (CO)** _or use the arsenic in the kitchen._ **SMITH (9)** _also knew about the relationship between_ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** _and_ **KATIE (NI)** _, and has now revealed knowledge of what he calls "the lunatic in the attic", somebody_ **WOOWOO (OO)** _is not happy about visiting_ ]

[ _In the attic (which also happens to be located on the ground floor because_ **JACK** _and_ **DONNA** _were concerned about ease-of-access for a certain amputee joining in with the game). The simulation rainstorm continues to hammer against the thin windows, and in the artificial moonlight a silhouette is bathed: a man, raggedy and decrepit, chained to the wall and unable to stray too far. They all keep their distance as_ **THE LUNATIC (ELEVENTH DOCTOR)** _turns around, a look of madness in his eyes. All THREE of them_ ]

[ _They jump_ ]

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Squinting at him_ ] What's up with your face, sweetheart?

 **LUNATIC (11).** It's my third eye. They call me 'the Cyclops.' Which doesn't make sense because a cyclops only has one eye, but I suppose Jack doesn't care too much about things making sense. [ **JACK** _glares at him_ ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Do you get excited when somebody touches it? Y'know, you're _third eye_. [ **ELISE (CO)** _kicks the back of her wheelchair and it rattles_ ] Hey! You can't do that!

 **LUNATIC (11).** My real name is supposedly Benjamin Holmes, for the record. Anyway… [ _clears his throat, begins doing a creepy voice_ ] What brings you all here, to my abode?

 **ELISE (CO).** Ooh, I'm getting chills. You're so method. I hope you didn't kill me…

 **JACK.** No flirting with the lunatic. He's a lunatic.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Personally, I think you're really stigmatising the mentally ill right now. But don't let _me_ tell you how to play your little game…

 **LUNATIC (11).** She just wants to divert attention away from the truth.

 **ROSE.** What truth?

 **LUNATIC (11).** _The_ truth! The truth behind everything!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** He doesn't even know what he's saying.

 **LUNATIC (11).** Ha! That's what you think. But _I_ know everything. _I'm_ the only person who _really_ knows what happened seven years ago, because _I_ witnessed it!

 **TEN.** You mean the murder of Elise's husband!?

 **LUNATIC (11).** What a terrible murder it was!

 **ROSE.** What happened!?

 **LUNATIC (11).** _What happened!?_ What happened is _she_ did it! The woman herself! Elise!

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Gasps_ ] Did I?

 **LUNATIC (11).** Well… yes. Didn't you?

 **ELISE (CO).** I don't know. Nobody told me anything.

 **DONNA.** Because you're supposed to be a dead body in the other bloody room. Just ignore her, pretend she's a ghost and nobody can hear her.

 **ELISE (CO).** Charming…

 **LUNATIC (11).** I saw her kill her husband through the window. She violently, brutally murdered him, with a garotte!

 **TEN.** A garotte!?

 **ROSE.** Just like the one used by-

 **TEN & ROSE.** KG-Beauty!

 **ROSE.** And you were so insistent about using the garotte, too!

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** So what? It was seven years ago. And he just said he saw Elise do it. What's that got to do with me?

 **LUNATIC (11).** It's everything to do with you. A prominent government scientist? Working for the Americans? Strangled in his own home by his wife the same night she gives birth to their child, then lets the infant go wandering?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** You can't listen to him. He's crazy. He's a _lunatic_. The _lunatic in the attic._

 **ROSE.** _You're_ a lunatic.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Only in real life, though. Not in this game. Besides, what's this murder seven years ago really got to do with anything?

 **ROSE.** Maybe Lucienne found out Elise killed her father and murdered her out of revenge? Maybe the butler did it? I don't know.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** I had no idea this witch murdered my father until this very moment!

 **ELISE (CO).** Alright, mate. Calm down. I haven't actually killed your dad.

 **TEN.** What was your father's job? [ _As he asks that question,_ **ROSE** _decides to go and search the many drawers and cupboards_ ]

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** He was a scientist, worked with experimental weapons, for the government.

 **TEN.** Experimental-!? And now the president and a Russian spy are in his house!?

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** I suppose so.

 **TEN.** Seems fishy.

 **ROSE.** [ _Sarcastic, but somewhat absent, still searching_ ] Yeah, almost like somebody's been murdered, or something…

 **TEN.** And then all of you showing up here… seven years later…

 **LUNATIC (11).** It's not fishy. Everything's connected, you see. I've got all the pieces, you know, up here. They just need somebody to put them together.

 **ROSE.** [ _Pulling out some documents_ ] Oh my god…

 **TEN.** What?

 **ROSE.** [ _With increased intensity_ ] Oh my _god_ …

 **TEN, ELISE (CO), WOOWOO (OO), THE PRESIDENT (MJ), KG-BEAUTY (MS) & BUTCH (AP).** What?

 **ROSE.** [ _Even more intensity_ ] Oh. My. GOD.

 **TEN, ELISE (CO), WOOWOO (OO), THE PRESIDENT (MJ), KG-BEAUTY (MS), BUTCH (AP), CYANIDE (RS), SMITH (9), ALBERT (JY).** WHAT?

 **ROSE.** These documents! It's her will! _And_ birth certificate! And it says she was born thirty years ago-

 **ELISE (CO).** Hang on, _thirty_!? I'm not bloody thirty!

 **ROSE.** In the Soviet Union! And her name is really Essena Vladislavovna!

[ _All gasp_ ]

 **ROSE.** _And_ the will doesn't leave a single named benefactor! None of you are in line for any inheritance!

 **LUCIENNE (IJ) & ALBERT (JY).** What!?

[ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** _snatches the will from_ **ROSE** _to examine it_ ]

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** I don't believe this! She's a Russian! And she didn't leave me any money! Even after she murdered my father!

 **TEN.** So she must know KG-Beauty!

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** Alright, fine! I admit it. Elise Wellington _is_ Essena Vladislavovna. We worked together in Leningrad. She was a spy, sent here as a sleeper agent to assassinate Lord Albert Wellington II, who was working on a weapon that would give the capitalists an edge in the war. But she stayed behind when she was supposed to come back to Russia, stayed here and enjoyed all the luxuries money could buy.

 **ROSE.** So you killed her! All because she was betraying Mother Russia.

 **TEN.** No, that can't be right, Elise was still helping blackmail the president and the bodyguard.

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** As a favour. So that I wouldn't out her to the authorities as a Russian spy. I'd just have to send one anonymous tip and they'd find out the suspicious circumstances surrounding Lord Albert's death, as well as the fact that 'Elise Wellington' has never even existed. I told you, she didn't see a penny of the blackmail money.

 **ROSE.** So you were blackmailing everybody. [ **KG-BEAUTY (MS)** _shrugs_ ]

 **TEN.** But anyone who knew that there was nothing in the will could have also wanted to kill her. Maybe it was the butler? Serving the family faithfully for two decades and then not having anything in the will? And you knew the lunatic was in here, so you must have come in here before.

 **SMITH (9).** If I'd found that will, I would've found the birth certificate, too. And I had no idea she was a Russian spy. I would have turned her in.

 **ELISE (CO).** Can't _believe_ that all along I've been a communist spy…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Your wife would cream herself if she heard you say that, I'll bet.

 **LUNATIC (11).** And you! Don't think I don't know why you're here, Agneta!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** [ _Gasps_ ]

 **LUNATIC (11).** Because I do! That woman is trying to kill me, I say! _Kill me_!

 **TEN.** Why does she want to do that?

 **LUNATIC (11).** Because she's a fraud! Take a look over there! [ _He points to the wall nearby, where they see in the ghostly moonlight an old, torn, yellowing poster. It is advertising a travelling carnival, and the names "Benjamin Holmes, The Amazing Cyclops" and "The Astounding Madame Woowoo" are both clearly visible_ ] We were in a travelling circus together, years ago, and I know she's fake! All the people she divines the futures of are plants, all the ghosts she talks to are fake! And more than that – she can walk!

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** [ _Surprised_ ] Can she?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Well… see, you know how we picked the characters at random? The _character_ , Madame Woowoo, is supposed to have been faking that she can't walk. I, however, haven't even got my prosthetic attached at the moment. Just pretend I did something cool. Like, that I breakdanced, or did a backflip, or something.

 **ALBERT (JY).** I did offer to swap, but Jack was adamant about no-swapping.

 **JACK.** It'd be chaos if you were allowed to change characters.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** So you just thought you'd be ableist, instead? [ _Shaking her head_ ] Despicable.

 **LUNATIC (11).** Anyway, continuing on, after that excellent breakdancing performance we just saw- [ **WOOWOO (OO)** _does a small bow in her wheelchair_ ] -she's the one who murdered Elise, with poison, but she wasn't trying to kill Elise. She was trying to kill _me_! So that I didn't reveal her to be a fraud!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I had no idea you were here. It's purely coincidence. I merely wanted to use the phone.

 **SMITH (9).** She did ask to use the phone when she arrived.

 **LUNATIC (11).** Only as a pretence!

[ **WOOWOO (OO)** _and_ **THE LUNATIC (11)** _glare at each other. Silence falls from the other people in the room, all of them pausing and waiting for another revelation. The glaring stops, and they look around, eventually all focusing their attention on_ **JACK** _and_ **DONNA** _. Finally,_ **DONNA** _goes to speak_ ]

 **DONNA.** [ _To_ **TEN** _and_ **ROSE** ] That's your lot, I'm afraid. [ _They pause, in shock_ ]

 **TEN.** What do you mean, that's our lot?

 **DONNA.** Everything. All the clues and information. It's yours now.

 **ROSE.** But… but… but it could be anyone!

 **TEN.** We'll have to just go through them all one by one. Did she kill herself? Can you tell us that, at least?

 **JACK.** She didn't kill herself. We're not that mean.

 **ROSE.** Alright, well… Oswin could have accidentally done it trying to kill the Doctor because of this carnival thing, although it does seem a bit weird that he's been here for years and she picks _tonight_ to come and try to kill him-

 **TEN.** And he is a lunatic.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Yeah, he could be full of shit.

 **LUNATIC (11).** I'm doing my best.

 **ROSE.** Jenny probably didn't do it because… well, we don't really have a motive or a murder weapon and she's a seven-year-old boy.

 **TEN.** Rory had opportunity but not much of a motive.

 **DONNA.** The motive is that Jack desperately wanted to force someone to dress up as a maid. Originally, he wanted that one to be Clara so that we could get her to shut up with the 'French' excuse.

 **ELISE (CO).** Oh, thanks.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Clara's not _that_ bad.

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Bitterly_ ] I'm not 'that bad.' That's a compliment of the highest order.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Don't ruin it.

 **TEN.** Could've been Martha. And if it was, Amy would definitely back her up. I believe the president and the CIA would definitely kill somebody to stop a lewd photo like that getting out.

 **ROSE.** But they didn't actually retrieve the photo. You'd've thought they'd've got the photo, or at least found out where it was, first.

 **TEN.** Maybe… but, it could also have been because they worked out she's a Russian spy and came here to deal with _that_. Then they definitely _would_ just kill her. Or Mickey could have done it because the KGB didn't want to get found out for sending an assassin over, or because she was trying to get some of the blackmail money for the photo, or because people might find out she killed Lord Albert!

 **ROSE.** Or it could've been the butler, he _is_ the only one with a gun, and we know for a fact there _was_ a gunshot. We _don't_ know that the food was ever actually poisoned, and it would be a bit tricky to time a power cut perfectly with death-by-poisoning.

 **TEN.** What would the motive be? Trying to get money out of the will?

 **ROSE.** Maybe. He could've tried to change the will after she died, so that she didn't find out about it. Or it could be delayed revenge for her killing Albert. _And_ it definitely could have been Ianto trying to get inheritance, avenge Albert, _or_ continue this weird secret relationship with Nios.

 **TEN.** Or Nios also looking to try and snatch the inheritance or get together with Ianto…

 **JACK.** Who doesn't wanna get together with Ianto? [ **ALBERT (JY)** _makes an exaggerated gagging, retching sound, then coughs_ ]

 **ALBERT (JY).** Sorry. Got something in my throat.

 **JACK.** Not for the first time.

 **ALBERT (JY).** You- [ **ELISE (CO)** _grabs her arm_ ]

 **ELISE (CO).** Yeah, alright, let it go.

 **TEN.** But! Maybe it was the lunatic! Why is he even locked up in this attic? Because he bore witness to the murder? Maybe Elise tried to poison _him_ and, I don't know, the language-barrier with Claudette meant the poisoned food went to the wrong person? Or Claudette could have known and done it on purpose because she likes the lunatic more than Elise? Or even, he could have managed to convince Claudette to kill Elise to eventually free him from being trapped here.

 **ROSE.** We have even less proof for that than for any of the others. And there's still Adam Mitchell, and his STD. Could've easily murdered her out of revenge.

 **TEN.** But how?

 **ROSE.** I don't know, all the lights were out. He must have had some reason to barricade himself in the library. Run in, bash her on the head, run back out again.

 **DONNA.** Come on. It's _obvious_.

 **TEN & ROSE.** Is it?

 **DONNA.** Yes! Just think about it slowly, and then tell us-

 **JACK & DONNA.** Who do you think the killer is?

 **AN: And in a shocking turn of events, it's down to YOU GUYS who the killer is! Who do you think is the most likely suspect? Who has the best motive, the best opportunity, or who would be the plain funniest murderer? In the spirit of the interactivity of a murder mystery event, whoever YOU vote for will be the killer! So let me know in the reviews!**

 **On a second note, I've now added a storyline next (might be a short one) because this murder mystery just hasn't lasted very long at all and will probably only take them to midday, and I'm gonna do a Jenny/Oswin exclusive because they've never had their own one together and they are arguably the best characters in the entire fic.**


	199. Whodunnit? VI

_Whodunnit? VI_

[ _The entire cast are gathered together in the attic of the Wellington mansion, eagerly awaiting the solution to the mystery that has been plaguing them for roughly two-to-three hours._ **LADY ELISE (CLARA OSWALD)** _, the murder victim;_ **LUCIENNE WELLINGTON-BLYTHE (IANTO JONES)** _; the secretly-lesbian step-daughter;_ **KG-BEAUTY (MICKEY SMITH)** _, the Russian femme fatale;_ **ABRAHAM ROOSEVELT KENNEDY JR., THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES (MARTHA JONES)** _and the bodyguard he's having an affair with,_ **BUTCH HARDCASTLE (AMY POND)** _; the bodyguard's diseased, porn star brother,_ **ROBBIE "CUMS-A-LOT" HARDCASTLE (ADAM MITCHELL)** _; the faux-exterminator lesbian lover,_ **KATIE CHAPMAN (NIOS)** _; the ex-gardener, ex-con cook,_ **RICKY CYANIDE (RIVER SONG)** _; the suspicious, armed butler,_ **JOHN SMITH (NINTH DOCTOR)** _;_ **MADAME WOOWOO (OSWIN OSWALD)** _, the wheelchair-bound psychic;_ **CLAUDETTE ARCENEAUX (RORY WILLIAMS)** _, the French-speaking maid;_ **ALBERT WELLINGTON III (JENNY YOUNG)** _, the seven-year-old heir to the Wellington fortune; and, finally,_ **THE** **LUNATIC IN THE ATTIC (ELEVENTH DOCTOR)** _, an old circus freak who knows too much. But who is the true killer?_ ]

 **ROSE.** [ _Clicks her fingers_ ] I know who did it.

 **TEN.** You do?

 **ALL.** You do?

 **ROSE.** Yep. Because _Jack_ … is full of it.

 **ALBERT (JY).** Well, we all knew _that_ already…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** [ _Coldly, to_ **ALBERT (JY)** ] Behave.

 **ROSE.** There's no way any of this is random. Getting Adam Mitchell to be a porn star? Rory to be a maid? Mickey to to be a seductress assassin? Clara as the murder victim? No. This is all designed. And there's only a few people who Jack and Donna would think it was really funny to have killed Clara.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Anyone killing Clara is _quite_ funny; you should've seen when she killed herself by trying to climb up a t-rex fossil and she fell off.

 **ELISE (CO).** Shut up.

 **BUTCH (AP).** Actually, I'd quite like to see that, you didn't get it on video, or anything?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Unfortunately not.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Why were you climbing on a dinosaur?

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _While glaring at_ **WOOWOO (OO)** ] It's really not as interesting a story as it sounds.

 **ROSE.** My point is, the killer is obviously… the lunatic!

[ **JACK** _and_ **DONNA** _both gasp theatrically_ ]

 **TEN.** Is it?

 **ROSE.** Yes.

 **TEN.** …But he's chained to the wall up here.

 **LUNATIC (11).** Yes, see, I'm chained to the wall. [ _He rattles his chains_ ]

 **ROSE.** Which is the perfect alibi.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** What is? The impossibility of him being able to kill her?

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** Not killing someone is the best alibi you can have.

 **TEN.** I thought it was somebody else, but… well… sorry, how did you work out it's the lunatic? What's his motive?

 **ROSE.** Revenge! For being locked in the loft for seven years.

 **TEN.** I was thinking more along the lines of the butler being involved because I thought they'd love a cliché, but-

 **LUNATIC (11).** Drat! Alas, I confess! It was me!

 **ROSE.** I knew it!

 **TEN.** What, really?

 **LUNATIC (11).** And I had more than a few accomplices, _including_ the butler, who knows the most fiendish secret of all: that the seven-year-old boy is not, in fact, the son of Lord Albert Wellington II, but is the son of me! A freakshow vagrant with a mutated, extra eye!

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Finally, an explanation as to why Jenny's so weird-looking.

 **ALBERT (JY).** Oi!

 **LUNATIC (11).** She didn't want anybody to know that she had a son with me, and an affair, but her husband discovered it. And I was visiting to see the birth of my child because no one's going to stop me from seeing my son, which was when I witnessed her murdering him. Maybe she was a Russian spy, but she was never an assassin; communism was just a red herring. It was I who helped her cover up the murder, until she tricked me and trapped me in here! Letting the gardener take our child somewhere else! KG-Beauty has been forcing Elise to help do her dirty work for years, like storing the blackmail photo of the President and Butch Hardcastle. But her connection to Leningrad and secret identity meant that I could easily lie to the police and say I orchestrated the murder because I found her hidden birth certificate up here and was just protecting the country.

 **CYANIDE (RS).** How did you do it, though? How did she die?

 **LUNATIC (11).** She was poisoned! She was poisoned by none other than the maid, Claudette Arceneaux, _parce que je parle Français_! The maid was the only one who ever saw me when she delivered my meals, and so I worked the same magic I worked on Elise and seduced her!

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** For the record, none of this stuff was written on my character sheet _at all_. This is the first time I'm hearing it.

 **LUNATIC (11).** I seduced the maid, the only one to return my advances – sorry, Rory, I've had all the time up here on my own to memorise the speech Jack wrote – and finally, after months, convinced her to help me in my scheme to gain my freedom and murder Elise. It would have helped if she was actually nice to any of her staff. And after Claudette briefly smuggled me some writing utensils and agreed to post a letter, it was all too easy to get the help of my old associate from the carnival, Madame Woowoo, the fraudulent psychic. I told her I would out her as a con artist if she didn't deliver some arsenic to the kitchen on this very night, the anniversary of the murder of Lord Albert Wellington II and the birth of my beloved son, whose _real_ name, as I would have it, is Bob.

 **ALBERT (JY).** _Bob_!? That's, like, the most boring name. Why is my name Bob now?

 **BUTCH (AP).** Shush, Bob, we're trying to listen.

 **LUNATIC (11).** Madame Woowoo delivered the arsenic after lying and saying she needed to use the phone to call a taxi on this stormy night – she is a professional liar, after all. The thing I didn't count on was the affair between Lucienne and Katie Chapman. Katie saw, from the pantry where she was hiding, Madame Woowoo bring the arsenic into the kitchen, all while Ricky Cyanide the cook was distracted arguing with Lucienne about Katie's presence in the kitchen at all. An argument triggered with the assistance of another pitiful friend of mine, the butler, John Smith. When I revealed to him that he wasn't even mentioned in Elise's will, after twenty years of devoted service to the Wellington household, that was all the convincing he needed. He was the one who shot the gun at that precise time, it's true, but only as a diversion to keep people from discovering the true cause of death-

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Which literally any post-mortem could tell you.

 **LUNATIC (11).** And how did he know exactly what time to fire the gun, when I was up here and the poison was acting? Easy! Because I have access to the fuse box! [ _He tears down the old carnival poster and reveals the metal box behind it, opening it to reveal the fuses and switches for every room in the house_ ] During a storm, nobody would question a power cut and it would serve as the perfect cover. The best part is that they all set themselves up to take the fall, meaning that as long as I, in the attic, remained a secret then I wouldn't even be investigated. The rest of my plan was for Claudette to free me and help me escape, where we would take my dear Bob-

 **ALBERT (JY).** For god's sake…

 **LUNATIC (11).** -And move to a beautiful cottage in southern France together, where we'd have many children.

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** Sounds about right.

 **LUNATIC (11).** Although, I am infected with the dangerous flesh-eating venereal disease, donovanosis, which is how Elise contracted it and then gave it to Robbie Hardcastle, thus inadvertently ruining his entire career just to get her leg over.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Wow. It turns out that Clara's vagina was the real villain all along. [ **ELISE (CO)** _kicks her wheelchair, yet again_ ] What!? I'm just saying that everyone you've slept with in this game has had something awful happen to them.

 **ELISE (CO).** You are _such_ a shit.

 **LUNATIC (11).** The only variable I didn't account for was that the butler would turn on me.

 **SMITH (9).** Had to save my own skin. They wanted _me_ for it, you heard him.

 **ROSE.** Seems like you almost thought of everything. _Almost_.

 **LUNATIC (11).** And I would've gotten away with it, too! If it weren't for you meddling kids and your dumb murder mystery party!

 **TEN.** Well. Looks like we were both right.

 **ROSE.** I was more right than you, though. The butler was barely involved. It's too obvious.

 **ELISE (CO).** I cannot believe you murdered me, sweetheart. This is such a betrayal. Sleeping with Rory I can forgive because who _wouldn't_ go for him in that maid outfit-

 **BUTCH (AP).** Amen!

 **ELISE (CO).** But _killing me_?

 **ROSE.** We've all wanted to kill you at one point or another.

 **ELISE (CO).** [ _Deadpan_ ] Thanks.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** Can I take this dress and these furs off, now? I'm _so_ sweaty.

 **JACK.** Can't say I'll complain if you wanna take your clothes off.

 **ALBERT (JY).** [ _Angrily_ ] Why am I called Bob!?

 **DONNA.** Thought it was funny.

 **ALBERT (JY).** [ _Annoyed, muttering_ ] _Thought it was funny_ … ugh… who gets the money from the will, though? Me or Ianto?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Fight to the death!

 **ROBBIE (AM).** You could do that thing they do in _Gladiators_ where they stand on the podiums and hit each other with the big cushioned cotton bud things.

 **DONNA.** There isn't actually any money, you know.

 **ELISE (CO).** I'm going to donate it. To medical research, to try and find a cure for donovanosis. Maybe someday Robbie Cums-A-Lot will get his penis back and be able to fuck to his heart's content. It's the least I can do.

 **TEN.** This was brilliant! I couldn't think of a better thing to do on a stag party! Here I was scared you were going to force me to get drunk.

 **ROSE.** Yeah, speaking of getting drunk, is there absolutely no alcohol?

 **JACK.** There's some Ferrero Rocher in a drawer over there we got for if you managed to get it right.

[ _The_ **LUNATIC (11)** _steps aside to let_ **ROSE** _get to the drawer, opening it and pulling out a large tray of chocolate she promptly takes over to_ **TEN** _so that they can eat it_ ]

 **CLAUDETTE (RW).** Don't any of us get chocolate?

 **KG-BEAUTY (MS).** Yeah, me and Rory have had to wear these stupid outfits, I think we're the ones most deserving of chocolate.

 **LUCIENNE (IJ).** I'm not having fun in this ridiculous dress, either. I'm wearing a corset.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** [ _Pretending to get emotional and cry_ ] Your dedication to the bit is truly touching. And speaking of _touching_ , I'm fully aware of what you're thinking of right now, Clara, eh? [ **ELISE (CO)** _was not paying attention to anything until she said that_ ]

 **ELISE (CO).** Leave me alone. I told you stop reading my mind.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** You're thinking very loudly right now, that's all.

 **ROSE.** I'd kill for some chocolate with some alcohol in it. Or some Baileys, anybody else fancy some Baileys? You can get salted caramel Baileys now.

 **BUTCH (AP).** I wouldn't say no to some Baileys.

 **JACK.** There's none here.

 **ROSE.** Why?

 **DONNA.** Nothing good ever seems to happen when any of us get drunk.

 **ROSE.** Getting drunk is a good thing on its own. What about you, Clara?

 **ELISE (CO).** After you just insulted me and said you've thought about killing me before? [ **ROSE** _nods_ ] Can't say I want to get drunk right now, particularly. It's barely even noon. I'm just hungry.

 **ROSE.** Eleven o'clock is Pimm's o'clock.

 **BUTCH (AP).** She's got a point.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** A point about what? The madness of drinking culture?

 **BUTCH (AP).** Don't you want any Pimm's? We could go for cocktails! Cocktails, Donna!

 **DONNA.** Because that went so well the other day, didn't it?

 **BUTCH (AP).** I suppose I'm maybe not really in the mood for day drinking…

 **ROSE.** No! Somebody must be! Jack?

 **JACK.** Too much wedding stuff. _Your_ wedding stuff. Sorry. [ **ROSE** _again turns her gaze on_ **ELISE (CO)** ]

 **ELISE (CO).** I've also got… plans.

 **ROSE.** What plans?

 **ELISE (CO).** I was gonna go have a wank.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** The vagina strikes back.

 **ROSE.** You're not serious, are you?

 **ELISE (CO).** …Quite serious…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** It's _all_ she's been thinking about all morning.

 **BUTCH (AP).** [ _To_ **THE LUNATIC (11)** ] Don't you mind her telling everyone that?

 **LUNATIC (11).** No. Why would I? It's Clara's business. I don't own her.

 **BUTCH (AP).** Just seems a bit weird, since by all accounts you two basically never stop shagging.

 **ELISE (CO).** Yes, okay, we get the point, I'm a sex maniac. It's been, like, six months, I'm sure everyone's fully aware.

 **TEN.** We do, you know, have a lot to be getting on with ourselves, Rose. A bit. Some stuff. A few things. Finishing touches. The seating plan, for instance?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** And before you ask for my frankly sterling company for your binge-drinking escapades, Rosie, this wheelchair has actually given me a lot of very sexual ideas, so I'll be busy fingering my way through some blueprints in the old laboratory.

 **KATIE (NI).** You're honestly such an atrocious individual.

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** And Jenny and I are busy after this, so don't ask me.

 **ALBERT (JY).** Busy? With what?

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** Surely you haven't forgotten that your hand needs to be put in a cast again to stop you from repeatedly screwing it up?

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Yeah, Jenny. Stop screwing everything with your hand.

 **ALBERT (JY).** Ooh, well, I sort of… have literally anywhere else to be, so, I don't think that's really going to… [ _Sees the glare_ **THE PRESIDENT (MJ)** _is giving her_ ] Or maybe I can spare a few minutes…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** Wow, Marth, you totally made Bob your bitch.

 **DONNA.** You have a real gift for making everybody in a room exceptionally uncomfortable at once, you know.

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I know a few tricks that'll make you _very_ comfortable if you just slide your underwear off. _Slowly,_ like.

 **ROBBIE (AM).** [ _Grabs the back of her wheelchair_ ] Okay, well, I think that's enough excitement for one day…

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I'm always excited when you're around, teddy-bear.

 **ROBBIE (AM).** Would you look at that? Madame Woowoo's going senile in her old age. [ _Begins to wheel her away_ ]

 **WOOWOO (OO).** I have to re-establish my position as the Alpha Lunatic here. Make sure I stay on top.

 **JACK.** I think that's as good a place as any to end things… now then, Ianto. What's say we get you out of those furs? [ _Picks_ **LUCIENNE (IJ)** _up and carries her out of the room_ ]

 **PRESIDENT (MJ).** [ _Grabbing_ **ALBERT'S (JY)** _arm_ ] And _you're_ coming with me to the medibay. Right now.

[ _CURTAIN_ ]


	200. One Last Job

_One Last Job_

 _Jenny_

Her face was an embittered grimace as she watched Martha Jones meticulously cover her right hand in plaster cast again. Apparently, she 'wasn't letting it heal properly', or some other ridiculous excuse, which Jenny thought was completely unfair considering all the lengths she was going to just to try and keep herself safe. Midway through her move to Hollowmire to begin a modest job in a bakery in just a few days (the day immediately following the wedding, in fact), and she hadn't really been roped into any schemes at all. She was doing everything right, and yet Martha still wanted to stop her from being able to use her grotesquely-scarred, right hand as much as possible.

"I don't see you going on at Clara about her arm like this," Jenny complained, watching the kittens crawl all over each other out of the corner of her eye. The black Maine Coon destined for Ravenwood's home glared at her menacingly from underneath a cabinet; she could see the threatening glint from its corneas and nothing else. The one with the tentacles was floating close to the ceiling and looked frightened of the height it had gained. Martha, allergic, had Jenny as far on the other side of the room as possible, and kept sniffing. Mickey was there too, loitering because in recent weeks he had become attached to Martha like a limpet, keeping the kittens occupied and cooing at them in a manner Jenny deemed most unlike himself.

"Clara actually followed my instructions about how to look after her burn to the letter. She keeps it moisturised with the prescription ointment, bandaged at night, makes sure to clean it properly to prevent any infection, has me check it regularly. You, though? You have your thumb snapped off and run and hide," Martha said, "Not to mention this black eye." Then she had to quickly stop what she was doing and grab a wad of tissues from a nearby box. She sneezed three times in succession, Jenny leaning away so as to avoid getting any stray snot near her.

"You alright?" Mickey called over.

"Fine. Just those bloody cats… why do they have to live in the medibay? Why can't they go stay in Adam Mitchell's room, or something?"

"Oswin hates them," Jenny said, "That's why. _Hates_ them. He'd keep them all in there if she'd let him. I'm not too keen on them, personally." Martha went back to bandaging up the cast, more blue bandages. Jenny had said that if she was going to have her hand put in a cast again, she at least still wanted it to look blue, her favourite colour (which she apparently had in common with her father.)

"There," Martha declared, cutting off the bandages. "You're about done. And I'm going to text Ravenwood my instructions about your hand, too, so she knows as well what rules you have to stick by and how often you have to check in with me. I know _she's_ competent."

" _I'm_ competent!" Jenny protested as Martha began to clear up the bowl full of plaster and put everything away again. The kittens meowed in the background. Jenny would much prefer if they were dogs, she loved dogs.

"Prove it, then," said Martha, "Don't go getting in trouble."

"I won't!"

"Promise me."

" _Promise_ you?" Jenny raised her eyebrows.

"Yes," Martha said firmly, pulling off her latex gloves.

Jenny clenched her jaw, "I promise."

"Good. And if you don't reply to my texts, I'll be forced to come to Hollowmire myself and chase you up."

" _Alright_ , alright," Jenny said.

While Martha and Mickey cleared out as quickly as possible once Martha was done with her latest attempts to repair Jenny's broken thumb, Jenny hung around for a while. It had struck her while she waited for Martha to mix the plaster that she didn't have any medical supplies on her ship, beyond a half-empty packet of plasters and a roll of bandages she wasn't sure were sterile. Standing up from where she had been seated for the last half hour since getting stolen away at the end of the murder mystery extravaganza, she glanced around for items she may be able to pilfer. A sewing kit, disinfectant, fresh bandages, anything she could use.

In the back pocket of her jeans her phone rang. Digging it out with her left hand, seeing as the right was yet again borderline immobile, she began examining some of the bottles of various medicines lined up on top of a small, metal trolley.

"Hey," she said casually, lifting up a glass bottle of what she recognised as cough syrup. She was expecting it to be Clara Ravenwood, or failing that it would surely be Esther, because only they – and sometimes Eleven – ever rang Jenny. But it wasn't.

" _Hey, there, Zero_."

"Pasz!" She dropped the bottle of syrup and it shattered at her feet, getting dark-coloured medicine all over the floor. She would have to clean that up before the kittens came over and started trying to eat it.

" _You haven't forgotten about me, have you_?"

"Forgotten about you? No," she lied. She had most certainly forgotten about the crime lord Pasznoxo, with whom she and River had bargained to get information on Jack's little adventure to Rospaonus some weeks prior. "You'll get your Fabergé Egg. It's just in a sort of… vault. Very large vault, poorly organised. Hard to dig it out." And because she hadn't been looking for it.

" _No. It's too late now_."

"Okay, so I don't owe you the Egg, then. Is that all?"

" _No, no, no. What is it they call you? The toast of the Blacklight Society? The thief of the century?_ "

"I wouldn't like to blow my own trumpet. How, exactly, did you get this number? I don't give my number out to people."

" _I have a lot of friends_ ," he said, " _It's a favour for a favour. I need a girl like you to do a job for me and write off your debt, forget all about the Egg. This is much more important. And then I'll never touch this number again_."

"I can't really do a job right now," she said, "I'm kind of, retired. And I promised I wouldn't get into any trouble."

" _Retired? You'll go to the most dangerous known-planet to rescue one immortal idiot, but you won't do a tiny favour for me? Whom you owe?_ " Pasznoxo paused. Jenny didn't say anything. " _It's not as hard to track down a time traveller as you might think_." No, she thought, it wasn't. Not with the resources someone like Pasz had, and not in his century. He had already managed to get her phone number, which somehow felt more intimate and invasive than her location.

But she had just promised Martha, and Clara, and her father, and everybody. She couldn't just keep saying 'one more job' all the time, it would never end. And she didn't even _want_ to help Pasznoxo.

"Are you sure you don't want the Egg? I can very easily-"

" _A planet's exploded out in some far corner of space. Completely uninhabitable, blew up on its way to be sucked into a black hole. I'm no chemist, but there was a very rare mineral in that planet's centre which was released as it collapsed. I sent a professional team of three people to go and get the ore and bring it to me_."

"Uh-huh."

" _But there was a problem. Engine malfunction. They had to jettison the cargo so that they had the fuel to make a warp jump and hitchhike a ride back to me to tell me they were 'very sorry, Pasz, but we couldn't get the ore you wanted.' So now you're going to get it. I'll send you the coordinates. And don't think of jettisoning anything yourself, or I'll have to take the same drastic measures I took with them_."

"…Which were what?"

" _Cutting off all their fingers. They certainly won't be jettisoning anything after that._ "

"…You don't want me to kill anyone, do you? This is just going to space to get a bit of rock, or metal, or something?"

" _Heavens, no, don't kill anyone. If you make a mess, you'll owe me a lot more than space rock. But just remind me about why they call you 'Zero', again?_ "

"It's the number of jobs I've failed."

" _Good. You know where to find me afterwards_." Pasz hung up on her, and she almost swore. This was fantastic, getting harangued by a criminal two days before a wedding she was supposed to be baking an extravagant cake for.

Should she dare leave Pasznoxo hanging? Wait a few days, talk to Clara about what she thought was best? But then, was it worth the risk of him really coming to find her in Hollowmire? If she welched on _two_ deals, the Egg _and_ this ore, he wouldn't be so forgiving as to stop at only cutting off her fingers. Yet again, she was in turmoil. She at least had to talk to somebody, possibly somebody who wasn't Clara. Her go-tos for any outing like this were Jack and River, but Jack was up to his eyes in wedding planning – not to mention the fact that she didn't actually want his help. And if she told River, while there was the benefit of River being the one who introduced her to Pasznoxo, she was also a wild card. Maybe there was a reason Pasz had contacted Jenny instead.

But who did that leave to turn to?

It was a question she mulled over as she knelt and cleaned up the chunks of glass and the potent cough syrup, trying to get as much of the gloopy, sticky liquid off the medibay floor as she could. Time Cats on cough syrup would _not_ go down well with the others on the TARDIS.

 _Honestly_ , she thought, annoyed; she'd only been back for the one night to pack her things onto the ship and then return to the village, and she'd already been forced into a murder mystery – bad enough as it was – and now she was being blackmailed into something potentially dangerous. Staring at the messy, dark patch on the floor, a small bag full of glass shards and slimy paper towels at her side, she was hit with an epiphany: _Oswin_. Oswin would, at least, help her decide what to do. Ignore Pasz, or do what he wanted.

Deciding that she had done her due diligence and cleaned up the medicine to the best of her abilities, Jenny dropped the bag down a metal chute built into the wall which was generally used for the disposal of biohazards. That is, when she had her hand amputated a few months ago that was where the burned remains of it went. Why was she suddenly so unlucky when it came to her hands? For two-hundred years before that, it had been her gnarled feet which had suffered the most, after putting them to so much work doing acrobatics and having a brief stint as a ballerina (which was just as painful as everybody made it out to be.) Before her regeneration at the hands of the Time Lord Xenomorph, her feet had in fact been scarred, grizzled and malformed after centuries of turmoil. She even used to be missing her little toe after a bizarre accident with a mousetrap (damn Konrad and his mouse phobia, though it certainly wasn't the worst thing to come out of her time in Germany.)

Jenny left the medibay and the cats behind, finding Nerve Centre completely empty save for Rory – now free from the maid outfit – who was making tea with his back to her. She didn't speak to him, instead cutting through into the console room and jumping up the steps towards Oswin's laboratory two at a time. That was where Oswin had said she would be earlier, after all, and where she usually was. Jenny was also lucky enough to be gifted with a keycard, one of the few who actually had one, and got into the lab without making a sound. She found Oswin, typically enough, muttering to herself. Or perhaps she was muttering to Sprite, who scurried up and down the table in front of her as she sketched on a large piece of paper, holding the pencil in a very strange way. She didn't notice Jenny come in.

Jenny crept towards her, thinking more about what her opening line would be rather than listening to Oswin mumble. Oswin who was much too engrossed in her drawing to realise that anybody else had even entered the room.

"Why is it that your handwriting is so terrible, but you can draw so well?" Jenny asked quite loudly, making Oswin jump and drop her pencil. She glared at Jenny, and Jenny leant against the lab table and smiled back.

"We have to stop meeting like this, you and I," Oswin said, leaving the pencil where it was.

"You're losing interest in our chance encounters?"

"There's never anything 'chance' about an encounter with _you_. And it's because I've practised a lot. Drawing, I mean. _I_ can read my own writing, at least," Oswin defended herself. "I painstakingly learnt how to draw over many years. Clara's always been too busy sticking her fingers inside other women to really learn to do anything substantial with them."

"She plays the piano," Jenny pointed out.

"Which is a lot easier than drawing schematics. I know that because she's been teaching _me_ how to play for ages. What're you after?" Oswin asked suspiciously.

"Nothing," Jenny lied. Oswin's eyes strayed to her hand.

"Martha's finally had her way with you, then?"

"Mmm." She jumped up to sit on the table next to Oswin, getting in her way so that she couldn't really get on with her drawings. Glancing at the paper, Jenny realised what they were. "You were serious about the wheelchair?"

"Absolutely. Even if I _wasn't_ going to fill it with fancy gadgets… it's just less painful. Than trying to limp around everywhere, relying on people to catch me if I trip."

"I haven't dropped you yet."

"I was talking about Nios."

"But _I'm_ your favourite."

"I don't know. You're much less interesting."

Jenny leant down towards her, "You don't mean that."

"What do you want, Jenny?" Oswin turned slightly more serious.

"Why do you think I want something?"

"Because why else would you be flirting with me so aggressively?" Oswin questioned. Jenny shrugged. "Is it Clara? Is she not satisfying you, sexually? Do you want me to drop some hints that she should go down on you more?"

"No!" Jenny exclaimed, her demeanour faltering now. "Don't say things like that."

"So you really are just here to try and manipulate me, hmm? Seduce me into joining one of your schemes? Isn't that how your divorce started?"

"We're not divorced. We weren't really married."

"So you always say. Are you going to tell me what you want yet, or are you going to wait for me to try and have sex with you? Because I'm not going to." Jenny narrowed her eyes and slid off the desk, instead leaning on it with her elbow and invading Oswin's personal space as much as possible. Unfortunately, this didn't have too much of an effect on Oswin, who merely raised her eyebrows like she was challenging Jenny to actually try something.

"I need your help."

"My _help_. How intriguing. Do tell, I'm all ears."

"…There's this job-"

"There's _what_?" Oswin asked her coldly, snapped at her so that she stopped mid-sentence. "A 'job'?" It was dreadfully like being told off by Clara, almost as unpleasant.

"Well…"

"What do you mean, 'a job'? You're supposed to be keeping yourself safe. You've been beating yourself up for weeks with guilt over what Clara might think if something happened to you, what your father might-"

"Nothing will happen to me," Jenny hissed, "It's a simple job, okay?"

"Would you listen to yourself?" Oswin hissed right back, matching her tone and leaning in even closer, until Jenny was the one who was forced to look away. "What's the matter with you? Why are you always doing this? It's not healthy."

"Look, I'll tell you the truth, okay? The truth is that River and I may have made an unwise deal with a prolific crime lord in exchange for information on Jack's whereabouts when he went missing a few weeks ago. I _told_ him I'd get him a Fabergé Egg because dad has one of them somewhere on the TARDIS and he won't even notice it's gone. But now he's changed his mind and wants me to go fly out into space and get him some ore or mineral from the remains of a planet being sucked up by a black hole. He already sent some people to do it but their ship malfunctioned, and now he wants me because I've got a reputation to uphold as an excellent… retriever-of-objects-"

"Or 'thief.'"

"I'm not stealing a bit of rock from anyone specifically," Jenny argued. Oswin rolled her eyes and motioned for Jenny to continue her spiel. "Anyway. I told him I'm retired and I promised not to get in trouble, then he threatened to find out where I live. If he does that, he can hurt Clara, and he could hurt the Spooks, and anyone else who lives in the village and knows me. That's a lot of innocent people."

"And here people say trouble follows your dad around – you're much worse. It's beyond me how you keep getting roped into these situations, it's non-stop. One thing just leads to another. Why come to me and not Jack? He owes you, after all, especially if you made a deal with this bloke to save _his_ life," Oswin said. "Or River, even? If she was also involved in this deal?"

"River didn't approve of it."

"I wonder why."

"I'm not even sure how much I trust River Song, quite honestly."

"What an awful thing to say about your ex-stepmother. And here I thought you usually take a keen liking to your stepmothers. Y'know, since you fucked one of them. A _lot_ of times."

"As for Jack," Jenny completely ignored her, because she wasn't even being factually accurate at that point, "Well… maybe he does owe me, quite a lot in fact for inadvertently reuniting him with his lost love. But I'm still angry with him."

"And he said all those things about your strap-ons earlier."

"Which he had no right to say. It's not like I've told anyone about the string of egg-sized anal beads he likes. I mean – forget I said that."

"Forget you said that!? This is a goldmine! I'm saving _that_ for a rainy day, for sure. How many of the beads are the size of eggs?"

"The smallest ones are the – I'm not telling you this," Jenny stopped herself, shaking her head, "It's completely irrelevant. Are you going to help me or not, Oswin?"

Oswin leant back quite precariously on her stool, balancing it on only two legs, then let it drop forwards again so that the sound of it banging back to the floor punctuated her next sentence: "You're an idiot. Nobody else is brave enough to say that to you, but it's true. You're stupid. That's why this happens to you, because you're a stupid, adrenaline junkie, with absolutely no self-preservation instincts who never thinks anything through and would much rather improvise a solution, just like your frankly useless father." Jenny didn't say anything, Oswin's words stinging her a great deal. Briefly she grew quite self-conscious and guilty, looking at her feet. "But I suppose I don't have much of a choice, do I? _I'm_ actually quite good at avoiding trouble. And at least sorting it out when it happens. Not to brag."

"And you'd _never_ brag."

"Says the 'excellent retriever-of-objects.'"

"Look, we just go to the coordinates, I do a spacewalk and you stay inside and run ops."

"Really utilising my core skillset there. And you're absolutely sure you don't want to take someone who could, you know, use a spacesuit and come and get you if something goes wrong?"

"What, and you can't use a spacesuit in an emergency? You designed the spacesuits, _and_ the ship."

"I know, I'm a genius."

"Oh, you'll be fine. There's no gravity, it's not like you'd be putting any weight on your leg. I'll take the emergency teleporter if that'll make you happy."

"It will."

"You worry too much."

"I worry too much!?"

"You do. Too careful. We're a good match."

"Keep telling yourself that. Moron. You're going to end up with two broken hands and two broken feet before you know it and then you'll be the one who needs the wheelchair."

"I'm sure it'll be a brilliant wheelchair if you designed it."

"Wish you'd stop trying to sleep with me."

"No, you don't," Jenny smiled at her. Oswin shook her head. "Thanks."

"For what? Having a go at you? Someone needs to. Your dad's too scared of pissing you off, you don't give a shit what Jack thinks, and Clara… she doesn't want to upset you. And for some reason you never seem to listen to Martha. But you really are a stubborn arsehole."

"Well," Jenny crossed her arms, "At least I'm not a conceited glorified-corpse who's borderline insane and can't even walk."

Oswin laughed, "Nice one. Totally unwarranted attack on my fragile state of mind and physiology, but I suppose if it made _you_ feel better, that's what's important. Now, go make yourself useful and get a proper first aid kit, god knows I'm not taking the fall if you get into trouble again."

"Knew you wouldn't be able to resist helping me."

"Yeah, yeah. Now go be cute somewhere else and I'll see you in ten minutes to pop my _Georgia_ cherry."

"To… excuse me?"

"The spaceship, I've never actually travelled in it. That's her name. I christened her by carving it into a part of the engine."

"…Ridiculous name." Jenny made to leave and go finish what she had been doing earlier; raiding the medical supplies for anything useful.

"Really? I don't know. I think there's an affinity there. Something about you just… resonates."

"You're imagining things," she said, turning to go.

"I'll see you for lift off, Major Young." Over her shoulder, Jenny gave a joking salute.


	201. Event Horizon

_Event Horizon_

 _Jenny_

It was a bizarre but exquisite feeling jumping down out of a spaceship imbued with gravity and into outer space, where there was nothing. The brief flicker of free-fall immediately transformed into weightlessness as she fell into disorientation and a total lack of civilised forces. Jenny loved spacewalks deeply.

Floating backwards, she lifted up her feet to fidget with one of the boots and its jammed air jet. After pulling out a big bit of lint that had been caught on a hair (a _dark_ hair, so she knew it was Clara's, though she couldn't think why Clara had been messing around with her spacesuit) the air flowed out enough to propel her jerkily towards the ship, where she banged against it.

" _What was that?_ " Oswin asked over her comms.

"Me. The air jet was blocked with some hair. You're so lucky your hair doesn't fall out and Adam's is short."

" _I don't know, he hasn't had a haircut since he got brought onto the TARDIS. I told him he should get one, but he asked me for specifics about exactly what kind of hair I wanted him to have. Which wasn't what I was getting at at all, he just keeps complaining about it bothering him_ ," she said, " _I guess you can't really tell because he never leaves the bathroom on a morning without doing it into that quiff which is apparently 'high fashion' in the 21_ _st_ _Century_." Jenny only paid attention to roughly half of that, busy trying to orient herself in the 0G. The monstrous black hole hung pendulously beneath her. They were a mile out of the point where it would start sucking them into its ergosphere, though black holes weren't _too_ much of a worry with teleporters and a ship that could travel faster than the speed of light. But there was still something about them and the utter oblivion they represented that made her want to avoid looking at it.

"That, uh, that boy – you know, the one who has the thing with Sally – he does his hair like that."

" _They all do. Rory does his hair like that. It's such an old-fashioned lack of variety, you know? Although, I can't deny that Sally Sparrow's toy-boy is basically gorgeous. I didn't know you'd met him._ "

"I haven't, I saw his Facebook because Clara was talking about how she thinks he's hot."

" _Do you not think he's hot_?"

"I have a girlfriend."

" _Oh, please._ "

"Well, he's over six foot tall."

" _So you do think he's hot_?"

"It's just a fact."

" _Jack's over six foot tall_."

"You're supposed to be my mission control, point out these rocks I'm looking for on the close-range scanner," Jenny said. She had her sonic screwdriver to test some of the meteorite chunks and bits of debris floating around, of which there were plenty, but the ship was equipped with the most advanced spacecraft technology in… well, the universe, probably. Now that the Time Lords weren't growing TARDISes anymore.

" _You want to be going north_."

"North!?"

" _Yeah, north_."

" _North_ – what's north? There is no north! This is space!"

" _No, no. Just look for a tree. Moss only grows on the north of trees_."

"First of all, that's not true, moss actually grows on all the sides of a tree and that's an urban myth and a very poor bit of survival advice. Second of all, could you please be serious? There obviously aren't any trees here. Don't make me hang about with the black hole for longer than I need to, it freaks me out."

" _Backwards. Opposite direction to the ship. Behind me._ "

"You're terrible at directions. The ship's drifting."

" _I'll keep updating you, don't be a baby. Now get going, swimmer_."

"It's nothing like swimming," Jenny said, moving through outer space with motions deceptively similar to swimming, propelled by the air jets rather than her own body. She could see the dark rocks in the distance, but it would be very hard to navigate without Oswin for guidance, even if she hadn't proven herself just yet.

" _Why don't you like black holes_?"

"I don't know. They make anxious."

" _What about them, though?_ "

"They're empty."

" _I like them._ "

"Why?"

" _Because they're empty._ "

"Ha, ha."

" _I'm serious. Wish I was empty_." Jenny didn't know what to say to that. She continued to glide through the darkness towards the rock cluster, the main source of light coming from the particles of galaxies being pulled into the black hole. " _You've got to dive a little bit, go down_."

"I know, I can see them." She stopped the air jets and continued to drift through the chunks of rock. "You'd think it'd be glowing, or something, at least."

" _Why would it be glowing?_ "

"Well I don't know what's so interesting about this bit of rock."

" _The thing about rocks, Jenny, is they're basically all, you know. Rocks. Geology is one of the most boring of all the sciences. Too much like chemistry, and I've never liked chemistry. Or botany and biology. Anything earthy_."

"But you make advanced medicines."

" _I'm just very good, aren't I? I much prefer computers. Get to scanning those big boys. You've still got another forty metres in range of the tether_ ," Oswin said. The tether was a magno tether, or more like a magno sphere, a large radius which would grab her and keep her moored to the ship if she went too far. Jenny took the sonic out of the belt on her suit and pulled the nearest rock towards her.

"Oswin?"

" _Mmhmm?_ "

"What do you mean you wish you were empty?" She didn't know whether she would regret asking that question. Oswin didn't say anything for a few moments.

" _Just, you know. It gets noisy. Being in my head. But not even sound can escape a black hole. Although_ …"

"What?"

" _Nothing. Just taking a reading from it_." Oswin sounded absent, like she was thinking about something else. She probably was. Jenny scanned her rock and found it to be little more than common refuse, predominantly iron, mildly irradiated. But everything without the protection of an atmosphere ended up irradiated in space. She moved onto another. " _Are we in my century?_ "

"Thereabouts."

" _Why? Who have you been dealing with?_ "

"Some criminal who runs a B-Earth out on the Perimeter," Jenny said. The 'Perimeter' was the very edge of the human empire of the period, just close enough to be safe from marauding alien threats, but far enough away that the Homeworld Alliance didn't care about policing it. "Pasznoxo." Oswin didn't speak. "I didn't know who he was until River introduced us. They're friends, he invites her to his functions in his ice mansion. Full of stolen trophies. I think he operates a black market. Do you know him?"

" _No, but I can't say I pay much notice to criminal factions outside of Horizon. I'm sheltered, you know that_ ," she joked. The next rock was another dud, so Jenny moved onto a third. " _He could at least have given you a bit more information other than 'find a rock at these coordinates.'_ "

"None of these are anything special, just standard planet wreckage," Jenny said, "Unless he wants standard meteor chunks? What do you think? Could you use these for anything?"

" _Of course you could, they're all metals. Asteroids are a handy source of construction materials. But I don't see what anyone who owns their own B-Earth would want with some basic construction materials._ "

"I've seen plenty of construction rackets. Lead into insurance fraud a lot of the time, worker extortion. But, no, it must be something different to all this iron, at least."

" _Why did he want you, then? You specifically? And not Jack, or River, who are also proven in their fields?_ "

"Oh, please. Don't compare me to them. They're messy, leave calling cards, clues, can't resist. Want all the credit, everyone to know how clever they are," Jenny said, "Get their faces across all the wanted posters. Pasznoxo doesn't want River stealing for him, Pasznoxo wants Zero."

" _Zero!? God, why does everyone get a cool alias except me? 'Smartest girl in the universe' is such a mouthful. It's bad enough now Clara's started fancying 'the Phantom' as a nickname, which is all the Shadow's fault. Someone who also has a cool bloody name._ "be

"Well, anyway. Have you heard of Akwana?"

" _Who's that?_ "

"Nobody, a planet," Jenny pulled another rock towards her, slowly rotating so that she was completely upside down in relation to the spaceship and its drift, the black hole burning a mark on her periphery.

" _Nope_."

"It's in Andromeda, right on the edge, practically a dead zone in orbit around this tiny, _tiny_ white dwarf. It's got this canyon, totally surrounded by mountains and dug into with caves, then filled with water. To the Alliance, when they scan, the settlements on Akwana are invisible, because all the buildings are underwater. Underwater, in the caves and the canyon, totally submerged and kept crystal clear by this filtration algae. It's a shame you don't like botany, because the algae is actually a miracle worker. All the water's drinkable, and it's a tropical climate so it rains a lot. All the foliage is blue, too, and the fruit?"

" _What's special about the fruit?_ "

"Bioluminescent. Crazy. So are all the fish, they're all ultraviolet, it's incredibly weird. I love it there, it's beautiful. I'd love to take Clara, but… anyway, it's where the Blacklight Society is based."

" _In my non-professional medical opinion, you shouldn't really take a vampire to a place overflowing with naturally occurring UV light._ "

"I suppose so…"

" _I mean…_ "

"What?"

" _I'm not a complete recluse. If you want to show it off to someone, I'll go with you._ "

"Like a date, you mean?"

" _A date where I bring my boyfriend because it sounds like the kind of place he'd think is totally cool._ "

"So I get to third-wheel?"

" _We can bring Nios for you to play with. Or have a three-way. I think poor Mitchell's brain would explode at that idea, though_."

"Nothing here. With the rocks. Point me somewhere else."

" _If you insist_ ," said Oswin, pausing. The ship had drifted away and rotated (as had Jenny) so that she was now directly facing its underside. Good thing for the magno tether keeping her invisibly attached to it, and the air jets in her boots. Still, without any kind of physical rope it did feel a bit like being stranded in the middle of space, which would be relaxing if it wasn't for the perilous black hole. " _You want to head back towards the ship and then go up, there's a cloud of debris I'm getting just above me here. I'm trying to alter the scanner to pick up on anything funky_ -"

"Funky?" Jenny questioned, the jets whooshing and propelling her along like a very, _very_ slow Superman.

" _Radiation. It's just tricky because space is all radiation. I really don't know enough about rocks, and this ship doesn't have the equipment for a remote geological analysis._ "

"Seems like a flaw in your design."

" _Ha, ha. Criticise my intelligence. I'm a lot cleverer than you, you know. You can always hang around on the TARDIS for a few more days and I can do some reworks if you're so desperate for the ability to do long-range geological surveys._ "

"Your tinkering will never be complete."

" _Not when I'm tinkering with YOU_."

"You just want me to stay on the TARDIS for longer."

" _I resent that assertion. I happen to find rocks incredibly dull, as we have already established, and don't actually want to build you a geo-scanner. Besides, your screwdriver seems to be working well so far_."

"Probably because it wasn't designed by you."

" _Wow!_ "

"Human engineering never really holds up."

" _I'm a Dalek. I'm going to get the Davros-esque wheelchair to prove it, and then you know what I'm gonna do? I'm going to scare the absolute shit out of your father. Also, my cane is outfitted with some very complex sonic technology of my own design which is far more efficient than your poxy screwdriver_." Jenny pushed herself against the sleek rim of the circular ship, giving herself a boost to reach another cluster of rocks bobbing around just above it. She went for the largest one first. " _There are quite a lot of rocks out there, you know. It might take us a while to go through them all. You should call this guy back and get more information._ "

"What about Helix?"

" _Helix is down, I'm running a software update. It's a biggie, still has two hours left._ "

"What are you updating it to do?"

" _Strategic thinking. Well, strategic thinking is generous, it's more probability analysis and recommendations based on the probabilities. Probability calculations are inherently vague, though; it's taken me nearly a week to write the coding and check it over._ "

"An entire week to build an advanced predictive algorithm for an alien AI? You're getting sloppy." Oswin laughed.

" _Helix isn't really an AI, he's incapable of thought. Not even shackled, just… has no self-awareness or ability to think. And given the access he has to the TARDIS it would be much too risky to ever write a program to allow him sentience_ ," Oswin said, " _But hyperspeed probability calculations, despite purveying the illusion to people un-versed in the specifics of AI functions of rational thought, are little more than a… party trick. If I try really hard one day I might be able to make it seem like he can predict the future._ "

"These rocks are a dud, Oswin. We need a better plan," Jenny said after scanning even more.

" _You gave me some incredibly vague coordinates to plot for a very large area of space and the sole instruction to 'look for a funny rock.' The scanner capabilities are depleted at the moment, anyway. Has anybody ever told you that patience is a virtue?_ "

"Why is the scanner depleted?"

" _I'm running a long-range diagnostic on the black hole._ "

"Why?"

" _It's giving me some unusual readings. And not the good kind of 'unusual' that makes me cum, the other kind_."

"Why would something unusual make you – actually, I don't want to know. Unusual like what?"

" _I don't know like what, hence why I'm scanning. God, you ask a lot of questions, don't you? I know I'm a very sexy genius, but I just don't have all the answers. Sorry to burst your bubble._ " Jenny scowled to herself and secretly wished she had brought River along, annoyed that Oswin had chosen that day to upload a big rewrite to Helix rendering them somewhat blind in a vast and relatively empty quadrant of space. " _You know, you could have always refused to run this errand_."

"And then what? He would have come after me."

" _You see, you're very pretty, but sometimes I do wonder how much activity is really going on, y'know,_ up there _. Like, you do realise that even if you do retrieve this rock, now that Pasznoxo knows exactly what buttons of yours he has to push – i.e., threatening the people you care about – he's essentially got you under his thumb forever?_ "

"It's a favour for a favour."

" _And you really trust him that much?_ " Jenny went quiet. Did she trust Pasznoxo that much? Oswin might be right, she realised, about him now knowing how to get to her. " _See what I mean? You don't think. Which is funny, because you always seem to be thinking very carefully about this or that. Or maybe you just want an excuse to go out and have a bit of fun, sort of like your own impromptu-hen-party before you move in with Clara. And I'm the best man._ "

"First of all," Jenny said, giving up and plucking another random rock out of the air, "You won't be my best man when we get married. Second of all, I'm not moving in with her, I'm living on the ship."

" _Mmm, you say that, but you've basically already casually moved-in with her. By the way, I'm absolutely_ in love _with you saying 'when' and not 'if.'_ "

"Don't start, you're as bad as my dad. He's convinced himself we're engaged."

" _You're engaged to your dad?_ "

"Shut up. To Clara. And we're not."

" _I'd be the best man, though_."

"You wouldn't."

" _I would. I'm writing my speech already. It goes a little something like this_ ," here she elaborately cleared her throat over the comms, generating a very annoying degree of feedback in Jenny's ear as she floated around next to the ship in borderline oblivion. " _Oh, shit all over my dick_."

"Excuse me?"

" _Shiiit. That's an extra helping of shit in an already overloaded shit sundae. A shit smoothie. A big fucking cocktail of ripe, crispy, steaming, faecal discharge. You need to get back into this ship right now._ "

"What? Why?" Despite her questioning, she was already hastening to get back to the ship's underside where the door back in was.

" _It's called the 'digging in the wrong spot' narrative cliché. Very classic trope in adventure movies._ "

"So we're… digging in the wrong spot?"

" _Yep_."

"What's the right spot?"

 _"_ _Well, Jenny_ ," Oswin began putting on a faux-polite demeanour, like a phone voice, " _If you'll look to your left, you may see a gigantic, fuck-off, bright red asteroid heading straight into that black hole_." Alarmed, Jenny turned her head and saw, way off in the distance, exactly that. A big chunk of very distinctive space rock.

"Uh… how fast is that thing going?"

" _About a hundred kilometres per second. So don't think about trying to go anywhere near it or it'll hit you so hard you'll just be very attractive goo. And as much as I'd love to get wet in a Jenny-puddle, well… I haven't brought my swimming costume_."

"Remind me again how Adam Mitchell puts up with you on a constant basis?" Jenny climbed around the edge of the ship, the porthole opening up to greet her. Lucky it was a complex forcefield that kept the atmosphere within rather than an airlock, airlocks were _so_ ancient.

" _He thinks I'm charming. And in the deep, damp recesses of your genitalia, so do you_."

She clambered up through the hole and back into the ship, feeling the heaviness of the gravity dragging her back down and making every movement take a heap more effort. The entrance closing behind her, she barely had time to remove her helmet as she stumbled over all the unpacked boxes and into the pilot's seat of the ship, engaging the thrusters and taking control while Oswin kept her eyes glued to the various screens and read-outs.

"What's the plan?"

"Depends how fast you are," Oswin said, "Hurry up and get after it though."

"Oswin, it's going into the black hole," Jenny argued, though she was already ramping up the speed and heading straight towards the red mass.

"And if you're quick it won't make it, alright? The ship has a kinesis-ray – or 'tractor beam' as my boyfriend would say – so, essentially, we can grab it. But it'll take a while to lose the momentum, especially when fighting against the gravitational pull of that black hole."

"I really don't think that flying into a black hole is a good idea."

"Well, try not to squirt too much when I tell you that it's not actually a black hole. My readings just came back and that sensual orifice over there is a wormhole ripe for penetration."

"How do you know?"

"Because it's spitting things out as well as sucking them in. It's the sloppy blowjob equivalent of quantum phenomenon, and we're gonna slip right inside and find its g-spot."

"And here you said you were trying to keep me _out_ of danger…"

"Jenny, I'm one-hundred percent sure it's a wormhole, absolutely guaranteed to just end up in some other area of space, which really doesn't matter when we're in my super-sexy time-ship I built with my own dextrous fingers. Now please _floor it_ because that rock is made of a highly volatile anomalous element."

"Hang on, _volatile_?"

"Yes, volatile."

"Volatile how?"

"A highly explosive geological catalyst that could wreak all kinds of havoc if somebody combines it with the right other elements. Unfortunately – though this is just pure speculation based on its chemical signature and my wealth of experience when it comes to incendiary devices – it looks like it could be destabilised by a very potent nitrogen concentrate so _get going_!"

"I AM!" Jenny shouted at her.

It was at that moment that they passed the event horizon of the hole, which was when space and time began to deteriorate around them. It was also the point-of-no-return for anything that couldn't exceed the speed of light, and while that didn't apply to them it was still unsettling.

"You're sure we're not going to be spaghettified, right?" Jenny asked as they went deeper and deeper into the invisible nothingness with only that red, burning asteroid in sight.

"An hour ago you told me _I_ worry too much. Yes, I'm sure. But you really want to hurry up, because at this distance-"

"What?"

"Time isn't going to behave itself. It's a flighty mistress."

"You're _so_ disturbing."

The rock disappeared, but before Jenny could react and even mention what she had seen, so did they. They exceeded the speed of light inside the wormhole and passed into what Jenny recognised clearly as the time vortex, but only for a brief second until being spat back out again into vibrant blue light.

"Oh, shit!" Oswin exclaimed, pointing, "Look out!" Jenny swerved the ship and it went into a wild corkscrew, the outside world spinning around violently until the blue was replaced with slate greys and neon and they were plunging towards a ground of some description, after she had almost crashed through a stream of flying vehicles. She veered upwards back towards the sky again until finally orienting herself enough to manoeuvre way out of the way of an elevated highway and above a futuristic metropolis. The rock, however, was not in sight.

"Where are we? Where did the asteroid go?"

"How exactly do you get anything done on your own? Nothing but questions. It is the 10th of April 5132, and we have just arrived in… Tokyo! That's so cool! And I've got you a temporal trace on the trail that rock left behind when it came through," Oswin plotted a course which appeared on Jenny's piloting radar in front of her, "Also, the ship's not cloaked. A million people probably just saw this ridiculous flying saucer appear out of nowhere and nearly crash into their cars." Jenny flicked the switch to activate the cloaking at that point and really hoped they hadn't done any irreparable damage. "Trail's old, though, nearly gone."

"We must have come through later… this is why I hate those things. Black holes, wormholes-"

"Bum holes?"

"No, I don't hate those. Unless they can bend the rules of time and space."

"Yeah, three seconds to us has been longer than three seconds to Earth," Oswin said, looking at the analysis on her own green holographic screens as well as the glass hologram readouts of the ship. "Landed in the bay."

"The bay, the bay…" Jenny muttered to herself, spinning the ship to get a visual while the automatic terrain scanner worked on constructing a visual image of the hundreds of enormous skyscrapers behind them. Once she spotted the open water she made a beeline straight towards it with Oswin desperately typing and calculating.

"We're weeks out. Maybe even a month. Fly as close towards the water as you can, we should be able to see it on the long-range if it's in there, though it's probably burned up a lot after being spat out. Which on the one hand makes it a lot less dangerous, but on the other hand makes it way harder to find. Especially in the middle of a city." Jenny guided the ship down and skidded it along the water between the very few ships that were moored, including one the size of an aircraft carrier with what looked like an enormous biome on the back of it.

"Anything?"

"No, nothing where the temporal trace runs cold, just the metal coating at the bottom."

"Why is there metal coating?"

"This bay has been completely separated from the rest of the ocean, there's a lock system to get out into the actual sea. Because of the pollution. It's also full of atmosphere scrubbers I really ought to take a look at… anyway, the silt in the seabed is too toxic to be allowed to touch the water. The rock definitely isn't here, though, it'd stick out like a sore thumb."

"Oh, great. This was supposed to be a quick job and now, what? We're going to have to search all of 52nd Century Tokyo looking for a tiny meteor?"

"On the bright side, though, you've got me for company! And I've always wanted to go to Tokyo."

"Fantastic…"

 **AN: Full disclosure, I am also currently working on the next storyline in "Retrograde" right now (which you should all go read and review) so I'm unsure how long this one will take as I'm balancing them both and "Retrograde" arcs are typically my longest story arcs in any of these fics, they're basically short novels while the others are novellas. But I am still writing, even if updates thin out.**


	202. The New Vision

_The New Vision_

 _Jenny_

"Could you hurry up?" Oswin called impatiently from underneath the hovering, invisible spaceship. Jenny ignored her and continued searching through her stacks of boxes, all of her worldly possessions haphazardly thrown together during her move. Truthfully, the things that were actually hers numbered much fewer than the things that she'd stolen from the TARIDS (mainly clothes and exercise equipment), but there was still _some_ stuff she'd collected during her two centuries of life. And then she triumphed.

"A-ha!" she exclaimed, pulling out an object from the bottom of a box. Broken, but she thought she could fix that. She took them and left the ship, descending the fold-out staircase – which always felt a _bit_ bootleg compared to the advancement of the rest of the ship, she thought – joining Oswin at the edge of the harbour overlooking the crystal-clear, artificially scrubbed bay. It looked clean enough to be out in the Mediterranean somewhere, vividly turquoise and swimming pool-like. Maybe the metal base keeping it separated from the polluted silt was painted to make it look cleaner – it wouldn't surprise her.

"Check it out," she showed her rediscovered object to Oswin, whose eyes lit up.

" _Wow_ , glasses. Are they all for my benefit?"

"They're not glasses, it's an OCF. And what do you mean, your benefit?" Jenny asked. Oswin got even more excited hearing what it actually was.

"An OCF? I've heard about those, I always wanted one," she said wistfully. 'OCF' stood for 'Optical Communication Frame' and was a bit like the 52nd Century equivalent of Google Glass, only much better. "Don't know what I'd use it for, though… and that's what Flek always said, too, because I asked if the Spores had any. And she was like, 'why do you care about glasses so much?'"

"…Right," said Jenny unsurely.

Oswin paused, then glanced at the glasses again, "Are they broken?"

"Yeah," Jenny said. They were almost snapped in two right down the nose-bridge, barely hanging together, "Got punched in the face and they took the brunt of the damage. But I think I can fix them and they might help us out… in the meantime, I fancy something to eat. Spacewalks always make me hungry."

"Literally everything makes you hungry. I bet you can't remember a single point in your life where you _haven't_ been hungry," Oswin said, Jenny beginning to lead them away while Oswin hobbled along behind her, Sprite attached to her shoulder for company. Jenny scowled at her for a second.

"I have a very high metabolism and an energetic lifestyle."

"Energetic? Is that Jenny-speak for 'Clara can't get enough'?" Oswin remarked, but Jenny ignored her; she was trying to take in the city.

It was a true manifestation of the utopic metropolis ideal set out by the best thinkers of millennia-gone-by; unimaginably tall skyscrapers only limited by the fact they threatened to leave the atmosphere. It made Manhattan look like it belonged in the Stone Age, millions of times vaster and more advanced, glittering in the sunlight like an array of diamonds. Various crafts, some capable of going into space and others trapped in the confines of the atmosphere, whooshed about hundreds of feet above the ground. It was completely incongruous with everything she knew about Planet Earth in the 52nd Century – were these really the same polluted oceans the giant, mutant squid had been pulled from months ago?

It took them all of ten minutes to find a sushi restaurant, one in a prime location overlooking the bay and the space port and crystalline water.

"Really?" Oswin questioned, "Sushi? You're _such_ a tourist."

"Be quiet, I love sushi," Jenny said.

"You couldn't pay me enough to eat something that's been swimming around in the sea. Not that the fish they use to make sushi here has ever been in an actual sea, they breed them away from the pollutants," Oswin explained, "Flek used to talk about it." Jenny was very surprised to hear that it was real fish and not something synthesised, since everything the Homeworld Alliance fed its citizens seemed to be synthesised.

Jenny left Oswin and Sprite to find a seat by the window while she herself went to load up on as much raw fish as she could possibly manage, before realising that she didn't have any money with which to pay. She stood, thinking, a whole sushi roll in her mouth in front of the automated payment machine. If she stepped out of its boundary without paying it would deliver an electric shock – a very good anti-theft deterrent, she, a professional thief, thought. As a last resort (because she was _very_ hungry) she drew out her screwdriver and sonicked the machine, causing its coloured screen to turn blue to indicate payment had been accepted. Then she went to join Oswin, who was doing something with her hologramatic screens.

"No attendants?" Jenny asked Oswin, looking around.

"This is the future, Jen. The robots have taken over all the jobs."

"Don't call me 'Jen.' What do people do if there aren't any jobs?"

"Beats me. _I've_ never had a job. Maybe they all become disillusioned with contemporary civilisation and joined a group of mad space-hippies and go to live on an inhospitable jungle planet. Or maybe they all become intergalactically wanted thieves, planet-jumping whenever they feel like it?" Oswin said, "Aren't you supposed to eat that with chopsticks instead of just shoving it in your face? Isn't that rude?"

Jenny glared at her, then said with her mouth full, "Rude to who? Nobody's paying attention."

"Aren't you supposed to be good at blending in places?"

Jenny paused, thought, then answered, "No. People normally think I'm quite weird." She stuffed another entire sushi role in her mouth. Maybe it _was_ rude, but she was famished, and nobody in there _was_ paying attention. Perhaps she would be more bothered with etiquette if they were out somewhere fancy.

"I wonder why…" Then, while Jenny continued to eat, Oswin took a photograph of the skyline with her phone. She caught Jenny looking at her. "I'm just showing it to Flek."

"Does it not bother Adam how you talk to her constantly?" Jenny asked.

"Not particularly. I'm sure he's a lot more bothered about me talking to you than talking to Flek."

"Why would he be bothered about you talking to me?"

"Because you fancy me," she said. Jenny frowned. "Give the glasses to Sprite, see if he can do something about them. He's delicate." Sprite scurried onto the table-top in between them and Jenny set down the glasses. _She_ was delicate, too, she thought bitterly – just a lot less delicate when she had a stupid cast weighing down her right hand.

"I don't actually fancy you. It's a joke."

"You definitely do, though," Oswin said, eyes on her phone. Jenny scowled even though Oswin wasn't paying attention, then decided to change the subject.

"I thought Earth's meant to be a wasteland. That's what everyone always says."

"It is, outside of Japan and a few other parts of East Asia. Most other people just gave up, went out to the stars. The moon is really flourishing. Funny how they call it the 'Homeworld' Alliance when they've never seemed to care particularly about the home world. Even the Spores would rather try and colonise a place like Eslilia than try and sort this wasteoid out," Oswin ranted. "And because Cluster Spores aren't allowed on Earth. Part of their anonymity. The oxyveses-"

"What're those?"

"Oh – the big ships with the greenhouses on the back. You weren't there when we got Squidzilla, were you?"

"No, only heard about it."

"They're supposed to be going around and purifying the air. They're researched, created and maintained by Japan." Her phone buzzed, and she checked it and laughed. "Flek's totally jealous, and she wants me to work out how they made the atmosphere hospitable again."

"What part of the atmosphere on Eslilia is so notoriously dangerous?"

"Well _you're_ allergic to it, for starters."

"Am I?"

"Your dad is. And since you're his clone, I assume you are as well. He ended up absolutely _covered_ , head-to-foot, in this awful rash. Although, I'm sure Clara very much enjoyed rubbing him up-and-down with special antihistamine lotion for the next few days."

"Please don't talk about Clara covering my dad with lotion."

"Not _your_ Clara."

"I know not _mine_ , but still." The thought was threatening to put Jenny off her food. "How does it affect humans, though?"

"Gives them respiratory problems. Sort of like, inducing asthma. Not immediately fatal, but could definitely lead to lung failure over a long period of time and shortened life-expectancy. It's the pollen, it's toxic. But, see, I was out with Clara a while ago on this asteroid that didn't have any atmosphere, and they were generating an entire artificial one over an enclosed area with external generators. I've actually got a few blueprints, I'll show you." Oswin waved a hand to reverse the images on her projected screens and dragged up a few drawings.

"All notably phallic."

"Well, I do love a phallus. Hard to make an atmosphere generator that looks like a vagina, but I suppose it depends on what kind of shape they like for the layout, you know?"

"Why do you want me to look at these? They'll all work, from what I can tell," Jenny shrugged, squinting at the calculations she was finding very difficult to read. "You're such a perfectionist. Haven't you run sims for these?"

"Yes."

"And what did the sims say?"

"That they'll all work."

"Why the worry, then?"

"I just like to make sure," Oswin said, "Before I go building a dozen of them. I think I need better air and plant samples. What I should do is build them new respirators first and send them out to gather specimens…"

"You don't want to drag out their suffering any longer, Os."

"I don't know. They're a bit obnoxious. Although, that reminds me, keep your eyes peeled for any fit birds while we're out here today. Eco-freaks."

"Why? Are you looking for a side-piece?"

"Not while I've still got you."

"Very funny. Amusing."

Oswin winked at her, "I try my hardest. I'm still trying to find Flek a replacement girlfriend, that's all. One who doesn't look like me. So if you spot anyone cute, lonely, and who might want to relocate to an alien jungle, let me know."

"And then what? You'll kidnap them and dump them with the Spores?"

"How dare you – I can be very charming and persuasive sometimes. By the way, news just broke of a UFO sighting over Tokyo and people are worried it's the precursor to a larger alien invasion," she said, while scrolling through her screens. Jenny rolled her eyes.

"Maybe I will invade," she muttered, chewing, "That'll show them..." Sprite was delicately reconnecting the various wires of the OCF, a task he was much better suited for than her.

"What is it you need the glasses for?"

"Contacts," Jenny said, and nothing else.

"You're sexy when you're being enigmatic."

"So you and Flek were going to come to Tokyo, or something?" Jenny changed the subject, licking her fingers of any stray food.

"That was always the plan, sort of. Run away together and come here, live in these high-rises… didn't mean anything, though. She'd never dream of leaving the Spores, and I never thought I'd be able to leave Horizon…" Oswin glanced out of the window at the cityscape, the shimmering, silver towers and flying cars high above. "Just one of those things people say to each other, I suppose."

"We could always go get her?"

"Nah. Not while you're around, I don't want you getting her into trouble."

"I don't get into _that_ much trouble," she mumbled, aware of the cast on her hand, her grisly black eye, the bullet wound on her arm, and most of all her hypocrisy.

Jenny stared at her plate after realising it was empty. Sprite still wasn't quite done with the OCF, so she took it upon herself to go and get even more fish. She could never get enough fish, really. When she returned after only a minute or two, Oswin was using her phone again. She was now getting looks from some of the other customers, probably because of the sheer volume of sushi she was consuming. Funny how the hologram didn't get a second look.

"Do you like being back in the future?"

"It's not the future," Oswin said, "It's the present. It _is_ refreshing not having to worry about advanced technology, though. About what people might see, or even about just explaining concepts we take for granted here. Adam asks so many questions."

"Aw, I'm sure he's fascinated about how you grew up in space," Jenny smiled, taking a large bite out of another sushi roll, "You should bring him to Tokyo, show him around the future."

"Maybe, maybe… but he does have an unfortunate habit of trying to google himself. And I still haven't quite convinced him to come to Venus with me to meet my dad."

"I'll come to Venus with you and meet your dad," she volunteered.

"Thanks, but it's more of a sort of, boyfriend-girlfriend meet-the-parents thing," Oswin said.

"So, I'm not allowed to meet your dad? You've met mine!"

"I'm not saying you can never meet my father, just that it would be a bit weird for you to meet him before my boyfriend does," said Oswin, "You and I aren't a couple. Despite all your pining."

"Alright, that's-" Jenny dropped her sushi roll on her plate, about to make a few very good points about how Oswin was completely wrong and imagining things, when Sprite beeped and held up in his tiny, metal claws the OCF to Jenny. Her demeanour flipped and she beamed. "Yes!" She took the frames and put them on, greeted by an AR text display of the diagnostics. "This is brilliant – I _love_ you and your machines, honestly." She ate two sushi rolls in one in her excitement.

"What're the glasses really about, then? Not just to turn me on, surely? You've never needed to go to much extra effort to accomplish that."

"No, no – it connects me to the BiteSoc Node."

" _BiteSoc_? Another fetish of yours?"

"Shut _up_. It's short. For 'Blacklight Society.'"

"The biting society."

"No."

"Where you all enjoy biting. Must be hard being with a vampire, then, since she's not really able to bite you without you getting all… dead."

"Uh-huh. Not going anywhere near that. It's a cloud-based network designed so that members of the Blacklight Society can connect with other members in certain areas. Black market contacts, primarily, but also information. Any weird meteor that crashes in the bay is _bound_ to have passed under the nose of the agents they've got out here."

"You sound like you miss it."

"I do! Don't tell Clara. I only left in the last twenty years."

"Wow, that's like, my entire life."

"Yeah, well, I'm old. I only left because I acquired a spaceship, which has unfortunately found its way to the Fowl Pocket and is now full of corpses, but… nothing that bad ever happened when I was running with-"

"BiteSoc?"

"I could kill you sometimes."

"You're too late for that."

"Part of being in the Society is getting access to these resources. It is a thieves' guild, after all, there are benefits to stealing for them."

"It's almost like a real job."

"Look, say what you want, but I've just got the location of their safehouse in Tokyo, so we'd better head there right away."

"Right away?" Oswin asked incredulously.

"Well… right away as soon as I get some more sushi. For the journey. I might take some for Clara…"

"You'll eat it before you can get it all the way back to Hollowmire," Oswin said. Jenny knew she was right.

"One day I might start my own seafood restaurant. It's a dream I have, I suppose. Like you and Flek with the Tokyo thing."

"You should always follow your dreams. Except when you have sex dreams about _me_ , because I'm taken."

"I could hire Nios as my sous chef."

"Sounds like you've got it all figured out. Now, go get your third helping of raw fish. You never know, if we get this wrapped up quickly we could do some tourist stuff. Like fight Godzilla. You could kill him and eat him – you'd love that."

"Godzilla's not real," Jenny scoffed, then caught Oswin's eye, "Wait… is Godzilla-"

"No!"

"Which one is Godzilla? Is he the monkey?"

"Is… no. No, Jenny. Godzilla isn't the monkey…"


	203. Game of Wits

_Game of Wits_

 _Jenny_

The lowest level of Tokyo was very different to the city they saw at the edge of the bay. It was much darker, despite being the middle of the day, thanks to the shadows of the colossal skyscrapers and towers. It was also damp and smelly, the streets decorated with large kanji characters in bold neon. They were advertising all kinds of things; illegal cybernetic implants, prostitution, tattoo parlours, more fast food – it was somehow comforting to see that every city, no matter how much of a metropolis it appeared from above, had the same seedy underbelly to enjoy. And it was places like that where Jenny had always thrived, thanks to her predisposition for work that fell into a bit of a grey area (as she would describe it; the authorities always used much crueller terms.) A glowing, blue trail formed in front of her, an AR illusion guiding her to the safehouse location courtesy of her newly-repaired OCF. Oswin limped along a few steps behind her.

"I could get a tattoo," Jenny said, growing distracted by the tattoo parlour on her right, "Or a body mod. I miss having a robot hand sometimes."

"I don't know that Clara would be too happy about that."

"Clara's old-fashioned," said Jenny.

"Ah – so you'd prefer a girl a bit more futuristic, hmm? A bit more your-speed?" Oswin asked wryly.

"I think I tried a dating pool in your century once, and ended up stuck with Jack for months," Jenny said, turning back around to look at Oswin. Oswin was probably about to say something witty (or at least something she _thought_ was witty) in response, but when Jenny turned she slipped and would have fallen had Jenny not caught her arm. "You alright?"

"Slipped in a puddle," Oswin winced, grimacing at the floor. Whatever she had stepped in was pink. "Not even water. Cleaning run-off from the buildings."

"What do you mean?"

"How do you think they keep them all so shiny up there?" Oswin challenged, "Spray them. With chemicals. Which get washed off the rain and come all the way down here where they don't evaporate outside of direct sunlight."

"Right – aren't they supposed to be against pollution here?"

"The chemicals break down naturally after a few weeks, they're no more dangerous than water," Oswin explained, "They're just not very accommodating for poor one-legged holograms who aren't good at balancing. Why can't your illegal safehouse be somewhere a bit nicer?"

"I told you, Akwana's _gorgeous_ …"

"…Look, I hate to ask, and this isn't me coming onto you-"

"For once."

"Could you just let me hold your arm? It's just, you know, my legs. You didn't give me a chance to finish my wheelchair." Oswin looked at her pleadingly.

"Oh…" Jenny paused, then smiled and held out her arm, "Sure." They continued to walk, looking like a couple now, and it struck Jenny that if it were Ravenwood clinging to her they would look exactly the same to outsiders. It was then, traipsing through the glowing, wet streets following the glimmering directions in her digital lenses, that she remembered something. "I heard you've been really angry at my dad in the last few weeks."

"I heard that _you've_ been really angry at your dad in the last few weeks," Oswin countered.

"That's my business, though." Jenny was asking questions she knew the answers to already, thanks to Donna's frequent attempts to 'catch her up' every time she was gone to Hollowmire for a few nights. "It's just – I heard you were upset with him on my behalf."

"Who've you been talking to?"

"Donna."

"Don't listen to Donna. She thinks we're in love with each other. Maybe she's trying to matchmake; she's never been particularly impressed by Mitchell, _or_ by your dirty habit of casually fucking Other Clara."

"Were you angry, though? With the Doctor?"

"Maybe I'm just overly sensitive to stories of parents who neglect their children and then act all high-and-mighty about it later," Oswin muttered. Jenny hadn't thought of that, but she'd never been the one Oswin came to with her family issues – probably for the best, she'd have no idea what to say. She wasn't good at family matters, evidently.

"…I think it's just here," she said after a minute of silence. She regretted saying anything about her father to Oswin now. She'd only been curious because Oswin treated Eleven with so much disdain, while Jenny knew she was one of Oswin's favourites, and it perplexed her because everybody always insinuated that she and the Doctor were like two peas in a pod.

Her directions had led them down a very narrow alley, which was so narrow so as to barely be an alley at all and Jenny marvelled at how they really got anything in, to a door whose only marker was a thin, purple UV light above it.

"So, how are we getting in?" Oswin whispered, "Fingerprint reader? Retinal scan?" Jenny ignored her and knocked on the door in a very distinct pattern, then stood to wait. Oswin gasped exaggeratedly. "A secret knock! Tell me that was a secret knock!" she grabbed Jenny's arm, then said in her ear, "I'm so wet for you right now."

"Eurgh, go away," Jenny pushed at her and leant in the opposite direction while Oswin sniggered.

"Honesty is the best policy. But, really, is a secret knock really the best thing for your clandestine organisation?"

"It's not a secret knock, it's a normal knock."

"You did a fancy pattern!"

"I've got a song stuck in my head from some advert that's always on when Clara's watching TV!"

"Wow. My underwear has dried right up now. It's like the Sahara."

"That's a relief…"

The door was opened from within by an enormous, hulking man, almost as wide as he was tall – and he was _very_ tall, over six feet.

"I'll tell you what," Oswin began stage-whispering to Jenny, "I'll sit on your shoulders and we'll go buy a trench-coat to disguise ourselves with."

"Shut _up_."

"I don't speak any English," said the giant in Japanese, Jenny assimilating the language instantly.

"Sorry about her," Jenny apologised, "She doesn't speak Japanese, so-"

"Erm," Oswin interrupted, "I do, actually." To Jenny's great horror, Oswin also answered in perfect Japanese. "It's one of my dozen-or-so languages. I told you, Flek and I wanted to come to Tokyo one day; it only took me, like, three days to learn." Jenny rolled her eyes.

"I'm Zero," she introduced herself, "I'm-"

"She's a member of the Biting Society," Oswin interjected. If it was anybody else standing next to her, Jenny would surely have punched them in mouth by now. Oswin was the kind of person who would really benefit from a broken jaw, Jenny thought, if only she were capable of receiving one. Anything to stop her from talking…

"Zero-sensei!" he boomed, "You're famous. Never been seen, never been caught, the prodigal daughter of Akwana. Come in!"

"You people are very indiscreet to say you're a bunch of elite thieves," Oswin quipped as the man stepped out of the doorway and let them in, down a very narrow, metal staircase where Jenny had to carefully help Oswin down each and every step.

But when they got into the actual safehouse, which was less of a safehouse and more of a black-market shop selling plenty of stolen goods, it was as though all of Jenny's Christmases had come at once. Weapons and gadgets galore. Even her anti-war, anti-violence father would love some of the devices being kept in that little basement, which made Jenny's eyes light up with wonder. Compact cannons, long-range rifles, an astonishing array of knives she could think of all _sorts_ of uses for.

"If only I hadn't just got a new sword this week…" Jenny said, staring at a wall of more ornate swords than she knew the names of, as well as a very nice metal bat that looked to made of solid tungsten. Any blow with that would be certain death from anyone with even a shred of strength.

"You what?" Oswin asked, Oswin who had immediately flocked towards a range of illegal cybernetic enhancements, like even more weapons you could have surgically implanted. Jenny had always been a fan of the large blade implants you could get – just as a last resort, of course – but had never had the inclination to actually get something like that. Although… maybe it _would_ be cool… "Where did you get a sword from?"

"Rose gave me a sword. She got it from an old friend of mine. It's called Jenny."

"You have a sword named after yourself?" Oswin questioned her, Sprite jumping down from Oswin's shoulder to look at the cybernetics closely. Their host, however, didn't like Sprite – who was significantly less remarkable in the 52nd Century and didn't really need to be hidden or lied about – crawling all over the merchandise.

"Hey! Keep that thing on a leash," he ordered, making Sprite jump in fright and scurry over to Jenny for protection. Jenny wasn't a huge fan of having the robot centipede crawl up her back, but let him be.

"Sorry," Oswin apologised, "He gets excited."

"Non-Society members aren't supposed to be allowed down here," he warned Jenny, meaning Oswin. "…Tell me how the great Zero dropped off the map. There were rumours of your death under mysterious circumstances. You look like you've been through a war." She didn't think she looked _quite_ as bad as someone who'd been through a war, with all her broken pieces, but didn't argue. Most of her brain capacity was currently taken up thinking about advanced weaponry, anyway. "I might say that both of you do." He'd spotted Oswin's fake leg as well as her cane.

"I fancied a change, went a few centuries in the past and decided to be a pirate for a while. Someone tried to kill me and now I'm… between hobbies," Jenny explained carefully.

"Hobby?" he asked, then laughed, lowering himself down into an enormous chair befitting of his enormous form, in front of a board game. Oswin didn't give any explanation as to the state of her legs. "The best thief we've ever had, and you call it a hobby!" She would never really call it a profession. In fact, Jenny wasn't sure she'd call anything she'd done a profession, even her military services; really, they were all just things she did to pass the time. "I wish I could call it a hobby. I retired a decade ago, long after the whispers of you died away, Zero-sensei, and here I still am." He didn't even mention the implied discrepancy with her age – but eternal youth was something that had been technologically achieved years ago. Maybe he thought she was using some sort of disguise.

"Only a decade? Maybe _I've_ heard of _you_."

"Maybe – under the name Oni." He moved some of the small stones on the game he was playing.

"Oh! You're the guy who used to punch through walls, right? Crush skulls?"

"A long time ago."

"Speaking of help," Oswin interrupted, peering very closely at what looked like fabric to Jenny's untrained eye, "What kind of material is this? Because to _me_ it looks like a silk-thin exoskeletal mesh with nano-densi threading."

"You can have it, for a price," said 'Oni.'

"…What kind of price?" Oswin asked carefully. He shrugged.

"You could let me have a look at your robot." Sprite cowered behind Jenny's shoulder.

"…No, thanks. I think I've got the general gist – coating microfibres in densi, though. Clever. Stuff can withstand a direct meteor shower."

"On the topic of meteors," Jenny began, "I'm here for information more than anything else. Information sharing is still the right etiquette for the Society, isn't it?"

"What's mine is yours," he said, leaning back in his chair.

"Great, see, the thing is – oh! Are you playing Go?"

"Against yourself?" Oswin added, glancing over. It _was_ Go; she thought she'd recognised it. Leaving the strange fabric alone, Oswin limped over crookedly to examine the board.

"Never anybody to play it with."

"Can I have the densi mesh if I beat you?" she challenged, to Jenny's surprise.

"What do you want that mesh for?" she questioned.

"I'm assuming it's supposed to be used as a body-armour, but it's got plenty of medical applications I can think of. I could line the spacesuits with it if I come up with a modified version," she explained. _Fair enough_ , thought Jenny. "Could even make you something for your hand." It _did_ look more comfortable than her clunky cast.

"You think you can beat me at Go? I used to compete at Go when I was your age," Oni said, "What do _I_ get if _you_ lose?"

"I don't know – the pleasure of somebody stroking your ego? Come on, let me play. I've never had anyone to actually play it against. We had an old version my brother and I used to play, but he gave up because he could never win," she said. Jenny wondered which brother. Oni gave up in the end, grinning, and indicated to Oswin the modest chair opposite as he re-set the stones. "Do you know, there's more possible moves in Go than there are atoms in the universe?"

"That only matters if you're able to think of them all. Who is the girl, Zero-sensei? Is she in the Society?"

"No. Oswin's… freelance. She's kind of like… tech support."

"I'm the Oracle to her Nightwing."

"I have absolutely no idea what that means," Jenny shook her head.

"It means we're both hot and there's a very blatant undercurrent of sexual tension. And also that I can't walk and _you_ can do a lot of fancy acrobatics."

"Of course it does," said Jenny, disinterested, crossing her arms and standing behind Oswin as she placed little, black stones on the board.

"What information are you after, Zero-sensei?" Oni asked.

"A meteor came down in the bay at some point in the last month. Glows bright red and potentially deadly. I thought it might have passed under the nose of the Society; I was commissioned to retrieve it."

"By who?"

"Nice try," she said. She wasn't going to tell him that she was under Pasznoxo's thumb. Maybe he was playing a friendly game of Go with Oswin, but Jenny certainly wouldn't put him down as a trustworthy confidant. He was a thief, after all, and a violent one at that. The moniker 'Oni' had a very bloody history associated with it, even if it didn't already bear its mythic connotations. There was a reason he had it, after all, just like there was a reason she was Zero. "Do you know about it, or not?"

"Maybe," he said, "I'll have to think about it. _You're_ not thinking about your moves very closely, are you?" he directed a question at Oswin.

"Carefully enough," she said, "I think very quickly. Y'know, they could've used a mesh like that to fix my leg. It would be perfect for holding damaged bones together."

"Or you could just reprogram yourself," Jenny muttered.

"Or Flek could have amputated both of them to begin with," Oswin complained, "If I'd been anywhere else at the time, they would have taken them both and replaced them with cybernetics, and I'd be all the better for it. A word of advice: don't date an idealistic doctor who thinks she has a right to make decisions about your body when you're unconscious after trying to kill yourself. Of course, Oswin being comatose certainly means she wants to be stuck with useless, mangled limbs for the rest of her existence…" She monologued while quickly moving the stones around the board; Oni was right about her hardly paying attention.

"Have you had a chance to think about it yet?" Jenny asked Oni coolly.

"Why? So that you'll leave before I can finish my game?" he nodded at the board. Jenny narrowed her eyes. How long would it take for one of them to win?

"…You'd really want cybernetic legs?"

"Why not? You had a cybernetic hand, Jenny-chan."

"Don't call me-"

"Jen-chan?" Oswin flashed her a grin, which was met with a glare, "I love it when you do that." Not even looking at the board, Oswin placed one of her stones in a new position. Jenny was sure that the black stones – Oswin's – were the ones given to the player at a disadvantage.

"I'm not doing anything."

"You are, you're being all serious. It's sexy."

"If you're such a big fan of removing and replacing broken things, why are you always on Martha's side when it comes to my thumb?"

"Jenny-chan, if you actually rested your cute, little thumb like the good Dr Jones _told_ you to do, it would be fine by now. But you keep hitting things. Now, if you'd had almost your entire hand blown off by a _bomb_ … you'll notice that when it was burned off by alien acid-blood, like your eyes, we didn't try to save them at all. Which I actually argued with Flek about, not that you'll remember; she thought it'd be better off if we left you blind." Jenny hadn't known about that, but was very glad of her eyes being replaced, even if growing them back had hurt tremendously.

It surprised her so much she took out her phone – which was, frankly, ancient technology compared to the OCF she was still wearing – and texted Clara Ravenwood: _Oswin just told me Flek wanted to leave me without any eyes after they were gouged out that time_. After she did, though, an alert came up that the Helix interface she had downloaded after Oswin had created it some weeks ago had finished updating – and more.

 _Chemical traces identical to the chemical traces_ GEORGIA _was set to scan for detected in your immediate vicinity, Major Young_ , it read. Outside of her annoyance that Oswin had programmed Helix to also call the ship by the name she had given it (though she did like that _she_ was now being called 'Major Young'), she was also highly intrigued. If traces of the meteor they were scanning were present in Oni's safehouse, that meant the meteor definitely _had_ been there, and recently. But he would notice if she started sneaking around, and she didn't really want to get her head crushed.

Clara replied: _You'd still be hot even if you didn't have any eyes_.

Jenny changed the subject: _What are you having for lunch? I've had a MOUNTAIN of sushi._

Speech bubbles popped up, and within a second she had a response: _Just a sandwich_. Then: _Sally's here bothering me_.

Jenny wrote: _If you tell her how much you want to sleep with her she's bound to leave you alone_. Clara sent back the flat-expression emoji and Jenny smiled to herself.

"Did Clara say anything interesting?" Oswin interrupted her. Jenny put her phone away; she'd missed a fair few of Oswin's moves.

"Just that Sally's annoying her."

"I think Sally goes out of her way to be annoying."

"Really."

"Yeah. It's pretty messed up, right? I mean, who would go out of their way to be annoying _on purpose_?"

Jenny glared at the back of Oswin's head and said stiffly, "I have absolutely no idea what kind of person would do that."

"A lunatic, probably."

"I'd certainly say so."

"Aww," Oswin turned to her and laughed, "You know you love me really, Jen-chan. That's, uh, checkmate, by the way."

"What?" asked Oni.

"Checkmate," she repeated.

"It's not chess, Oswin," Jenny told her.

"Whatever. All your liberties are gone, you're surrounded, I win," Oswin nodded at the board. Oni could not believe his eyes. It had barely been ten minutes, and Oswin had triumphed. She gave him what Jenny knew to be her sweetest and most attractive smile, leaning on her elbow on the table, "Can I have my mesh now, Oni-san? And the information lover-girl's after."

"The meteor," Jenny reiterated. Oni nodded at Oswin and waved his hand in direction of the mesh. Oswin stood up carefully and then shuffled across the room again, while Jenny turned all of her attention on Oni. "What happened to it?"

"I only heard rumours," he said, "And then government salvage boats fished it out of the water and that's the last I've heard of any space debris."

"You're lying. I know it was here recently. It could still be here for all I know."

"I'm _lying_?" And then he stood up, threatening her, towering nearly two feet above.

"Uh… Jenny?" Oswin asked unsurely nearby.

"Yes, lying. It could be used to make a bomb, it could blow up Tokyo – is that really what you want?"

Oni laughed coldly, "A bomb? You're naïve, Zero-sensei."

"So you do know about it."

"Fine. I was only trying to save your life…"

"I can save my own life, thanks."

"The government took it. I stole it. And then sold it on. That's what we do here."

"Who bought it, and what for?"

"Why should I tell you? It's not anywhere you'll be able to get it, so why bother? There are some things even _you_ couldn't steal. But I do wonder whether stealth is your only real asset – how well would you do in a fight?"

" _Jenny_ ," Oswin hissed at her.

"I'll decide what I can and can't steal and who I can and can't fight," she said, crossing her arms.

"You haven't even got two good hands."

"Just tell me what happened to the meteor and I'll be on my way. No need for you to do something stupid and hurt yourself." She had insulted him which, despite horrifying Oswin, did the trick: it made him decide that he was going to pummel her, perhaps even try to kill her. And when he decided _that_ , it meant he also didn't feel any risk in bragging about who he had sold the meteor debris to. The thing Oni didn't know was that he was outmatched.

"Nobukane Tanabe brought a group and bought it. Nobukane Tanabe, an aniki of Tanabe-kai."

"So, what? I'm supposed to be scared of a mobster now?"

"A mobster!? Tanabe-kai has been the biggest yakuza syndicate in Japan for almost two-hundred years, Zero-sensei," he laughed at her again, "Nobukane is noted for being particularly violent. Even more violent than me."

"I'm not scared of the yakuza, and I'm even less scared of you." She smiled at him. That _really_ ticked him off, and without so much as a cliché, _now you're in for it_ , he swung one of his enormous fists straight at her face, a _lot_ faster than she had been expecting. Perhaps he had experience boxing, he was famous for his punching. But while he was fast, Jenny was faster.

As Oswin tried to make herself as small as possible on the other side of the room, Sprite also frightened and hiding behind her, Jenny dodged Oni's first punch and dropped into a roll on the floor – she was going for the knife collection. His massive foot came down next and almost succeeded in crushing her ankle, but just like he had lost to Oswin at Go in a matter of minutes, he was destined to lose to Jenny even quicker. It was simply a matter of avoiding his blows for long enough that she could get her hands on a weapon, and a sai happened to be the first thing she grabbed. While it was better for stabbing than slashing, she could definitely use it. Oni had barely seen the glint of the blade before she dove to the floor, between his legs, and tore savagely at the back of his knee. He wailed and she sharply kicked him in the same place where she'd just slashed the muscles to pieces, and there was a sickening crunch until he toppled forwards onto the floor, crashing and bringing a table down with him.

"What the fuck!?" Oswin shouted at her, but Jenny had already dropped the sai and was hastening to her feet, using her OCF to contact the emergency services.

"Door, now," Jenny ordered her.

"No! He's going to die, that's his femoral artery you chopped! He'll bleed out within minutes!"

"Os-chan," Jenny retaliated, "Do you know how quickly an ambulance response is here? It's the most advanced city in the human empire at this point. They'll get here less than thirty seconds after I call them, so _let's go_. And by the way, Oni-san, if you dare _warn_ Nobukane to expect me, I'll come back and make sure both your legs end up in an even worse state than _hers_ ," meaning Oswin, "Now _let's go_."


	204. Yakuza Zero

_Yakuza Zero_

 _Jenny_

"Oh, fuck me up my arse and call me 'Jenny,'" Oswin said as soon as they had escaped the Blacklight Society safehouse and the wrath of Oni, left bleeding out on the floor.

"Ex- _cuse_ me!?" Jenny exclaimed, thinking that was quite possibly the most horrific sentence that had ever been said to anybody in history. Despite what she had said, however, Jenny seemed to be the absolute last thing on Oswin's insane mind.

"That dick-weed, he sent out some kind of alert while we were playing Go, the emergency services communications are talking about half a dozen recklessly-driving vehicles all heading _here_ , from different directions – they're screwing with the pissing ambulances you called, comms say they recognise boryokudan symbols on them." Jenny was caught in the midst of a dilemma. There was no way they could get back to her ship and make a quick getaway before the yakuza showed up. Even if she didn't have a disabled hologram tagging along with her, she might not make it.

Which left only one viable option, in Jenny's mind: grand theft auto. Luckily for them, Oni had a car, parked on the roof of the safehouse building.

"Okay – you stay here," Jenny said, making a beeline for a handy ladder she had spotted. Very narrow and slick with the same damp as everything in Tokyo city's basement, Oswin hadn't a chance of getting up there any time soon.

"Me do _what_!?" Oswin exclaimed.

" _Stay here_! Or re-programme your legs so they grow back and follow me, I don't know!" she was already climbing the ladder.

"You can't _leave me_!"

"Trust me!" she shouted back, taking out her sonic screwdriver, Oswin monitoring the blips of pursuing vehicles on her holoscreens. How long did Oni have until the blood-loss became fatal…? Well, she thought, they were in the 52nd Century, medicine had come a long way, especially if Oswin could blow herself up and miraculously survive. He'd be fine… probably.

She sonicked the locked doors of Oni's flying car, Oswin aggressively shouting status reports from the street below. The door sprang open and she clambered inside, hitting the dashboard blindly to make it go. This worked, to her great joy, the front window illuminating with hologramatic read-outs much like those of Oswin's screens. But the problem was it was quite tricky sometimes adjusting from flying a big, complicated spaceship to flying a small, uncomplicated car, which was why she launched upwards with far too much force and almost went crashing into a wall. Within seconds, Oswin had hacked the car's built-in comms and was shouting at her.

" _What are you doing!?_ "

"Listen – just – whoa!" She turned the wheel too hard and went into a violent corkscrew down the very cramped under-street, skidding to a halt on the ground and crashing into the front of the tattoo parlour they had walked past earlier. Oswin panicking behind her, yakuza cars and ambulances above, Jenny flung the car into reverse and it went whooshing backwards, its entire base hover-powered. She slammed on the breaks and it jolted to a sudden stop right at Oswin's side, Jenny opening the passenger door. "Get in!" Oswin didn't hesitate, as an ambulance descended from the sky above. An ambulance and its unwelcome entourage of Tanabe-kai flying motorbikes.

"'One last job', you said! 'Simple retrieval mission', you said! 'We totally won't get attacked by the yakuza', you said!"

"I think you're paraphrasing quite generously there," Jenny said, "But, er, you might want to put your seatbelt on. I've been told I'm not a very good driver." Oswin heeded her words.

"The similarities between you and your father never cease, do they?"

"So I hear – do something useful, would you?" Jenny tossed Oswin her screwdriver, which Oswin nearly dropped when she tried to catch it, "Make the car go faster. We've got to outrun this lot of-" They both yelled when the car was shot in the rear bumped by laser weaponry, which made it spin out of control again. Not good, considering they had very quickly ascended to the height of all the other traffic.

"Could you at least try to keep us alive!?"

" _You're_ already dead! Honestly, this is my second car chase in as many weeks! If Martha gets wind of this – uh, you're not going to tell Martha, are you?" Before Oswin could respond, one of the flying motorbikes zipped past them in the air and tried the pit manoeuvre, ramming right into Oswin's door with tremendous aggression. "Oswin! Make car go fast!"

"You're putting me under an immense amount of pressure! I've never been in a car chase before!"

"There's a first time for everything!"

Jenny pushed the wheel forwards and the car turned into a nosedive, and she felt much more like she was flying a plane than driving a car. That was probably a good thing though, because she was known in certain circles as an exceptional pilot. She threaded the needle through another two cars and was suddenly in the middle of oncoming traffic, which was exactly where she wanted to be. Oswin, meanwhile, was using the sonic on the car's control systems.

"This is quite hard without actual access to the engine, you know!"

"Well feel free to climb out and have a look under the hood!"

"Urgh! You're so frustrating!"

"Uh-huh! Hang on!" She dove again, another layer of traffic down, steering them through the centre of a floating intersection. Really not the sort of place you wanted to be when you were in a high-speed chase; it was beginning to look inevitable that they'd get into a fatal collision, though she really wasn't in the mood to regenerate _again_. But the other complication was the cast on her hand, which made it quite hard to make the sharp turns and near-misses she was being forced to execute as another bike slammed into the car's roof, leaving a dent in it.

That was when Oswin managed to trick the car into lifting its speed limit restrictions, which were remotely enforced on _all_ vehicles in the future to try and mitigate accidents. It did work, though not quite as well when there were a handful of vehicles cheating the rules (herself now included).

"God, they _really_ don't want you getting your hands on their asteroid, do they?" Oswin said.

"Oh, do you think!? Look, try and find out where this Nobukane Tanabe actually lives so we can drop in for a nice, friendly chat about why he suddenly wants to kill me so bad," Jenny ordered her.

"Of course, _Major Jenny_ ," Oswin grumbled, annoyed at being ordered around. Jenny rolled her eyes. In her pocket, her phone started buzzing in her back pocket.

"Could you get that?" she asked Oswin.

"For – _do this, do that_ – I'm not your bloody slave!"

"Just get it! I think it's Helix!" She knew it was Helix because, over the sound of the chaos and the car engine, she could just about here his muffled voice trying to say something. Oswin groaned with frustration and leant over to get the phone. Jenny swerved to miss another car which was honking at her, the owner sticking his middle finger up out of the window.

"What's up, Helix?" Oswin said to the phone once she'd unlocked it, adding to Jenny at the last moment, "By the way, totally felt your arse." Jenny ignored her.

" _The rudimentary short-range scanners in this device indicate that your pursuers are being controlled remotely and possess absolutely no life signs_."

"Wait," Jenny said, "You mean to say they're all just robots?"

"More like remote control cars," Oswin said, "In fact, that literally is what they are, if Helix is right."

"Great! In _that_ case," she jerked the wheel and slammed them, _hard_ , into one of the bikes, so hard it smashed into another car, denting the door but leaving the occupants unharmed, and went spinning out towards the ground. Peering out of her window, she said, "I hope that doesn't land on anybody…"

"Can you be a bit more careful!? I'm trying to hack into this city's entire population database to find the address of this one mob boss _you've_ decided to piss off, and it's a bit tricky when we're flying all over the place."

"You're not very good in the field, are you?" Jenny questioned, ignoring her completely and rear-ending the first yakuza-bot-bike that tried to get in front of them, causing its engine to stutter so they shot passed it as it stalled.

"My whole thing is that I _don't_ want to be in the field, especially not with an adrenaline junkie like you!"

"You know you love me really. I'm fun!"

"This is the _opposite_ of fun! You're crazy!"

"Well – so're you! Now find me the address before-"

A particularly suicidal robot bike had sped head-on for another vehicle, a civilian van, coming at such an angle that the shocked driver was forced to make a sudden turn _right_ for them. Jenny tried to swerve but it clipped the tail-end of their car, mid-turn, with such force that the already-struggling engine suddenly died. For a split-second, they were suspended in the air with absolutely no propulsion system. And _then_ they started to plummet, all the way past the gigantic, Tokyo skyscrapers towards its rotten ground-level.

"FUCK!" Oswin shouted.

"Don't panic!" Jenny told her. Oswin gave her a look which seemed to say if the incoming crash didn't kill Jenny, _she_ certainly would. With all the force she could muster, Jenny punched her unbroken hand through the glass control panels of the cars, plunging her fingers into the wires beneath.

"WE'VE GOT SECONDS!"

" _I'M DOING MY BEST!"_ She bit two of the wires apart, one blue and one black, and carefully pushed their ends together _right_ as she and Oswin were about to smash into the pavement. The car engine returned to life and she pulled the wheel back so that they were shooting upwards like a rocket, heading straight towards the sun. She was dimly aware that her hand was now bleeding, but for the time being just shrugged it off.

" _Miss Oswald, I have discovered the home address of one Nobukane Tanabe, would you like me to import this data into the current vehicle's navigation system?_ " Helix asked, completely oblivious to the fact they'd literally almost gone splat; Jenny did not have high hopes for regenerating if that had happened.

"Yes," said Oswin hoarsely.

"Helix – forget the roads, just point me in the direction, we'll cut through and go straight there."

"You know, they have road safety for a reason!" Oswin argued.

"I'm perfectly safe! I'm wearing a seatbelt!"

"Oh, great! Because that'll totally save us if we crash into a solid object at two-hundred miles an hour!"

"It might do! Never give up hope! Helix – route the location to my OCF," she requested, since she was still wearing the glasses by some miracle considering how much the car had been spinning around.

" _Affirmative, Major Young_." Within seconds, a little, blue circle appeared in her peripheral vision, digital and pulsating: the apartment of Nobukane Tanabe.

"What is it that attracts you to organised crime so much?" Oswin muttered, peering out of the window, but their sudden dive towards the ground appeared to have shaken the yakuza-bikes for the moment. And they didn't need much time to get to their destination, not with the speed boost of the hacked, stolen car (she _really_ hoped Oni wasn't dead now she'd also wrecked his ride.)

"It just works out that way, I don't know. I'm good at it. Besides, I have normal jobs too, sometimes. I'm getting this job in a bakery in Hollowmire; Oc'thubha has the _best_ recipes," she explained, things calming down slightly now the immediate danger appeared to have passed – though, the car engine was stuttering in a way which made her very uneasy, and she wasn't sure her hot-wiring solution was going to last for long.

"How are you planning on confessing to Clara that you're taking your life in your hands _again_? Or are you going to lie?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it…" Jenny said, her eyes fixed on that blue waypoint in the middle-distance. The glass dashboard – at least, the parts of it she hadn't smashed to pieces – lit up in a very angry red and started flashing at them: catastrophic engine failure. " _If_ we come to it…"

"What!? 'If'!?"

"I'm sure we will!" Jenny lied. Oswin was horrified and clutched the car seat, awaiting their inevitable demise. "Just, um, not that I'm thinking anything bad might happen…" She pushed the accelerator as far as it would go; maybe they'd be able to make it before the car gave up the ghost for good? "You have backups of yourself, right?"

" _Yes_ , but that doesn't mean I want to get torn to pieces!"

"We're not gonna get torn to pieces! You're being melodramatic," Jenny said, and then the engine began to smoke in front of them.

"FUCK!" Oswin shouted, again.

"You know," Jenny began, "Some people might think you swear too much."

"FUCK _YOU_!"

"I'm just _saying_ …" Nobukane's skyscraper came fully into view, the blip in her line of the sight indicating they were heading straight for it. Behind them, the yakuza-bikes returned in full force; he must have some kind of defence system, she assumed, if he was important as Oni had said. "Uh… hang on. This is going to be a bit bumpy!" Finally, the car hit top-speed, just staying ahead of the flying bikes behind them.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?" Oswin yelled, "WE'RE GOING TO CRASH INTO THE WINDOW!"

"Yep!" Jenny confirmed, "That's the plan!"

" _THAT IS NOT A PLAN!_ "

Jenny ignored her; it _was_ a plan, it was a great plan, and it would absolutely work – provided the engines held on for just a _few_ more seconds…

At the last moment, the yakuza-bikes were forced to veer out of the way, clearly having more preservation instincts than Jenny, and she and Oswin braced themselves to shatter the window – which was much stronger than the windows of the 21st Century she was used to. That was probably why, after they broke through it, the engine finally exploded for good. Because of that they lost the majority of their momentum instantly, and then collided with another wall before the car came to a halt in a now-destroyed room full of dust, debris, and smoke. The airbag burst, delayed, and hit Jenny in the face, which didn't do much good for her sore and swollen black eye. Then Oswin punched her in the arm.

"Hey!" she complained, fighting with the airbag to get out of the car, at which point she collapsed on the floor and broken glass and concrete, coughing into her bloodied hand. On the other side Oswin did the same. Aching, Jenny got to her feet, a trembling Sprite crawling out of the rubble behind her. She stretched and then examined at her limbs, but she appeared to be no worse for wear, except for the cuts on her other hand. "See?" she said to Oswin, who looked angrier than Jenny had ever seen her, "I told you this morning, you worry too much."

"You're a lunatic," Oswin accused, "I know _I'm_ a lunatic, but _you_? Oh my god. _What_ is the matter with you!?"

"I'm courageous!" Jenny argued, "And talented."

"You're literally a masochist." Oswin clicked her fingers near the floor and Sprite went running over to her side, around the smoking wreckage of the hover car, while Jenny staggered through the hole in the wall behind them and into the room with the now-shattered floor-to-ceiling windows. She paused, and found everything strangely silent, aside from the steaming wreck. Oswin came limping up behind her. The bikes didn't follow them inside. When Jenny strained her ears, she detected a voice coming from a different room.

It didn't make too much sense to start sneaking after she'd just crashed a car into the apartment, but she did it anyway – maybe they'd think she'd died.

"This flat's pretty cool, right?" she whispered to Oswin, glancing around at all the lavish furniture, "Are you sure you won't move to future Tokyo with Adam?"

"Do you think it's cooler with or without the gigantic hole in the wall?" Oswin snapped.

"Shh," Jenny hissed.

"But you were the one who-" Jenny put a hand over Oswin's mouth for a second and listened even further.

"You didn't say you sent some psycho to get your precious rock!" Nobukane shouted from a door to their right. Jenny released Oswin and snuck right up to the door, motioning for Oswin to keep her distance.

" _Well, maybe YOU should have kept your hands off it, or given it over for free instead of hanging onto it for so long_ ," a second voice, talking through a speaker, " _I warned the Tanabe-kai that I didn't have a way to call her off_." He was talking to Pasznoxo. Furious, Jenny kicked in the door and found Nobukane, alone, talking to a hologram projection of Pasznoxo, who was probably safe and sound in his ice mansion on his precious B-Earth. And there, in a modified container, was the glowing-red chunk of space rock they were all after.

"Hi," she said, "I don't know if you heard me come in. I did knock… sort of."

"You're insane," spat Nobukane. Oswin hadn't followed her in. Good.

"I've been hearing that a lot today… so, here's the thing, Pasz-san. I know that you can use that rock to make a bomb."

"A _bomb_?" Nobukane laughed, then repeated sourly, "A bomb!"

" _Shut up_ ," Pasznoxo ordered him coldly.

"She thinks it's valuable because it can be a bomb. You can make a bomb out of anything. This rock has much more interesting potential."

" _Nobukane-san_ ," Pasz warned, " _Don't say another word or Tanabe-kai will have made a powerful enemy. You may control Tokyo, but think of what_ I _control_."

"What does it do if it's not a bomb?" Jenny asked Nobukane.

" _Don't tell her anything_ ," Pasz continued.

"You can shut up," Jenny ordered the hologram, "I'm coming for you next, don't think you can stop me. Trying to blackmail me into delivering you this rock – what does it do?"

" _I'm not scared of you, Zero_."

"Pasz, you don't even know who I am. You really think my only claim to fame is that I'm a good thief? A time traveller?"

" _River Song didn't mention much else when she gave me your phone number_." Jenny's blood ran cold. River!? _River_ had given Pasznoxo her number!?

But she barely had time to take in the news, because Nobukane had taken advantage of her lapse. He lunged towards a decoration on the nearest wall, which turned out to not be just a decoration but actually a pair of antique swords: wakizashis. One of them he threw like a shuriken straight at her head, but his aim wasn't nearly as good as her reflexes. Jenny dodged to the side and then caught the wakizashi by the hilt in her left hand. _That_ spooked him; he must have never seen someone catch a sword in mid-air before.

"We're doing this, then?" she said, challenging him, spinning the sword deftly in the one hand to add even more flourish, "Because you'll lose."

"How could I lose to a girl with only one working hand? And that one's bleeding everywhere."

"Why don't you come over here and find out?"

Suffice it to say, Nobukane did come over there and find out. He ran towards to and manically swung his sword in a motion that was all-too-easy to counter. It was nothing like trying to best Ashildr in a fight – this guy, despite being the aniki of a powerful yakuza syndicate, was a pushover. He was so much of a pushover that she literally did _push him over_. She countered the first strike, moving swiftly behind him, and then kicked him sharply in the small of his back, sending him to the ground. Another kick to his hand and she knocked the wakizashi out of his reach, then held her own sword down by his neck with her foot angled carefully over his wrist and hand.

"Are you for real?" she questioned him, "Because that was pathetic, really."

" _He's probably high_ ," holo-Pasz said. Jenny frowned and squinted at Nobukane's eyes, darting around in panic which, sure enough, were dilated beyond belief. So he probably _was_ high. " _I hope he hasn't been sampling the product_."

"The…" It clicked. "That rock – you're going to use it to make a drug!?"

" _Well done_ ," said Pasz dryly.

"Thought you didn't want me to know?"

" _You were just about to interrogate him. And he would have told you the whole story, very proud of how he schemed to get something I want, thinks he has me under his thumb. Nobody has me under their thumb_." Jenny had been about to interrogate him, she had been about to threaten to break all the bones in his hand one by one by stamping on them if he didn't tell her what was going on. " _Grind it into powder and smoke it in a pipe, supposedly the high of a lifetime. I don't really care how potent it is, just how much I can charge people to buy it_."

"And your exclusive crack-rock is right here, in this room, with only me. Do you really still think that this is going to fall into your hands?"

" _Of course I do._ "

"Huh. So, River did this, then?"

" _I asked her how to contact Zero_."

"And she just handed over my number?"

" _No. I had to bribe her, obviously_."

"With what?"

" _Why should I tell you_?"

"Because if you don't I'll beat you to a pulp so badly that you'll only be able to eat through a straw, that's why," Jenny threatened, "And don't think I won't. I'd gladly do it to this reprobate." She indicated Nobukane, who didn't dare move. "Look, here's the thing, Pasz. The thing River didn't tell you. She'll have known that no matter what she did, I wouldn't bring you that rock, and you wouldn't best me."

" _I'm listening_."

"Have you heard of the Doctor? River Song's husband? Saves lives, defeats monsters, makes whole armies turn around at the mention of his name?" Pasz said nothing. "Well, he's my dad. And I'm a real chip off the old block, as it were. Except I do have a bit of a problem when it comes to violence, which he's never really approved of." She touched the tip of the wakizashi to the nape of Nobukane's neck. "But, I owed you a favour, and I'm hardly a moral beacon myself. I'm willing to just forget about all this and leave you to your business. Though you won't be getting your hands on that rock _or_ any Fabergé Egg. If you ever come after me, it's not just me you have to deal with, it's my dad, and I don't think you want him on your case. Certainly not if you hurt his only daughter."

Pasznoxo hung up the link. That meant she had won. She'd successfully terrified him with her father's reputation – which really did come in handy. Especially now that he would actually come looking for her if something happened. As for River… well. She'd deal with _that_ mess later, though she was desperate to know what Pasz had bribed her with.

"See that, Nobu-kun? Pasz is scared of me. He's given up. And if _he's_ scared of me-"

"Just take the rock!" he wailed, "Have it! It's not worth all this trouble!"

"Thanks!" she said brightly, "D'you think you might call me a cab? Only, my car's a bit… scratched."

"Fine! Just don't kill me!"

She shrugged, "Whatever you say. Oh – one more thing…" she began as Oswin crept gingerly into the room now that the drama was over, "Do you know anywhere that does good takoyaki?"

 **AN: I'd just like to state here for the record that I LOVE the new Doctor and am actually watching the show again, which is awesome considering I haven't seen any episodes of S9 or S10 (and hopefully I never will have to see them). And again, to reiterate, there WILL be a long crossover storyline (in the 50,000 words region hopefully) in** ** _Retrograde_** **where Beta Thirteen, Yaz, Ryan & Graham will find themselves in the Alphaverse in the 2060s and it will be totally awesome.**


	205. Neo Octopia

_Neo Octopia_

 _Jenny_

"Oh, _wow_ … Yeah… That's _great.._. Really hits the spot... Mmm…"

"Do you always make so many noises when you eat?" Oswin questioned her disdainfully. Jenny glared and bit into another takoyaki ball. "You don't think the yakuza might come after us since you took him up on his fish recommendation?"

"It's not fish, it's octopus."

"It comes from the sea, it's a fish," Oswin muttered. She was _not_ in a good mood. Maybe it was the weather, Jenny mused; it had taken a sudden turn for the worse since they'd left Nobukane Tanabe's penthouse, and it was now pouring rain. They sat outside a modest takoyaki stand underneath an umbrella, trying to avoid getting wet. Steam rose up from Jenny's food and the stand, which was operated by a real human and not automated machines; it was a nice change of pace. "I don't understand how you eat so much. You literally never stop eating."

"I need the energy," she mumbled with her mouth full.

"Didn't understand a word of that." Jenny glared at her. Sprite was hanging around on Oswin's back. They hadn't taken the taxi Nobukane had called to straight to get something to eat, Jenny had had it deliver them nearby her spaceship. After _that_ she'd persuaded Oswin to hack into the mainframe of the nearest hospital and check that Oni hadn't died (he hadn't), and then she'd played a sly trick on a car dealership to get him a new levitator, feeling bad about both mortally wounding him _and_ destroying his ride. She'd snuck into the hospital and left him the keys with an apologetic note. Now, the flying saucer was cloaked nearby, the red meteorite safely on board so that Jenny could destroy it later; though she still hadn't gotten around to destroying the stash of heroin she'd acquired from Viola.

She nudged Oswin's leg gently underneath the table with her foot, the leg that actually had feeling in it, but not hard enough to cause any additional pain.

"What?"

"You okay?" Jenny asked sincerely. Oswin crossed her arms and slouched against the table.

"I'm thinking."

"What about?"

"How glad I am that Clara's your girlfriend and not me."

"What makes you think I'd even want you to be my girlfriend?"

"Everything you say and do. Really, though. Must be stressful for her." Jenny had bandages around her left hand now, but it was really just scratched; it wouldn't take more than a few days to heal fully and wasn't hurting her especially. Unlike the dull ache constantly present in her bad thumb.

"Yeah, well. That's why I'm moving. I don't…" She paused, thinking of the words to say, Oswin watching her expectantly. "Okay, I do enjoy it. The chaos and the thrill and the fun, but… it's different now. It's different now I care what happens to me a lot more than I used to. And I _hate_ the way she looks at me when I come back and have another wound."

"What way's that?"

"Similar to the way people look at injured, stray dogs. She doesn't get angry, just sad…" She pushed a takoyaki ball around her paper tray with a chopstick, sighing. "That's what hurts the most, y'know? That _is_ why I'm going to the village, so she doesn't worry about me so much. I'm choosing to be there for her."

"Big commitment."

Jenny smiled, "Nah. Besides, she needs me around more. She can get depressed these days…"

"That sort of thing happens when you die and have to leave your entire life behind to go live in the middle of nowhere."

"Maybe I should've asked if she wanted to move to Tokyo." Oswin laughed slightly. "I think I'll take her some takoyaki. Calamari is her favourite, after all, but I don't think she'll have ever had authentic takoyaki."

"I'm certainly glad _I've_ never had it, authentic or otherwise," Oswin said, turning up her nose up at Jenny's food.

"I don't know why you keep bringing this up, anyway."

"My distaste for seafood?"

"No, _us_."

"'Us'?"

"Don't get coy _now_. You know what I mean. And you know it wouldn't work." Oswin raised an eyebrow.

"You know, we've never talked about this."

"Maybe we should. After all, we're the only two who actually know nothing's going on between us. Some of the others are so _suspicious_ …"

"Uh-huh. Well, you're right. It wouldn't work. We're too similar. We're both broody and guilt-ridden. And we'd never get out of bed."

Jenny grinned, "D'you think?"

"I do think. But…"

"What?" Jenny entreated, taking another bite.

"I'm still gonna miss you when you leave."

"Oh… yeah. Well. So's dad. You can come visit! Come to the village! After all, it's where Esther is, and I know you have a thing for Esther as well as for me," she jibed. "Esther likes you when you manage to stop flirting with her."

"I know that," Oswin said defensively, "I talk to her. Check she's not accidentally seducing my boyfriend _too_ much – though I'd be fully supportive."

"She's asexual."

"But in a parallel world, I'm sure they're together. That's the beauty of the multiverse, Jenny-chan-" Jenny grimaced again at the honorific, "-everything's true somewhere. _We're_ probably a couple, you know, out there. Maybe there's even, I don't know, another female Doctor? You could have two mums. Wouldn't that be great?"

"I guess it'd be cool, but I've got enough trouble with the Doctors in _this_ universe, let alone dragging others into it. Besides, for every alternate Doctor there's an alternate Jenny."

"Maybe you should go meet an alternate Jenny."

"What would I do that for?"

"Sleep with her?" Jenny kicked her in the prosthetic. "I wish people wouldn't keep doing that! It's a very delicate piece of machinery!"

"Stop being obnoxious then!" Jenny snapped.

"But everyone loves how obnoxious I am!"

"They don't."

"It's my entire appeal!"

"It's not."

"You wouldn't like me as much if I was more polite."

"No, I'd like you more."

"Ha, ha," Oswin smiled at her. The rain increased, leading Jenny to hunch her shoulders and lean across the table even further. It was getting chilly, too; she didn't remember the date, or the season. No doubt it was one of those awkward months where it could be boiling hot one minute and freezing cold the next. The damp humidity from the rain was making her hair bother her, too, and she didn't have a hairbrush.

"Would you _really_ sleep with Clara?"

"Eurgh, absolutely not. Not in a million years."

"Then why make so many jokes about it?"

"Duh, because they're funny."

"They're gross, and they make people uncomfortable."

"Yeah. In a funny way. That's comedy for you."

"You're certainly not a comedian." Before Oswin could defend her, quite frankly, _hideous_ sense of humour, Jenny's phone buzzed with a text alert. Half a dozen times she had tried to call River Song, and none of the times she had been answered. But now she got a text – not a phone call, a _text_ – explaining to her exactly why River had betrayed her.

And it was even less than a text, it was just a photograph. A photograph of a battered, blue, leather-bound book, which oddly resembled the TARDIS. She was perplexed – what kind of an explanation was that?

"You're cute when you frown," Oswin remarked. Jenny ignored her, confused. "C'mon, what is it. Sharing is caring."

"Do you know what this means?" she held up her phone screen to Oswin.

"Sure, that's her diary," Oswin said, "Has her record of her time with the Doctor in it."

"Oh…"

"Why?"

"Maybe… well, I suppose, Pasz must have gotten his hands on it. He must have used it to convince her to give _me_ up… but how did _you_ know?"

"Erm, the TARDIS has a library and is full of useful information? You think I wouldn't read up on River Song? My enigmatic rival-hologram from the same century? Unfortunately, most of the entries about her say 'refer to diary.' _That's_ the diary." The entirety of River and the Doctor's relationship, written down? Outside of its clearly enormous sentimental value for River, Jenny could see how Pasznoxo reading it was dire. Could she blame River for selling her out with something like that at stake?

"Still," she muttered, putting her phone away, "Could've warned me Pasz might call. She knows I'm trying to stay out of trouble."

"She probably just got distracted, and you've been away. Maybe she wanted to tell you in person. There's a lot of stuff going on right now – mainly this ridiculous wedding we're all supposed to care so much about."

"I still haven't made the cake for that," Jenny sighed. That was tomorrow's job. When was she going to get a chance to see Clara? Hopefully _before_ the wedding itself.

"Can I ask you something?"

Jenny paused, "…Is it something creepy?"

"No," said Oswin. She seemed serious, for once. "Have you met Clara's dad? Ravenwood's dad?"

"Uh…" Jenny did not know whether to tell the truth. She _had_ met Clara's dad, because Clara had decided to announce to her father that she wasn't dead about the same time Jenny had decided to give _her_ father a piece of her mind about being abandoned. But she had done that without the prior 'permission' of any other Time Lord, taking all the authority upon herself.

"I can tell by your hesitation that you have."

"…Right… yeah. Yeah, I have met him. Pretended to be working for the government, made him think she had to fake her death and went into witness protection."

"Do you think it's weird that Adam won't let me meet his parents? And that he keeps refusing to meet my dad?"

"I _told_ you, _I'll_ meet your-"

"Not the point!" Oswin cut her off. She seemed to be genuinely worried about this.

"Well, why won't he let you meet them?"

"Because he doesn't like them, after they took off on a cruise and left Ellie home alone so now _he's_ got sole custody of her," Oswin explained, "It's less that, it's more my dad. I mean, I keep telling him my dad would love him, he'd think he's great, but Adam's just terrified. He's scared of my brother, too. Fyn. You remember Fyn?"

"He's the really hot one, right?"

"Oh, for – _yes_ , whatever, maybe some people might think that about him, though I think that's gross, personally. Fyn _likes_ Adam though. He thinks he's cute."

"He is a bit cute," said Jenny, "In a weird way."

"A 'weird way'?"

"Yeah. You know what I mean."

"Not really. I think he's gorgeous."

Jenny laughed, amused, "Do you really?" but Oswin just glared at her and she became very awkward. She coughed and changed her tone, "Yeah, I mean, sure, why wouldn't you?" She looked down at the remnants of her takoyaki, watching the rain spatter the puddles at their feet. Oswin shook her head.

"I'll pretend you didn't say that."

"That would be preferable."

"Really, though. Do you think it's weird…?"

"No. Hasn't it only been a few months? Let him go at his own pace. I wouldn't worry. Besides, he _has_ met Clara, and Clara _did_ create you. Doesn't that count for something?"

"Hmm. Maybe. Hadn't thought of it like that."

"She certainly sees you as a daughter, that's blatantly obvious."

"What gave it away?" Oswin asked sarcastically, "The fact she literally refers to me as her daughter sometimes?"

" _Well_ … I'm not one to judge."

"Except when you judge the attractiveness of my boyfriend."

"I said I was sorry!"

"You didn't, actually."

"Oh. I'm sorry. He's cute in a non-weird way."

"Great. I feel _so_ validated."

"Is your dad hot?"

"Is my dad _what_?"

"Hot," Jenny repeated, nonplussed.

"Yeah, again, giving you the opportunity to change what you said: is my dad _what_!?"

"Is he _hot_. H-O-T. Hot. Attractive. Tasty."

" _Tasty_?"

"Is he?"

"Is he!?"

"Is there an echo out here?" Oswin was not happy. "Sorry, have I crossed a line? Didn't you call my mother, quote-unquote, 'bangable', two weeks ago? Did you not say you 'hate swimming' but wouldn't say no to 'diving in that mu-'"

"Shush!"

"Didn't realise you were such a grotesque hypocrite."

"Blah, blah, blah. You definitely can't meet him now. Not in a million years."

"I can wait a million years."

"What's this? Giving me a taste of my own medicine?"

"Maybe a little."

"Well. As long as I don't have to taste that disgusting octopus, I can't say I'm bothered."

"Did you not have any fun today at all, then?" Jenny inquired wryly after a pause. She'd run out of food and was just biding her time before she could go get some more and deliver it unto Clara. Maybe she'd stop by quickly that night, just for an hour or two, until she had to really start working on that wedding cake…

"I much prefer staying on the TARDIS. Running ops, like you promised me I would be this morning."

"Well, Os-chan, in future, you can run _all_ my ops."

"Til death do us part. Or, more fittingly, until death does _you_ part. Because you're an idiot who just walks right into danger."

"That's part of my charm, though."

"I've never found ultraviolence _particularly_ charming, personally."

"Each to their own. _Now_ … I'm just gonna get some more food… you know, for the road… and to take to Clara," she slid off her stool and into the rain.

"As an apology?" Oswin asked.

"It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission!" Jenny called back through the haze of the poor weather, hunching her shoulders as she approached the takoyaki vendor. Still, there was always the slight worry that Clara might get tired of her someday, or that she wouldn't even welcome Jenny's impromptu dinner-dates where she brought whatever food she happened to stumble across that day.

Again, her phone went, but it wasn't River Song this time, it was the very woman who was on her mind: Clara Ravenwood.

 _Do u fancy grabbing dinner 2nite?_

Smiling, waiting for her latest batch of diced, battered octopus, Jenny replied: _Always. I'll be right over_.

 **AN: And TRAGICALLY, I have to go on hiatus again! But, never fear, because I'm halfway through the next "Retrograde" arc (as you all know, I write the entire arcs in advance before I upload them, and they're much longer than the standard fic arcs), and seeing as last year I did a special Christmas chapter over in** ** _Spook Watch/Spooky Hollow_** **but no Halloween chapter, this year's the opposite and there will be a special Halloween chapter which will centre around the vampires in the future and, despite it arguably fitting better in** ** _Spooky Hollow_** **, I will upload it here.**


	206. For She's a Jolly Good Fellow

**AN: I'm back! Although I haven't really gone away because there's been so much of** ** _Retrograde_** **. This is also the PENULTIMATE storyline. Of the** ** _entire fic_** **. Although I do have a bunch of ideas for** ** _Retrograde_** **which does directly carry on the future continuity (I'm gonna have them go to the French Revolution at some point, and find a genie at another).**

 **DAY 162**

 _For She's a Jolly Good Fellow_

 _Martha_

" _For she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fellow, for she's a jolly good fe-ellow! And…_ and… and _she's a jolly good fellow! Nobody can… fellow!_ " Rose Tyler sang, and then she hiccupped.

"I swear to god," Amy Pond began through gritted teeth, "If you don't shut up, I'll strangle you."

"Why's nobody else singing?" Rose slurred, disappointed.

"Because nobody else is drunk," Donna snapped at her. There were a few long moments of silence when all they heard was the lapping of the waves outside and the creaking of the ship. Then Rose coughed and broke into song again, her own wonderful remix where she got half of the words wrong. While she sang, she rolled side to side against the wall of their cell, holed up in a grotty corner Martha didn't dare go near. _She_ was standing up with her arms crossed rigidly, Amy and Donna side-by-side perched on the edge of an iron cot. Clara was leaning against the criss-crossing bars with her arms looped through them.

"This is absurd," Clara said, "Even for us. We've really pushed the boat out today." Martha glared at her. "I mean… not the boat… the… land-based-vehicle we could have also potentially pushed out…" Quiet again, and then Rose piped up once more.

" _What do we do with a drunken sailor, what do we do with a drunken sailor, what do we do with a drunken sailor_ … _early_ … throw… ' _something' in the water_ ," she stumbled. The wrong words again.

"How much have you actually had to drink?" Martha questioned her. She mumbled something incoherent. "Excuse me?"

"'M not drunk," she repeated herself, lolling around. She was drunk, they'd seen her consume an ungodly amount of alcohol so far that day, the rest of them all straining to stay sober. Of course, Martha had the excuse of being pregnant (not that anyone aside from Rose knew about that), but the others had struggled quite a lot to resist Rose's pressuring them to join her in chaos.

"Better she stays drunk," said Clara, "If we find ourselves with a seasick, hungover idiot in an enclosed space like this…"

"I can smell it already," said Amy sourly.

"This is great!" Rose announced, beaming.

"How is this great!?" Donna demanded of her. The four of them had been trying to get away from Rose in her corner, distancing themselves. "You know you're getting married tomorrow?"

"Boo!" Rose protested, "You're spoiling the fun!"

"Oh, _I'm_ spoiling the fun? Am I the one who got us kidnapped by pirates?"

"They're giving us a lift!"

"Where could they possibly be giving us a lift to?" Amy asked.

"Pirate Land," said Rose knowingly, nodding.

" _Why_ do I bother…"

"Are you so drunk where you missed the part where we were dragged onto this ship at gunpoint?" Martha continued. Rose said nothing. "You're literally delirious."

"Is not that bad," she mumbled.

"What part of it isn't 'that bad'?" Donna asked her, "We've been kidnapped by pirates, the day before your wedding, robbed of our phones, our powers aren't working, and nobody knows where we've gone. We'll be lucky if we're not made to walk the plank."

"Walking the plank is actually historically inaccurate," Amy interrupted, "They never did that. It's more likely that they'll keel haul you."

"What's that?"

"It's where they drag you around the underside of the ship and across all the barnacles."

"Oh, great. I'll look forward to that then, shall I?"

Amy shrugged, "It's just history…"

"Why would our powers just stop working, though…" Clara thought out loud. That was bothering Martha, too, far more than having her phone stolen by a couple of criminals so they couldn't call for help. But at the most vital moment, their superpowers had all miraculously failed. "Maybe…" Clara began, then stopped.

"What?" Martha prompted her.

"What if, like… what if we're in a simulation?" she suggested.

"How could we be in a simulation?" Amy asked, "I remember clearly everything that's happened today."

"What if the morning was part of the simulation, too? I mean, it makes sense, don't you think?"

"Not particularly," said Martha, who, like Amy, could remember quite clearly all of the morning's events with no lapses or gaps. Typically, being stolen and sucked into a simulation caused at least some failure of memory, "Why would anyone put us in a simulation where Rose is drunk and we've been kidnapped by pirates?"

"You says," Rose began woozily, "You don't not remember… but _I_ don't not _not_ remember…"

"Rose," said Amy firmly, "I _will_ kill you. Don't test me." Rose stuck her tongue out. "Look, let's just go through the day's events again, slowly, and see if anything sticks out as being… simulation-esque…"

* * *

 _A Few Hours Earlier…_

"Why do babies need so much stuff?" Mickey questioned her that morning, the two of them sitting in their bedroom eating breakfast – just cereal – at a small table. There hadn't always been a table in their room, just a bed really and a small TV that was never used, but they'd been sinking into the solace of each other's company much more since the news had come out. He was trying to make a wish list of everything they would need to buy on his phone.

"What do you mean?"

"Well… they can't even _do_ much. They're so expensive, and they just…"

"What a nice attitude to have towards our child," Martha said, but she was only joking. She knew he was only worrying about money, but he wasn't very appreciative of what she was implying. "I'm _kidding_. Look, I'll talk to Leo, he might still have some stuff from when Keisha was a baby we could have. In fact, I'm sure he does still have a pram, because mum's always complaining about it taking up space."

"When do you think we'll tell your family?" he asked. Martha was the only one of them who had any family to tell.

"After the chaos of this wedding is over," she said, "I'm not… I'm not trying to keep it from them. Mum's going to be over the moon. Although…"

"What?"

"You know what my mum's like. She's not going to give us a second of peace, trying to get involved with everything, asking where we're going to live, if I'm going back to work, all that… Just, don't worry about it for the moment," she said, being a tremendous hypocrite because she spent most of her waking moments intensely worried about their future, "After the wedding, it'll all… I don't know."

"At least it's tomorrow," Mickey said.

"How's it feel?"

"How's what feel?"

"Having to go watch your ex-girlfriend get married to the man she left you for," Martha said, again, joking.

"Ouch. I wasn't even thinking about that. How's it feel watching a man you used to be in love with get married to the girl you tried to replace?"

"Point taken."

"Maybe we shouldn't go."

"Why?"

"Neither of them came to our wedding. And the Doctor – what's his excuse? We tried to invite him, and nothing!" Mickey argued. He brought that up more than Martha thought was necessary; the Doctor was, well, the Doctor. He'd probably missed the message, or it arrived in his future or his past. She was sure he hadn't skipped their wedding on purpose, out of any kind of malign intention.

"We have to go. She's in the running to be godmother."

"What do you mean 'in the running'? 'In the running' with who?"

"I don't know – Gwen?"

"Well, Gwen hasn't asked, though, has she? It'd be a bit rude to overlook Rose when she's been begging," Mickey said.

"Okay, so you don't want to go to her wedding, but she's your number one pick for godmother?"

"I just don't like wearing suits, you know that," he said. She did know that, it was a struggle trying to get Mickey Smith to wear anything even _remotely_ formal. Not that she was a big fan of formalities herself; she'd choose jeans over a dress any day. "You know, he came to brief me when I was making tea earlier."

"Who came to brief you on what?" she asked, confused, continuing eating her cornflakes (at least she hadn't been craving Clara's disgusting cereal again.)

"The Tenth Doctor, about how they want us all staying in this hotel."

"What? When?"

"Tonight."

" _Tonight_? She hasn't told me anything about that. Where is this hotel?"

"Haven't got a clue."

"Ugh. We already all live on the TARDIS, why do we have to go stay in a hotel now? How much is that going to cost?"

"She's paying for it with that stolen credit card she's using to fund the entire thing."

"We better not get arrested for being, I don't know, accessories to fraud. I don't care if they arrest Rose, but I'm not giving birth in prison," she complained.

"We'll just deny everything," Mickey said.

"Sounds like a great plan," Martha muttered sarcastically, "Probably works for everybody." He yawned and stretched in the exaggerated way he sometimes did, which had always irritated her a little but when she mentioned it he argued he was 'only stretching' – despite the fact he ended up kicking her under the table as he did so.

"I think I'm gonna have a shower. Before I get to packing."

"For our hotel trip?"

"Well, I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself."

"You think I'm going to hurt myself packing an overnight bag?"

"You could pull a muscle."

"I doubt that any muscles would be involved. Just leave it, you always pack wrong anyway."

"How do I 'pack wrong'?" he asked, standing up.

"You do. Do you remember our honeymoon? When we went to Greece? And you forgot to pack _any_ socks?"

"You're so rude to me. It's out of order."

"I'm having your baby, so I'll talk to you how I like," she said, which defused the situation quite well because he could never stop the overwhelming feeling of joy which swept through him whenever the baby was brought up. Whenever _she_ brought it up, really, because deep down she was still coming to terms with the realities of having a real-life _child_.

Nevertheless, Mickey eventually vanished off into the en suite to have a wash, leaving Martha to finish off the leftover milk in her cereal bowl. Unfortunately, it was during his brief absence that everything decided to kick off, and she heard shouting from the Bedroom Circle which sounded distinctly like Rose Tyler telling someone to stop trying to have sex with her. Thinking that could potentially be something serious, and even if it wasn't serious it was certainly a weird thing to overhear at ten o'clock in the morning, Martha's sense of duty and responsibility forced her to investigate.

"I am _not_ trying to have sex with you, I'm just trying to stop you from-" Clara Oswald was halfway through her sentence, hands on Rose's shoulders, when Rose's knees buckled, and she collapsed right onto Clara.

"You're _touching_ me," Rose said, "Pervert."

"I'm – you fell on me!" Clara argued, trying to get Rose back on her feet.

"What's going on?" Martha asked, approaching.

"Careful, Marth," Rose said, "She might try and shag you, too."

"For god's sake…" Clara muttered.

"But… maybe you'd enjoy it."

"Excuse me!?" Martha asked, suddenly thinking that Gwen Cooper was her new first pick to be the unborn baby's godmother.

"She's drunk," said Clara, finally pushing Rose back onto her feet properly, though Rose continued to sway uneasily.

"She's-!? It's ten AM!"

"It's five o'clock somewhere," Rose said, staggering towards the wall, "This is a _time machine_. Don't be so _boring_ Martha. Come out with me."

"Out with you? Where?"

"For my hen party!"

"Your _what_? You had a hen party yesterday."

"There was nothing to drink. Can't have a hen party without _drink_."

"And how long have you been drinking for today, exactly?"

"Early birds, n… worms," Rose nodded to herself.

"That's comforting…" Clara mumbled.

"Have _you_ been drinking?" Martha asked her next.

"At this time on a morning? No, I most certainly have not. I'm _supposed_ to be going out for a quiet lunch with my husband before the inevitable chaos of _this one's_ wedding tomorrow, but she almost kicked the door down just now shouting about how she wants to go and get pissed," Clara explained.

"Don't you have important wedding things to be doing?" Martha implored Rose, "Why don't you go have a cold shower and I'll make you a coffee? Sober up?"

"But I don't _wanna_ be sober," Rose said, punching the wall so hard she dented the metal.

"Okay," Martha said, backing away a few steps, "Well… we'll just, uh…"

"We're having a hen party," Rose said firmly, "This is 'important wedding things.'" The commotion prompted another intervention as people came into the Circle from Nerve Centre. Martha was really hoping it was the Tenth Doctor or Jack, since they were the only two she could think of who might be able to talk some sense into Rose, but it was only Donna and Amy. Martha thought she saw Amy in Donna's company far more often than Rory's. Rose cheered drunkenly when she saw the pair of them. " _Now_ it's a party!" she announced. Amy frowned at her.

"What's going on?"

"Rose is drunk," said Martha and Clara at the time time.

"I am _not_ drunk!" Rose shouted, then she tripped over her own feet. Clara again went to steady her, but Rose made a very angry sound that made her think twice, and so she stepped away to join Martha in keeping her distance. If there was one thing more dangerous than a human being with the power to control reality, it was a _drunk_ human being with the power to control reality.

"You've been _drinking_ the morning before your wedding!?" Donna demanded of her.

"It's my hen party!"

"What was wrong with the hen party Jack and I planned? It took us ages to sort that out!" She was absolutely livid. Martha wondered how successful she'd be if she tried to sneak away back to Mickey and let Rose ruin her own wedding if was that hellbent on it.

"There's no booze! Doesn't count!"

Donna was about to start shouting at Rose, but Clara of all people jumped to her defence to try and stop the situation from escalating, "There's no point having a go at her when she's like this. You're best to hold onto it and bring it up later, when she's sober." It was a good point; after all, they all knew Rose could be a very unpleasant drunk depending on what she'd been consuming.

"I just wanna have fun! Why don't you want me to have fun? It's my last night of freedom!"

"Technically, it's your last _morning_ of freedom," said Amy dryly, "Y'know, since it's not even noon."

"You're all just _mean_. Why don't you want to come on my hen party with me?"

"Oh, we're invited?" Amy continued with her sarcasm, "Looks like a bit of a one woman show from over here." Rose was too out of it to pick up on the fact she was being mocked.

"Everyone's invited! Every girl! The _hens_! All the single ladies!"

"We're literally all married," said Clara.

"We're going out!" Rose declared, "I don't _care_. It's my _wedding day_."

"It's not," said Amy, "And, we're sort of busy."

"Yeah, I've got plans with Mickey all day," Martha said, which was true of every day now because they had so much on their plate.

"No!" Rose exclaimed, "That's it!"

Martha hadn't realised before that Rose was capable of teleporting people without touching them, and if she'd known that she probably wouldn't have even left her room hearing the commotion. It might not be anywhere near as unpleasant or jarring as a vortex manipulator, but getting taken to a random point in space and time was the absolute _last_ thing she needed – even if it was what all five of them got. They were plucked out of thin air on the TARDIS and dropped on a shoreline in the middle of the night, seawater washing over Martha's legs.

"Oh, no," she said, "No, no no no no no… this isn't happening…" She sloshed about in the shallows until working out which way the beach was, white sand glowing in moonlight and the shore dotted with firelight: a town, most certainly, but not a modern one.

"What the hell have you done!?" Amy shouted at Rose, who was also wading through the sea towards the nearby lights and wooden shacks.

"Now _this_ is a great place for a hen party!" she said as she stumbled through the seafoam and onto the beach, the other four forced to follow. Martha's socks squelched when she finally made it out of the water, rowdy but jovial cheers reaching her from the settlement.

"Where are we!?" she asked anybody who was willing to answer.

"Tropical island, I think," said Clara, pointing out a palm tree. However, when Martha's eyes strayed down the trunk she saw something much more sinister strung up by a rotten rope: a corpse, hanged, and left to become carrion for the birds. It wasn't the only body, either; though the shadows were thick at that time of night, Martha eventually made out at least half a dozen in varying states of decomposition; some could have just been killed yesterday, while others must be months old.

At the opposite end of the beach a long stretch of docks had been erected from shoddy pieces of driftwood, and the silhouettes of more than a few large ships were visible against the horizon and the night sky. They weren't any kind of ship Martha had seen outside of a theme park.

"Someone _please_ tell me this is an extra part of Disneyland in the future," she said. In the distance they heard a gunshot, and Rose cheered and whooped, heading in the general direction of all the commotion. "Rose? ROSE!"

" _What_!?"

"What are you doing, bringing us here!? Take us home," Martha ordered her.

"No!"

" _Yes!_ "

"It's _my_ universe."

"No, please," Martha grabbed her shoulders as they staggered across the beach, "Please, Rose. I have to go home, back to Mickey." She tried to get Rose to meet her eyes, but Rose was somewhere else entirely. "You stay here if you want, but I've got to get back to the TARDIS."

"Just one drink, Marth."

"No, not one drink, I can't be here," she hissed.

"Why can't you just drink by yourself like any other budding alcoholic?" Amy quipped.

" _I'll_ take us back," Donna volunteered when Rose wasn't budging on her ridiculous, drunken stance. Donna then did a bizarre hand motion in the air in front of her, which resulted in absolutely nothing happening. She frowned. Tried again. Nothing. "Hold on… third time's the charm…" Unperturbed, she tried once again to conjure one of her portals, and once again it failed. "I'm, um… this never happens, honestly."

"Rose, seriously," Martha continued to implore, "I'll come and hang out with you while you get drunk back on the TARDIS, where it's safe and there aren't any dead bodies hanging up." Rose squinted, and finally something within her must have had a genuine thought. "I promise, I'll spend the whole day with you." Better waste the day with Rose on the TARDIS than out there on a desert island.

"Alright, alright… if you _promise_ …"

"Yes, fine, whatever you want," said Martha, "It's your wedding, after all." She could always force Mickey to come along as well, she supposed; let _him_ field Rose's endless baby-related questions.

"Let's _go_ , then…" Only… they didn't. They stayed right where they were. Rose grew incredibly confused.

"If you tell me you're too drunk to teleport…"

"Shh, shush," Rose waved a hand at her, then scrunched up her face and closed her eyes very tightly. Just like with Donna, nothing happened.

"Uh… this might be a bad time to point out that my powers aren't working, either…" Clara interrupted. At that, Martha desperately tried to make a flame in her hand, something which was ordinarily incredibly easy. Yet no flames appeared, no heat whatsoever.

"Uh-oh…" said Amy.

"This doesn't make sense, how can our powers just be gone?" Martha said. Rose was walking again. "Rose! Don't wander off! We don't even know where we are!"

"I'll ask around!" she said, continuing her quest towards the buildings.

"No! We should stick together!" Martha protested as Amy followed in Rose's tracks.

"We might as well see what's going on," she said, "There must be _some_ reason our powers have just stopped."

"I'm so tired of getting stuck on tropical islands with _you_ ," Donna said pointedly to Amy, "That's the second time this week…"

"Donna! We shouldn't… they've got guns!" Martha was left with only Clara by her side, watching the other three vanish.

"Come on," Clara said quietly, "Amy's got a point. And we can't very well call anybody to come and get us if we don't even know when or where we are."

"This isn't safe!"

"We'll be fine if we don't piss anybody off," said Clara, who was naturally very good at pissing people off.

Martha was forced to give in. "Alright! But I'm telling you now, this is a terrible idea."

 **AN: Minor spoiler: they definitely are not in a simulation, it's something else going on which is vastly more interesting.**


	207. A Night out on the Town

_A Night out on the Town_

 _Martha_

"Nassau," Amy announced, sliding back into the chair next to Clara at the table they'd managed to acquire in what she supposed you might generously describe as a 'tavern.' "That's where we are. Nassau. The Bahamas. 1718, pirate haven. Best part about a pirate haven, though, is that they have their own special pirate laws." The place was bristling with the 18th Century's most undesirables; ex-soldiers, privateers, colonists, prostitutes – though, she supposed prostitutes existed everywhere – they were all packed into that dilapidated, tropical pub drinking dusty liquor, swearing and stinking. It was everything she expected a pirate utopia to be.

"Like what?" Martha prompted.

"Well, if we don't kill anyone, steal anything, or make any trouble, we _should_ be left alone," she explained. It was at this point that Rose finished downing the bottle of rum she'd acquired from somewhere and slammed it loudly on the table, causing a silence to pass over the room.

"Who wants to buy me another drink!?" she shouted, and then she burped. Suddenly, she was awash with drinks, bought by filthy pirates all trying their luck with her.

"A drink for any of the other pretty ladies, perhaps?" one with more than a few black teeth said, leering towards Amy, who happened to be closest to him.

"No, thanks," she said awkwardly, "I'm doing dry January."

"It's September," the pirate said.

"Dry September, then," she shrugged. He frowned at her like he didn't understand the idea of somebody choosing _not_ to drink, but then, 18th Century pirates were surely the worst sobriety advocates you could find. After showering Rose with more rum than she knew what to do with, they all crept away again to their stations, probably waiting for her to drink herself so silly they could make their untoward advances without her putting up much of a fight. That was why Martha wasn't going to let Rose out of her sight; who knew what could happen without their powers?

"This is _so_ worrying," Clara whispered to Martha, eyeing Rose, "Who does this the day before their wedding? It's not even noon…" Martha couldn't help but agree. She'd had her own hen party three weeks before her wedding and hadn't even been half as drunk as Rose was at the moment. Drinking on her own, during the morning, definitely did not bode well for her future happiness. And where had the Tenth Doctor been? Why hadn't he tried to put a stop to this? Why hadn't anybody?

"I think our best bet is to just stay here until she's so drunk she can't complain about it, and then call someone to bring the TARDIS down and take her home," Donna said, Rose utterly incapable of listening to them.

"Because who _doesn't_ want to be severely hungover for their own wedding?" Clara quipped, "Sounds like a dream come true."

"Could always dump her somewhere harmless to sleep it off," Martha suggested, "We do live in a time machine, after all. There's no real reason she has to get married _tomorrow_."

"I'm getting married tomorrow!" Rose shouted upon hearing this, then she cheered to herself and took another swig of rum.

"Why don't we just throw her into the sea and be done with it?" Amy grumbled, "She's bound to sober up if that happens."

"I don't know," said Clara, raising her eyebrow at Rose sceptically, "She might drown."

"Can she die, though?" asked Amy. "If she can control the universe."

"Is that your idea? Let's throw her into the sea to test if she dies or not?" Clara asked. Amy shrugged. "Can she even swim?" At that, Martha elbowed Rose sharply to get her attention.

"Can you swim?" she asked. It seemed like a sensible question, seeing as they were on a desert island surrounded by water (and Amy was threatening to try and drown her.)

Rose snort-laughed, "Of course I can _swim_ , Martha. I'm from London."

"I'm… not sure what that means." Rose shook her head and went back to her drink.

"So we're all agreed? We're going to throw her into the sea?" Amy said, "All in favour, say aye."

"No," Donna said, "We're not going to drown Rose." Rose burped again and fell off her chair onto the floor at Clara's feet. Clara, as she was closest, went to help – only to be berated by Rose and, yet again, be called a 'pervert' for touching her. So Martha had to step in to drag Rose back to the table, so she could continue to drown her apparently non-existent sorrows in whatever liquid was put in front of her.

"You know, etymologically speaking, the word 'pervert' in this context has its origins as a homophobic slur," Clara said to Rose. Martha didn't think Rose cared about etymology on the best of days, however. "It's more than a _little_ offensive that you keep calling me it. It's also generally used to refer to men." But she had lost Rose's attention.

" _Are_ you offended?" Martha inquired.

"Me? Maybe. I'd be more so if she wasn't drunk, but don't think I'm not going to bring this up again when she's sober. But, you know, it's eleven in the morning – too early to teach identity politics to _this_ train wreck," Clara said dismissively of Rose. "What else do we have to talk about? Other than, I don't know, queer activism."

"Are you _sure_ you don't want to throw her in the sea?" Amy persisted.

"How's your speech going?" Clara ignored Amy and asked Donna.

"I shouldn't say, not with the bride right here."

"I doubt she'll remember," Martha said, glancing at Rose briefly.

"SHOTS!" she shouted, then took another large swig of her rum.

"You're not even drinking shots!" Amy protested, but Rose wasn't paying her the slightest bit of notice. "Urgh! Why can't we just go home and get brunch like normal people?"

"It's a liquid brunch," Clara quipped, referring to Rose. Amy wasn't amused.

"You're hilarious."

"I do try."

"It's not going well," Donna eventually answered, satisfied that Rose really _was_ in another world entirely, "I'm not a public speaker. And especially not when I have to warm everyone up for Jack's speech. He could write a best man speech in his sleep."

"I wanted the Doctor to make a speech at my wedding," said Amy, "But he showed up late."

"He wasn't even at mine," said Martha, echoing the conversation she'd had with Mickey that morning.

"He came to mine to drop off the winning lottery ticket I got," Donna explained, "But I didn't remember him at the time. Or recognise him." They all turned to Clara, awaiting her absent-Doctor wedding anecdote, failing to realise the obvious.

"Well obviously he was there when _I_ got married, since he was the one I was marrying," she said, which ruined the whole conversation, really. "Enough about brides, anyway. How's the groom faring? The Doctor – Eleven, I mean – is getting really sick of Ten asking him weird questions all the time."

"Questions like what?" Martha was intrigued.

"He asked him something like, 'do you ever feel trapped by having to wear a wedding ring?'" Clara repeated.

" _Does_ he?"

"No."

"It's worrying," said Amy, "If Ten thinks _that's_ what a marriage is like."

" _This_ is much more worrying," Donna said, indicating Rose, "If any behaviour screams 'I don't want to get married', it's running away to an inescapable tropical island and binge-drinking. What if she drinks herself sick?"

"I'm keeping an eye on her," Martha said, "I think you lot all forgot I'm a doctor. If there's a stomach somewhere needs pumping, I'll be there to do it."

"How reassuring," said Amy. "Alternatively, may I suggest we just let her get on with it? Drinking herself to death, I mean."

"And people say _I'm_ sarcastic," Clara muttered.

"Rose, are you alright?" Donna questioned, having to raise her voice so that Rose could hear anything over her stupor. "Like, do you actually _want_ to get married…?"

"Of course I want to get married!" Rose argued very passionately, "Why wouldn't I? When I'm engaged to the most _amazing_ man in the entire-" hiccup "- _universe_?"

If their day hadn't taken a turn for the worse when Rose had first announced her drunkenness in the corridor earlier, it certainly did once their conversation dwindled, and a handful of interlopers dragged – in synchronicity – an additional set of chairs to the edge of their table. Two women and two men were suddenly seated in between them all, Rose oblivious but the other four very ill at ease by the change.

"Sorry for the interruption," said one of the two girls, "But we couldn't help overhearing your friend discussing her fiancé."

"This isn't the sort of place to be talking so openly about one's personal attachments," said the other. The girls, both dressed boyishly in the standard male pirate clothes and who certainly did not fall into the other two categories of woman present in the tavern (those being 'barmaid' or 'whore'), were quite obviously in charge. The portly, toothless men were little more than lackeys, but probably still knew more about how to handle the swords around their waists than any of _them_ did if they had a weapon.

"The wrong person might overhear," said the first girl again, a red-head with an Irish accent, "And we couldn't have that. It might put you at risk."

"What makes _you_ the 'right person'?" Clara asked the Irish one, who was wedged in next to her. The girl leant her elbow on the table and leant towards Clara, a motion which may be described as a 'leer' by someone being particularly ungenerous – Clara, at least, didn't seem to appreciate it, and leant the opposite direction, back towards Martha.

"Wouldn't you say I'm the right person?"

"I'd say I haven't a clue what kind of person you are, other than one who interrupts groups of old friends while they try to celebrate," Clara said.

"Maybe we want to celebrate too."

"Aye, I'd never turn down a chance to celebrate," said the second girl, distinctly English, though with a regional accent that had faded into something ambiguous Martha couldn't place. "What's say we do that by hearing more about your fiancé?"

"And how about another round? On us?" the Irish girl said to Rose, knowing the way straight to her heart. Or straight to her liver, as the case may be. Attracting the attention of pirates was the last thing they'd wanted to do, but now it seemed they would struggle to escape it. A fresh bottle of rum was brought over for Rose, paid for in pennies by the women.

"He's _fantastic_ ," Rose slurred, "He's the best man I've ever known."

"Must be, to be marrying a girl like you." It became clear to Martha as they started coaxing information out of the incredibly inebriated Rose: she was their mark. And without any powers at their disposal, a mystery they had yet to really look into, there wasn't an awful lot they could do. The pirates were all armed with swords and pistols, and _they_ weren't armed with anything at all; perhaps she used to carry a gun, back when she was freelancing or working with UNIT or Torchwood, but that had been months ago, before she'd re-adopted the Doctor's no-weapons policy (and because, with pyrokinesis, she didn't need one.)

Rose went on and on about how phenomenally wonderful the Doctor was – which made her desire to drink herself into oblivion all the more unusual, if she really was happy – which made the pirates more and more interested. They became especially interested when Rose mentioned his ship, which they took to mean a real ship.

"Rose, maybe you shouldn't-" Clara tried to stop her.

"Shush," Rose waved a hand in Clara's face.

"Let her talk if she wants to talk," said the English girl.

"I just don't think-"

"I said _shush_ ," said Rose, "Just because you're _obsessed_ with women," she slurred.

"I'm-!? I just don't want you to-"

"She's a _lesbian_ ," Rose told the Irish girl.

"Hate to bring us back to etymology again," Clara began, "But first of all, the word isn't used in that context in this era, and second of all, it's technically not true."

"It's true you sleep with women," Rose reiterated.

"Which you seem to have a problem with, even though I've never actually tried to sleep with you," Clara snapped at her, clearly reaching the end of her tether with these constant, borderline-homophobic jabs. There was only so far drunkenness would go as an excuse.

"This fiancé," the English pirate continued, while the Irish girl appeared preoccupied with the revelation about Clara, whose personal space she continued trying to invade, "Does he… have a lot of money? I'd hate the idea of a nice girl like you marrying someone who couldn't provide."

"That's such a loaded question," Amy said, then told Rose firmly, "Don't answer."

Indignant, Rose declared, "I'll answer who I like!" Martha wanted to curl up and die. She was supposed to be having a _baby_ , for god's sake, not getting on the wrong side of a group of pirates. "We've got _loads_ of money at the moment. Well, it's sort of, like, stolen, but we're basically _rich_." Simultaneously, the four pirates drew their guns: the men had one each, while the women both had two, meaning all five of the TARDIS companions had a loaded pistol aimed straight at them.

"I can see by those nice rings that you're all married women, too," said the English girl, "So you'll be coming along as well. Or we could chop off your hands right here and just take the shine – though your husbands will definitely want to retrieve you, I'm sure."

" _Don't_ move a muscle," the Irish one said, pressing the muzzle of her gun into Clara's temple. Clara had been fidgeting with something at Martha's side, which Martha now realised was her phone. "What's that?" The Irish girl snatched it, Clara powerless to stop her (literally).

"Nothing, it's just-"

"Is it valuable? It looks valuable."

"No, it isn't-" The Irish girl pressed the gun against Clara's head even more, and Clara shut up completely.

"The rest of you, turn out your pockets. We'll be holding onto these _things_."

 _Good going_ , Martha thought, glaring at Clara. Now what were they going to do? They were ultimately forced to hand over their phones, despite the pirates not knowing what to do with them. Rose obliged very easily, apparently unaware that they were being robbed and in the process of being kidnapped because she'd duped the pirates into thinking the Doctor was affluent.

"Where is this fiancé? Is he in Nassau? Havana? Can't be too far if you're getting married tomorrow," the English girl asked.

"Suppose he's up at the fort," the Irish one said, "Some poncey commodore or the like." Rose laughed like they'd told her a joke. Martha was despairing, giving her phone – which wasn't cheap – to the English pirate. "Alas, where's my manners?"

"Same place as your personal hygiene, I assume," Amy quipped, making the Irish girl point her other gun – the one _not_ aimed at Clara's skull – in her direction instead.

"I'm Anne. And my less-charming friend is Mary."

"Hang on," Amy suddenly started, apparently not worrying about the pistol threatening to gut her, "You mean-!? You're-!? Anne Bonny? And Mary Read? Two of the most notorious pirates _in history_!?"

"Why don't we just put the whole kidnapping on pause, so you can get an autograph," Donna snapped at her.

"I'm flattered, really," said Anne Bonny, whom Martha had certainly heard of despite her general disinterest in history, "But it doesn't change that you're all going to come with us to our ship so that we can notify the husband-to-be of the ransom on his girly's head."

"If you cooperate, nobody has to die," said Mary Read, "And we won't have to waste any gunpowder shooting you. So we'll all win."

"I, uh… suppose we'll be coming with you, then…" Martha said, very aware that any of them could meet their deaths at any second.

Anne Bonny smiled, "That's the spirit."


	208. A General History of Pyrates

_A General History of Pyrates_

 _Martha_

"Unless Rose teleported us directly into a simulation, I don't think that's what's happening," Donna decided after they had gone over the day's events so far together – including their hour of captivity aboard Bonny and Read's ship which had left Nassau as soon as they'd been thrown into the brig.

"Yeah, but…" Amy began, deep in thought.

"I'm pretty sure that Anne Bonny and Mary Read both pretended to be men," said Clara eventually.

"That's what I was thinking," said Amy, "But they just introduced themselves to us as, you know, themselves. Not in disguise. Even though, by all accounts, they definitely _did_ both wear disguises… then again, what little we know of them does come from that ridiculous book."

"What book?" asked Martha, who'd never been particularly interested in pirates.

" _A General History of the Most Notorious Pyrates_ ," Clara answered, the only one who was fully following what Amy was saying. "It wouldn't surprise me if everything in that book is a lie. Maybe Bonny and Read didn't need to pretend to be men to command respect."

"Maybe…" Amy said, still thinking. Thunder rumbled somewhere overhead as the sea sloshed against the hull. They were right at the bottom of the ship, probably mostly underwater and hidden at the back of the hold.

"What about Oswin?" Martha thought suddenly.

"What _about_ her?" Clara asked.

"You're psychically connected to her – they can't confiscate _that_ ," Martha reminded her, "She must be able to do something."

"You think I haven't tried that? She's either ignoring me, or the mind-patch is being interfered with," Clara sighed, "I've been trying to get a hold of her periodically ever since we arrived here. Which could happen in a simulation. What's strange is it's normally painful when something messes with it."

"You don't think Oswin would…?" Martha began.

"What? Dump us in this nightmare the day before Rose's wedding? No, I don't," said Clara firmly, "There's no reason for it. Unless one of you's really pissed her off, but I'm sure she would have told me about it if you had."

"Maybe _you've_ done something to her," Amy suggested.

"Well, I haven't," Clara shrugged, "It won't be her. She doesn't even like pirates, or anything to do with Earth or the sea." Speaking of the sea, the rocking of the ship was intensifying. Martha had to hold onto one of their cage bars to keep herself steady, like Clara was doing, and she could certainly hear a rainstorm picking up. "Urgh – this is a nightmare… I need a smoke…" she fumbled about with her pockets for one of the few items she had that _hadn't_ been confiscated by pirates. Martha started, however.

"Err, I'd rather you didn't. This is an enclosed space."

"It smells bad enough as it is," said Clara, taking out her Marlboros and her lighter, "I hardly think one cigarette is going to make it much more unbearable."

"No, really," Martha told her seriously.

"What's up with you?" Donna asked her, "Just let her, it's easier than an argument. You know how she can be when she hasn't smoked."

"No," Martha continued, "I just… I don't want to have to deal with it."

"Is for the baby," Rose slurred, the first thing she'd said for a while. Martha had thought she'd managed to fall asleep, or something, but apparently she was still acutely aware of what was going on. Clara froze right when she was about to light the cigarette between her lips.

" _Baby_?" Amy asked Rose, "What baby?"

"She's having a baby," Rose waved a hand vaguely in Martha's direction. Martha was mortified; this was _not_ the way she had wanted everybody else to find out, not at all. Clara dropped the cigarette and it fell to the floor at her feet, but she didn't appear to notice. Suddenly, Martha was everything she didn't want to be: the centre of attention.

"Is she for real?" Donna indicated Rose.

"You're _pregnant_?" Clara stared at her.

"I…" but there was no use in lying or trying to avoid the question. They'd have to find out sooner or later. "Fine, yes. About a month. I've known for ten days. And before you make a thing of it – yes, it's Mickey's, and yes, he knows about it, he was the first to know, and he's very excited."

"Well – congratulations!" said Donna.

"Yeah, that's great," Clara added, smiling, putting away her cigarettes now the real reason Martha didn't want to breathe in her second-hand smoke was clear.

"Here everybody thought Clara was the one who'd find herself knocked up," Amy quipped, "But – no, I'm really happy for you."

"I've never been pregnant, actually," Clara argued with her, "I've only ever contracted STIs. Not… babies."

"I don't think you 'contract' a baby, it's not a disease," said Donna. Clara just shrugged. "And – how many STIs have you actually had?"

"Couldn't say."

"Why not?" Donna asked.

"She means literally," Martha explained, "She literally can't say, because she doesn't know."

"Hang on, if you're having a baby on the TARDIS," Amy began, "Doesn't that mean it's going to be a Time Lord? That's what happened when I got pregnant with River."

"Bloody hell!" Donna exclaimed.

"What?" Amy asked.

"Forgot she was your daughter. It's _so_ weird…"

"Well… anyway. Martha?"

"Yes, it does mean that," said Martha, "Also means I'm going to _kill_ Rose when she sobers up. Do you hear that? I'm going to _kill you_."

Rose burped again, then asked, "Can I still be the godmother?" Martha glared at her, furious, but she didn't appear to notice. "Does anyone else really want a drink? I'd _love_ a drink…" Rose proceeded to curl up in a ball on the floor.

"We should really come up with a plan," said Clara after Rose seemed to fall asleep, or at least lull herself into a state of blissful unawareness.

"Why don't you just seduce somebody and have them let us go?" Donna suggested to her.

" _Seduce someone_? What? Who?"

"She's right," Amy nodded at Donna, "Anne Bonny would definitely have a go on you."

"She'd 'have a go' on me?"

"You'd just have to smile at her."

"Right, well," Clara began, irritated, "Firstly, I don't need your advice on how to seduce women, I'm a bona fide libertine. I've slept with _countless_ women, literally. And do I think I could get into Anne Bonny's knickers? Yes, in a heartbeat, but I won't."

"Why not? It could save us from being ransomed off to Rose's non-existent fiancé in the fort," Donna said.

"Because! I don't want to sleep with her."

"Wow, finally, we've found someone you wouldn't sleep with," Amy said dryly, "Wait until the papers get a load of this: _Clara Oswald refuses to have sex with woman_." Clara glared at her.

"I'm not some emotionless sex-robot you can just point at people," she said, "I'm a human being."

"And you're passing up the opportunity to sleep with one of history's most notorious pirates!" Amy said, "I think you'd better do it. Cross it off your bucket list."

"I'm not going to cheat on my husband with a woman who has black teeth, thank you very much. And god knows what a state it's in down _there_. We're long before the invention of Femfresh."

"Eurgh," Amy muttered.

"Oh, that's gross, is it? You'd rather push me towards her and avert your gaze? Why don't _you_ fuck her?" Clara challenged, "Or Rose. Rose would probably do it. She wouldn't know the difference." Rose didn't say a word in her defence. "Could just have a massive orgy, then maybe they won't throw us into the sea." Martha was glad that this ridiculous argument was forced to conclude before it could get any worse, and someone seriously tried to force somebody else into extra-marital sex with a pirate queen.

The next time a gang of interlopers piqued their attention they were caught less off-guard; there wasn't much of a chance for Bonny and Read to sneak up on them now, not when the only route to the brig was dead-ahead. They came carrying orange lanterns aloft, illuminating their faces, talking in hushed tones with a third person – a taller man none of them had seen yet. He was dirty but intimidating, and it almost seemed as though they were holding the lights for _his_ benefit rather than their own. They were his guides.

"This is a waste of time," he argued with the women as Clara stood up, withdrawing her arms from where they were looped through the bars. "How much shine are these tramps really going to bring us? They're weighing us down." They loped closer, the trio, all three of them used to constant rocking of the old wooden ship.

"Your scary friend has a point," said Clara to the girls, "Surely it must be a bit of a hassle having to take care of prisoners?"

"We'll throw you overboard then, shall we?" Read said.

"On the other hand, did we tell you about how rich Rose's fiancé is?"

"You have no scruples," Amy said.

"One rich girl? And was there a reason you had to take her four friends as well?" the newcomer questioned the girls, mainly Bonny.

"They're _all_ rich," Bonny argued, "Look at them."

"They're clean. You're getting 'rich' and 'clean' mixed up. And they could be married to the King of Spain, it still wouldn't be worth dragging them around to claim the ransom."

"Really? Why's that, then?" Clara asked, intrigued, "King of Spain's probably got a lot of cash, been stealing it from South America for years by now. Say she is his mistress, or something."

"Listen, I don't care how pretty my Anne thinks you are," said the man snidely at Clara, "None of you are worth half as much as the treasure which awaits us." So Anne Bonny really _did_ fancy Clara; what was it about her that made people swoon so much? Even Martha had a brief lapse in judgment some months ago, not that she could pin down any reason _why_. She supposed it had been snubbed out upon hearing that Clara had had chlamydia four times; STIs definitely weren't appealing.

"Holy shit!" Amy suddenly shouted, standing up from the wooden cot bed, "Are you Calico Jack?"

"Have stories of my adventures reached as far as Scotland? I'm charmed," he said. So it seemed like Clara wasn't the only one attracting inappropriate attention from the pirates.

"You're famous," said Amy, smiling at him, "A hero of the seas, sticking it to the man."

"The man?"

"The Queen, I mean. Anyway – about this treasure," she began. So _that_ was why she was trying to get on his good side, for information. "What is it, exactly?"

"Ha!" he laughed, "How long have you been in Nassau not to have heard about the Forgotten Island?"

"Forgotten Island?" all four of the conscious girls asked at once. Rose mumbled something incoherent and rolled over on the floor.

"Aye. It did rise out of the Caribbean some two weeks prior."

"Sorry, an island rose out of the sea?" Martha asked, "Is that what you just said?"

"An island full of treasure and riches," Read continued, "Stories of it have reached as far north as Florida. It's only a matter of time before the Europeans come to try and claim it."

"You _are_ European," Martha reminded her.

"Hardly," she scoffed. Martha rolled her eyes.

"Typical…"

"What kind of treasure? Specifically?"

"A treasure which will grant whoever possesses it ultimate power over the seas. And whoever controls the seas controls the money, and whoever controls the money controls the world," said Calico Jack. "Every pirate is hunting it, but _I_ will be the one to claim it."

" _We_ will claim it," Read corrected him coolly. Bonny had her eyes fixed on Clara. So, an island with treasure that could control the sea had risen out of the ocean, and conveniently all their powers had stopped working, and they had no contact with anybody else… Martha had never been much of a believer in coincidence.

"The point is, what we're hunting is much more valuable than any rich girl's dowry – and there was no need for these spares," Jack said, annoyed, "You may as well throw them overboard, for all they're worth."

"All of them?" Bonny asked. Clara shrank uncomfortably under her gaze.

"Aye, _all_ of them."

"You mean…" Bonny nodded at Clara, "All of them?"

"All of them."

"Not all of them, though? Surely?"

"All. Of. Them."

"This is thrilling conversation, truly," Amy said.

"They're talking about killing us," Donna hissed at her.

"I'm a strong swimmer."

Shouting erupted from above, louder than the rolling thunder – which was dulled somewhat by their being mostly underwater in that part of the ship.

"Blast!" Jack exclaimed in anger, "Devils sail these waters… I told those bastards to douse the lamps, we could have sailed through the storm unseen…" He turned to leave, Read at his heels as the second most concerned about what was going on upstairs. But Bonny's crush worked to their advantage; she lagged behind, taking an extra few moments to scrutinise them all before they'd be thrown into the sea later that night. As soon as she also went to follow, the pirates raging above, Clara called her back.

"Wait, Annie," she said, reaching an arm towards her through the bars. ' _Annie_ '? "You're not _really_ going to let him throw us overboard, are you?" she asked, "Not _me_ , surely?" Clara left her hand outstretched towards Anne Bonny.

"Jack's right. You're useless to the ship."

"To the ship, maybe, but not to you," said Clara.

Anne smiled, "I've got Mary and Rackham." Apparently polygamy was very fashionable in that century, or something. "And you've got a husband."

"I care more about not drowning out here than I ever could about him," said Clara. She had better have an actual plan, other than becoming Anne Bonny's consort and taking to a life of piracy. The ruckus continued on the upper decks, keeping Anne's attention split. "You wouldn't even give me a chance? Don't pretend there's nothing between us – you feel it. And I know you'll never forgive yourself if you let me drown without a taste." It was almost more than Martha could stomach, but Clara finally persuaded Bonny to approach, close enough to get an arm around her waist and pull her quickly right up against the cell front. Martha looked at Amy as if to ask, ' _What the hell is going on?'_ and Amy only shrugged, equally baffled. They weren't going to start getting off with each other, were they? And _then_ Bonny went in to kiss her, Clara keeping a firm hold around her middle with the one arm she could get through the bars.

"BONNY!" boomed Calico Jack's voice from above. Bonny stopped right as Clara braced herself.

"Sorry," she said, smirking, "That sounds important."

"I'm not going anywhere," Clara grinned right back, detaching her arm from Bonny but maintaining her sultry tone of voice. Thinking herself a master seductress (even though it had really been Clara's ploy), Bonny slunk away, carrying her lantern aloft. When she smiled back at Clara, Martha saw that she really _did_ have more than a few black or missing teeth. As soon as she'd disappeared, Clara coughed and covered her mouth with the back of her hand, visibly appalled.

"Having fun there, are you?" Amy asked her with a note of distaste.

"I hope you lot appreciate everything I do for you – I might have had to kiss her," Clara said angrily, "Her breath is rancid. And if I was going to cheat on my husband, I'd rather do it without four gossipy witnesses…"

"Why do it then?" Martha asked.

"Because she has a set of keys," Clara said, "Weren't any of you paying attention?" she held up her hand, the one she'd had looped around Bonny, and showed off a rusty keyring she'd just stolen. It must have been hanging from her belt, but it was too dark down there for Martha to have spotted them. "Here I'm the only one being bloody proactive…"

"So you really _will_ try to shag your way out of anything," Amy quipped.

"I just think if it's a choice between me sleeping with _her_ or all five of us dying, I'd rather sleep with her. I feel like the Doctor could even find it in his hearts to forgive me. I'd be a hero," she argued while fumbling with the keys, trying to find which one of them worked in the lock.

"I've seen Jenny pull that exact same stunt, you know," Donna mused, "The day she was born. Although, she actually _did_ kiss him. And she stole his gun and threatened to shoot him if he didn't let us out, instead of stealing the keys."

"I'm a lover, not a fighter."

"Oh, we can see that," Amy muttered. Martha took it upon herself to go and wake up Rose, who really had drunkenly passed out on the floor.

"Can one of you help me? She's heavier than she looks," Martha bade.

"Did you say I'm fat?" Rose slurred, waking up as Martha dragged her to her feet by her elbow.

"No, you're drunk," Martha told her while Clara fumbled around with the lock on the door. "Somebody? Some help?" Donna finally took pity on her and came to lift Rose up by her other arm. Surely, as the best man at her wedding, lugging her around was much more Donna's responsibility than Martha's. And then she got an idea. "You know, carting her around isn't good for me. In my _condition_."

"Playing the baby card?" Amy asked.

"Without any powers, it's the only card I've got."

"I'll help you once I unlock the door," Clara promised. She was worryingly close to dropping those keys.

"No, it's fine," Amy sighed, "I'll take her off your hands… but you can have her back if she's about to puke. You should get used to people throwing up on you anyway, with a baby on the way."

"Hopefully when the baby throws up it won't be ninety-percent blue lagoon," Martha muttered, ducking away from Rose to pass the burden of hauling her around to Amy. It was almost jarring to talk about it suddenly so openly, with such surety; _when_ the baby throws up, like the baby really existed, and was going to be born, and raised, and would vomit (as they were known to do.) Clara succeeded in unlocking the gate to their cell, finally finding the right key.

"What's our plan now?" Donna asked, she and Amy carrying Rose by either arm as Clara held open the gate.

"Steal some weapons? Threaten them until they take us back to Nassau?" Clara suggested.

"I can't help but think it might have been better to wait in the cell until we arrive at this mysterious island," Martha sighed, now rethinking their jailbreak.

"Wait for them to throw us over the side, you mean?" Donna said.

"But _this_ is only accelerating the process…"

The lower decks were all but deserted, not a single pirate left down there to cook or man the cannons or mind the rum –whatever it was pirates spent their time doing, certainly not guarding their prisoners. Everybody had flocked to the main deck, going the same route the five of them were going now. Whatever was going on was just that important or exciting, and they went completely unchallenged when they finally reached the top of the ship. It was being battered by the storm, rain lashing down around them – but what they saw couldn't be denied: docked alongside, leering crew with cutlasses drawn and ready to pounce on Calico Jack's gang of misfits, was a monstrous, glowing ghost ship. And upon closer inspection, all of the sailors were glowing, too, bright white; spectres. Martha really thought she'd seen enough ghosts already that week.

"Holy _shit_ ," Clara said, gawking.

"Whassat?" Rose slurred, squinting at it. Amy nearly dropped her.

"You'll never beat us to the treasure! You're wasting your time!" Calico Jack yelled at the captain of the ghost ship.

"Fucking hell," Amy's eyes widened, "That's – it's – that's the _Queen Anne's Revenge_!"

"I think it might actually be the _ghost_ of the _Queen Anne's Revenge_ , and crew," Clara corrected over the wind.

"What's the _Queen Anne's Revenge_?" Martha asked her two pirate-literate friends.

"Blackbeard's ship, ran aground in 1718," Amy explained.

"Blackbeard!?"

"Aye, that's my name!" Blackbeard himself, an enormous man with a ridiculous hat and thick, black beard with smoke streaming out of it, boomed. Other members of the crew turned to look at them, including an aghast Anne Bonny. Bonny quickly checked her belt for her keys, then realised Clara was holding them up smugly. "I'll sink the _William_ if it's the last thing I do, Rackham! You're no match for me." The only part of the _Revenge_ that wasn't white was its enormous, shredded, black sails; it was certainly much more formidable than Calico Jack's boat.

"Hold on…" Amy began, "I'm not sure that this is-" She was interrupted by what was, unmistakably, the boom of a cannon. Going by the way the _William_ rocked suddenly, it was one of Blackbeard's cannons, and they'd just been hit. _Shit_.

"Bastard!" Jack yelled over the thunder at Blackbeard, "Man the cannons!" Martha couldn't imagine they had an awful lot of cannons, certainly not compared to Blackbeard's monster frigate.

"I'll get to the Forgotten Island! I've come back from the grave to claim the power of this treasure, and no _privateer_ like you is going to stand in my way!"

Calico Jack tried to spit at him for that, but the _Revenge_ was a bit too high and the wind a bit too strong for it to do much good. Behind him, the crew had scarpered to their battle positions, a few of them scrambling off downstairs to get to the cannons.

"This is bad," said Martha. Then Blackbeard yelled and raised his sword, indicating to his own ghost crew to jump from the deck of the _Revenge_ onto the _William_ to butcher and plunder them before the ship sank. "This is _really_ bad."

"Yep, it's pretty fucking bad alright," Clara said, "Wish you'd let me smoke my cigarette now. Use my dying breath for something pleasurable. God, maybe I _should_ have slept with Anne Bonny…"

"Yeah – forget about that – what's our _plan_?" Donna implored, backing away with Rose from the battling pirates surrounding them, "Before _she_ comes and murders you for stealing her bloody keys," she nodded at Anne Bonny, who was advancing.

"I think we'd better just take our chances…" Amy said, glancing backwards at the dark, stormy sea, "At least we've all established we can swim?"


	209. Out of Shape and Out at Sea

_Out of Shape and Out At Sea_

 _Martha_

It wasn't the best plan they'd ever had, in Martha's opinion, jumping headlong into the inky black ocean in the midst of a storm. It was, in fact, what quite a lot of people would call 'suicide.' She'd spent enough time with Captain Jack Harkness and Owen Harper to hear their brutal experiences with the afterlife, or lack thereof, but had still personally held onto some shred at hope that there might be _something_ , at the very least a void where she was still aware that she had once existed as a conscious being.

She didn't need to be a doctor to know that she wasn't dead, however, but it was more the fact that she had slipped unconscious at some point in the choppy ocean and hadn't _realised_ she'd slipped unconscious that bothered her. If she had died out there, she wouldn't have even been aware that she was dying. She didn't remember the moment where she'd disappeared. Truthfully, though, deep in her heart, Martha's wellbeing wasn't the first thing on her mind when she coughed up a hefty amount of sea water she'd inadvertently swallowed onto the beach she'd washed up on; no, he first thought was about the wellbeing of the unborn baby. So maybe she had more motherly instincts than she knew, because she was suddenly furious at herself for even being in that situation, for even risking the life she was carrying around, for having the audacity to almost drown in the open ocean while she was 'with child.'

And Martha's second thought, too, wasn't about her, but about Mickey; how he would cope. He'd gone to shower, that was all, what if he left the shower to find her gone, the last time they'd ever spoken? Eventually, perhaps, her body would be picked out of the Caribbean and he would have lost both his wife and the foetus she was propagating. Would he cope at all?

But again, Martha Jones was decidedly not dead. The icy sea was lapping at her legs as she crawled away from it. Her eyes stung, but all they could see was the murky darkness of some tropical trees – maybe a small crab – and little else. Driftwood, and – bodies? Were they bodies? She continued her ragged crawl over to the nearest one, finding a pale wrist where she could look for a pulse.

But she didn't need to find a pulse, because the body heaved and spluttered. Martha pushed it over so it wouldn't choke right about the moment she realised it was no anonymous pirate, but Amy Pond, sprawled out on the shoreline. There was one other body, and after rubbing her eyes and squinting she thought it might be Clara, but she didn't have the opportunity to check. The storm had lessened now, the wind still blowing but the rain stopped, the only liquid on the air blown onto land from the surf, but loud voices carried over the breeze towards her. She didn't know what they were saying, but they were male, so she assumed they weren't friendly. If that _was_ Clara, though, she didn't see anybody else.

"Where are we?" Amy mumbled after spitting water onto the sand. Martha was scrambling to get to her feet, desperate to head in the opposite direction of the voices. She was dumbly aware that her powers still weren't working, thanks to her futile attempts to warm herself up, so decided to be sensible for the moment and drag Amy away.

"Get up, hurry," she hissed, tugging on Amy's elbow after she'd finally managed to stand, though her entire body was aching. She finally succeeded in getting Amy up, "We've got to hide, quick!" They only escaped another encounter with the rogues of the high seas by the skin of their teeth, heading in what she hoped was the opposite direction of the oncoming voices to hide within the thick foliage and shadows at the edge of the sand. They were in a bay, she decided, after examining their surroundings in the moonlight, curved around like a horseshoe.

"I can't believe we're not dead," was the first proper sentence Amy managed to string together, "Is that Clara?"

"I think so," said Martha, at the moment two figures appeared from the gloom on the opposite side of the horseshoe. They were far away, but they looked to be dressed like soldiers – they were redcoats, though the coats themselves were torn and sullied.

"We have to go help her," Amy said, until Martha stopped her.

"How do you suggest we do that? They're soldiers," Martha warned, "We're no match for them, they've got swords." She could see their swords very visibly, glinting in what little light there was that evening. Amy decided that Martha was right, and so lurked uncomfortably by her side in the brush. They were forced to watch the soldiers pick up Clara, who didn't wake, and carry her away, utterly useless. That wasn't what the Doctor would have done, he would have been able to improvise something very witty, but suddenly Martha's priorities were completely skewed. Even she would have ordinarily jumped in to wake Clara, try and show the soldiers they were more trouble than they were worth, pelt them with coconut shells – _anything_. But now all she could think of was self-preservation, or, more correctly, the baby. Going out there to face them would put the baby, _her_ baby, in jeopardy, and she couldn't do that in good conscience.

"That's three we've got now," one soldier said to the other, "I wonder where these women came from – they look too clean to all be stowaways." The other one mumbled unintelligible, but then their outlines – and Clara's – disappeared back into the trees, returning to wherever they'd come from.

"They must have Donna and Rose, too," Amy whispered. Inexplicably, Martha burst into tears, and she _really_ didn't cry very often. It took quite a lot to get her to break down, being a doctor. "I'm sure they'll be alright," said Amy unconvincingly, "…Are _you_ alright?"

"I'm not even worried about them…"

"Aren't you?"

"It's just – it's stupid – I – I keep thinking about, what if something happened? To me? Not me, not even me, the… the baby. What if something happened to the baby? All this, now, today-"

"You can't think about that," Amy told her, "What ifs have never helped anybody, you have to focus on what _has_ happened, and what's happened is _you're_ fine, just a bit banged about from the sea."

"Nearly drowning isn't good for the baby."

"So… _are_ you excited about it?" Amy questioned, putting a hand on her shoulder to try and comfort her while she kept crying about the potential fate of the foetus. "You just seem a bit, uh…

"What was it like for you? When you found out?"

"I found out when I went into labour, so it was mostly confusion, pain, and panic. And, you know, I was also a flesh doppelganger of myself without even realising, and ended up… liquefying. Then, suddenly, I wake up in a space prison and I'm giving birth to Melody. Honestly, you're lucky," Amy said. Martha hadn't had a clue that _that_ was how River Song had been born. "And then she was programmed from birth to be a weapon capable of killing the Doctor, so… I mean, I love her, obviously, and so does Rory, and we sort of _did_ grow up with her without knowing – raising her, in a way – but… well. I'm infertile now, whatever they did to me…"

"I'm so sorry," said Martha, "I didn't know the whole story."

"I don't like to talk about it. Before the Crash we were thinking of adopting, actually," Amy explained, "But you know how it is, the Doctor shows up and everything gets put on hold. Not that the Doctor has much time for the pair of us anymore." She joked, but Martha could hear a very real note of sadness in what she said, about Eleven's time being absorbed by Clara now.

"And speaking of that…" Martha began, huddled in the trees with a cold wind blowing around them, "She _did_ just get kidnapped. We should probably do something."

"Well…" Amy turned her gaze towards the rest of the island, looking out across the horseshoe. The skies were clearing, which was good, but it was still the middle of the night. "What's that?" Amy pointed past Martha's head at the sky. Martha squinted.

"What?"

"Over there – I think I can see smoke." Martha had to strain her eyes quite a lot, but sure enough, there was a thin trickle of _something_ in the sky. And with the storm, any fire had to be recent, recent enough to coincide with their arrival on the shore. "What do you think?"

"I think that's our best and only plan," Martha sighed, the tears gone from her eyes now; her emotional blip was over, thank god. "Do you remember what happened after we fell into the sea?" she asked as they left the shelter of the trees, hoping the soldiers didn't reappear to scavenge the beach again. All was quiet so far, aside from the wind.

"The _Queen Anne's Revenge_ sank the _William_ ," Amy explained, "Carried on on its own, and then… I don't know, I suppose the storm got the better of us."

"Lucky we all washed up on the beach."

"As far as we know – maybe it's _not_ Donna and Rose they've got captured, could be anybody. Could be Bonny and Read." Martha hoped it wasn't. "It's going to be dark in here… wish we had a light."

"They'd see us coming," Martha pointed out.

"I suppose. But, here's the thing," Amy said, "I don't think the _William_ was captured until 1719."

"Jack's ship?"

"Right."

"And what year are we in?"

"1718."

"Maybe you misheard, or someone got it mixed up," she shrugged, "It's only one year's difference."

"Yeah, but the _Queen Anne's Revenge_ sank early in 1718, in North Carolina."

"How do you know that?"

"I like pirates," Amy shrugged, "How do _you_ know… I don't know, the symptoms of different diseases? The names of all the bones in the body? It's a lot easier to remember pirate trivia than become a doctor."

"I suppose. But what does it matter where it sank? It was a ghost ship," Martha pointed out.

"How does that even work? A ghost ship? Ghosts of _people_ , sure, but not the ghost of an _entire ship_. And it was remarkably solid – its cannons did real damage, they had real swords," Amy continued as they trekked through the forest, whispering, trying to keep an eye on the thin trickle of smoke in the distance.

"So? What's your point? Look, didn't Clara say that book, or whatever, is inaccurate?"

"Well, yeah…"

"You're overthinking, what we need to be focusing on is how to rescue the other three, since we have no powers, no weapons, no phones or means of escape. Unless you know how to fence?"

"Uh… not really. Not against a troupe of trained Royal Navy officers. What about you? You worked with Torchwood, didn't you? And UNIT?"

"I know how to fire a gun, but we don't have any guns, and I don't think my expertise extends to flintlocks and muskets. Strangely, UNIT don't teach their recruits how to swordfight…" The conversation dwindled while they both continued to think. "We can't all die out here. The female Doctor is still married to Clara in the future."

"Clara's got nanogenes, _they_ might still be working," Amy pointed out as they continued their journey, tripping and stumbling through vines and branches, "I already had to find my way through _one_ jungle this week… you know, I think Jenny's got the right idea, moving to get away from all this."

"I'm just glad she's finally listening to me," Martha said, "We're planning on leaving."

"Probably for the best. You definitely don't want to try and raise a kid on the TARDIS."

"Even without that, though… just feels like maybe it's time. We both turned down offers to travel on the TARDIS full-time before."

"Rory and I were settled, had jobs, a car, a _mortgage_ … managed to get all that again in the 1930s, too, only for this to come along… do you know what you're gonna call it? The baby, I mean."

"Oh. No, we haven't talked about that. Mickey reckons he's gonna be a stay-at-home-dad."

"A house-husband? What a dream. You'd better hang on to him. I suppose you'd only need the one income; you must get paid a lot, right? An experienced doctor?"

"Maybe. I thought I'd try to get a job as an emergency doctor somewhere, in a proper hospital for once."

"Oh yeah?"

"I think I'd be able to manage with the stress and high stakes. Provided we don't die in this jungle."

"Frankly, I think dying might be preferable than having to go to Rose's wedding tomorrow."

"I'm not convinced there's even _going_ to be a wedding at this rate…"

"That'd be the day. Let me have a lie-in. Shit… do you hear that?" They stopped dead, now very close to the smoke stack, close enough that she could smell it along with the rain and also close enough to hear voices, talking. After a few moments of listening they recognised one: Donna.

"I really don't think you want to do this," she argued. Martha and Amy continued advancing in silence. Eventually they saw the flicker of a fire through the trees and out of the shadows loomed a makeshift camp. There were tent-like structures made of driftwood and broken branches, a shoddy firepit in the centre of all the little, wooden constructs, a few full crates and sacks. She and Amy were forced to lie down in the mud to get closer and found themselves prone in a mess of green foliage, wet and filthy, but camouflaged.

There were three soldiers: the two from the beach and one more, who was wearing blue rather than red. Martha knew enough to say that he was their commanding officer, though all three uniforms were in dire straits. Shredded and sullied, the cotton fibres were barely holding together, and they didn't have a full pair of shoes between them. Their feet were black with mud and old blood, faces filthy; surely, they could use the sea to have a _bit_ of a wash, even if the water was undrinkable? Or find a stream, or pond.

"I don't know why you're complaining, ma'am," the officer addressed Donna, standing on a box and posed like he was getting his portrait done while the other two fumbled about with a length of twine. "We'll save you for last."

"Why last? Why not first?" Donna argued.

"Why do you _want_ to go first?" Clara hissed at her. The both of them were tied up inside one of the 'tents', had their arms wrapped around a tree trunk. Rose, too, though she was still unconscious – or worse. Could someone as drunk as her really swim? Sickening as it was, Martha wouldn't be too surprised if Rose had drowned, with no powers to save her.

But then Rose moved and heaved up quite a lot of water, didn't say a single word, and curled up on her side in the dirt.

"That one's first," the officer drew his sword with a flourish, a rusty old rapier, and pointed it at Rose. "She won't last long anyway. There's no point extending her suffering."

"Funnily enough, I think if you roast her on a spit, you might make her suffering worse," Clara said. Amy and Martha exchanged a panic-stricken look – they were going to _cook_ Rose!? Cook all three of them!? How long had they been on that island for?

"How long does it take to roast a human being?" Amy whispered urgently to Martha.

"I don't know, a few hours at least? On a fire like that? Though, it would take less for extensive burn damage and psychological trauma to set in," Martha replied quickly.

"But that's good, isn't it? Means we've got a while to work out what-"

"The wood isn't going to be strong enough to hold the girl," one of the redcoats interrupted their whispers.

"Well, she'd keep for a few days, in one of the barrels. Just shoot her," the bluecoat commodore said, indifferent.

"You were saying?" Martha hissed at Amy.

"We need a plan, and _quickly_ … what's say we go out there and threaten them?"

"Threaten them how? We don't look like much. They've already got _three_ kidnapped women to eat, I'm sure they'd love another two."

"Alright, alright… so we need to… shit, I don't know… what's in these sacks?" Amy asked, nodding at them. The officers were now arguing about their twine, while Clara and Donna desperately tried to persuade them not to shoot Rose. "They're all full."

"So?"

" _So_ – they're obviously not full of food, or they wouldn't be trying to kill Clara, Rose and Donna. But they must have something useful in them, because otherwise they wouldn't have dragged them out here whenever their ship wrecked, right?"

"I suppose? Maybe it's just weapons."

"Waste the energy carrying surplus weapons across the island? They must have valuables in them. Things they could trade to hitch a ride on a passing ship…" Amy carefully began to stand.

"What are you _doing_?" Martha hissed, trying to grab her ankle and stop her, but Amy just shushed her. She reached out closely enough to touch the sack that was closest, the three soldiers all occupied. Clara, however, was facing directly towards them, and very clearly saw this. She didn't say anything, obviously, but had her eyes firmly set on Amy's outstretched arm, ghostly in the moonlight. Amy fumbled with the cloth sack, finding a hole in it, and something fell out: a thin stream of white powder. Immediately, Amy retreated into the bushes, Clara still fixed on their position; she better not give them away to the soldiers… "Well?" Martha prompted.

"It's sugar," said Amy, "A big sack full of sugar."

"Great, we can make them some tea."

" _No_ , don't you get it? Sugar is flammable. That sack will explode if it gets sparked."

"But we don't have anything to _make_ a spark, they're all gathered around the fire, you wouldn't be able to get there, grab a burning hot log, and get back here before they grab you as well," Martha said, "And then what? Blow us all up?"

"It wouldn't blow us up, but it'd burn this camp down."

"Start a forest fire, you mean?"

"No, the trees are too wet. Look, we can use this to bargain, or as a distraction: do what we want, or we'll burn down your camp and all your valuables, right?"

"But _my powers aren't working_!"

"There's a fire right there."

"So you're going to pick up that massive sack of sugar and lob it over there? You're not strong enough. I don't even think both of us would be strong enough," Martha said. Amy paused to think; she was right, it was a very large sack, and throwing one onto the existing fire might not have the desired effect, since that fire was in a specially dug-out firepit and a few metres away from the rest of the small camp.

But then Amy had a epiphany: "Clara smokes, she has a lighter."

"Which has just been in the sea!"

"Maybe it's waterproof! Do you have a better idea?" Amy challenged.

"Well… no, alright? No. How are you going to get Clara's lighter? She's tied up; even if she wanted to throw it over here, she couldn't," Martha said.

"All we have to do is circle around this little clearing," Amy began to crawl awkwardly backwards, into the shadows, Martha forced to follow her lead, though she wasn't convinced of the viability of Amy's plan; starting a fire in the middle of a jungle seemed like a way to get all five of them killed.

They walked as quietly and quickly as they could, very aware of the looming threat to Rose's mortality; without her powers, she wouldn't be able to survive a bullet to the head. She wasn't even sober enough to try pleading for her life, that was being left to Donna.

"You don't need to kill us – can't you go fishing?" she suggested, "Surely there's animals out here? Fruit?"

"But why would we waste our time with that when it's much easier to make use of the resources god has given us?" the bluecoat said.

"God wouldn't give you women to eat," Clara argued, "That's not how any deity works. Maybe god wants to test whether you're good people or not – if you help us, you are. If you kill and eat us, well, you'll definitely go to hell."

"We're servants of the King directly," said the bluecoat, "The King is put on the throne by god, therefore, we are serving the Lord. We're being rewarded for our loyal service." They were obviously insane, they'd probably been on the island too long and it had all gone a bit _Lord of the Flies_. Martha wouldn't be surprised if they'd eaten the rest of the crew and those three were the only ones left.

Amy and Martha crept up behind the 'tent' the other three were being held in, but were blocked from being able to pickpocket Clara by a sheet of canvas, or more specifically, a torn shred of a ship's sail they'd hung up to make their shelters. They could get their hands underneath it quite easily, but couldn't see if any of the soldiers were looking in their direction. Plus, the bluecoat was barely six feet away from them now, keeping his watchful eye on his prisoners.

Amy had to lower her voice even more and whisper in Martha's ear the next stage of her scheme, "We get the lighter, then I'll sneak back over there and distract them while you untie these three, then I'll light the sugar and we all make a break for it. That way, towards that mountain," she nodded in the direction of a craggy shadow in the distance. Martha hated that this was their best idea. "Do you know which pocket she had it in?"

"She might be able to reach and get it herself," Martha said.

"But how do we tell her?"

"…I know," Martha said, picking up a rock next to her. It was relatively large, nearly twice the size of her fist, and she stood carefully in the shadows, praying she wouldn't be seen.

Martha threw the rock across the camp. Luckily, it was too dark for them to see it – the trio so focused on rigging up their spit – so they didn't notice anything until it crashed against a tree trunk on the opposite side of the camp. And to Martha's great joy, they didn't realise it was a projectile, and all turned their attention towards where it had landed.

"What was that?" the bluecoat asked the girls.

"How should we know!?" Donna protested, "Maybe it's a pirate. There were two pirate ships out there, we were on one of them, but there's at least fifty all heading this way."

"They're a blight upon the good name of the empire," the bluecoat grumbled, drawing his sword again and taking it upon himself to investigate. The other two paused to watch what happened, and Martha took the opportunity to sneak forwards, out into the open, close enough to the canvas to whisper through while they were occupied.

" _We need your lighter_ ," she hissed at Clara's shadow, visible through the cloth, " _Push it under the canvas_." She retreated, seeing Clara start to fumble.

"I can't believe that worked," Amy said once Martha was hidden again. Because of the awkward way Clara's hands were bound, not around the tree but first behind her back, with a second rope around she and Donna's middles, she _did_ have access to her lighter, able to throw it underneath the small gap once she retrieved it. Amy lunged and managed to snatch it just before the bluecoat gave up his meagre investigation.

"Must have been a bird. Or maybe you brought some rats with you from those pirate ships." Amy made her move next to Martha once the bluecoat had regained his regal posture, standing as though he still had a ship to command. She disappeared into the trees, leaving Martha to lie in wait for the moment when she could pounce and release their friends.

"Don't you want to stab her, sir? Drain the blood?" one of the redcoats asked.

"Shooting is cleaner."

"I think the water has dulled the gunpowder. We couldn't get a pistol to fire yesterday."

"What were you doing with the pistols?"

"Trying to shoot birds, sir."

"What are we going to do with one bird between us?"

"With all due respect, sir, at the time we didn't have _any_ birds between us."

"You were trying to push me out, eh?" the bluecoat continued, "Get a bird for the two of you to enjoy? A parrot for you both? Let me starve?"

"Of course not, sir. We're loyal to the last."

"This is why _I'm_ getting first pick with these girls. I want all the thighs to myself."

"The arse is probably your best bet," Clara interjected, "Although, you'd have to clean off all the shit. Unless you want to eat shit. If you want to eat shit, I won't stop you."

"Silence yourself, or you'll be on the spit first. You're the smallest, after all."

"I'm sure it's not her first time being on the receiving end like that," Donna muttered.

"Really? We're about to die, and you're going to take the piss?"

"If you carry on offering to shit on a plate for him, I don't see why-"

"OI!" Amy yelled from the other side of the camp. Donna and Clara had been doing a pretty good job of keeping them distracted already, but Amy was going to pull out all the stops, Martha was sure. She was holding out Clara's lighter above the sack of sugar, and remarkably, the flame was lit. "You can stop what you're doing with those twigs right now." At least they'd mistakenly revealed that their guns weren't working; it was Amy and a bag of explosives versus three goons with swords.

"By the devil, woman – what's in your hand?"

"A lighter," said Amy, "Fire. And you know all this precious sugar you've got? It's flammable. It's going to go up like a shot if I move this naked flame any closer. You won't have a camp and you won't have any commodities. And what's in these barrels? Rum? Alcohol? More accelerants?"

"Who are you? Where did you come from?" the bluecoat demanded.

"Me? I'm a pirate. Amelia Williams. Washed up here. And I don't like the idea of a bunch of demented Englishmen killing and eating some innocent, young girls. Don't you have any common decency? You're degenerates, all of you." Meanwhile, while Amy talked very loudly and insulted them, Martha pulled up the sheet behind Clara and Donna and started to untie the bindings on their hands. She wished she had a knife – maybe Clara had a knife as well as a lighter? She didn't want to ask and risk being heard, Amy keeping the soldiers thoroughly busy.

"That sugar is more valuable than your life, I guarantee it, Miss Williams," the bluecoat said, "We won't hesitate to shoot you. We have guns."

"Really? Where? I don't see any guns on you at the moment." Martha freed Donna, leaving her to crawl over and drag Rose – covering her mouth to make sure she didn't give them away – while Martha continued to help Clara.

"What do you want? Do you want some sugar?"

"From you? Not in a million years, no. What else have you got? Any gold? Treasures? I know – how about your uniforms?"

"Bah! How dare you suggest something like that! Removing our clothes would… well, it would practically be treason!"

"Really?" Amy continued, "Even for _me_?" And to think, earlier she'd made fun of Clara for faux-seducing somebody. Now she was trying to blackmail three dirty men into stripping. What a weird day they were having.

Martha finally got Clara's arms undone, and the two of them went to help Donna with Rose. All they had to do was get out of there and Amy would be able to start her fire – they just needed to trust her and get going towards the mountain.

"Wow. A beautiful woman shows up at your campsite, says that if you take your clothes off, she _won't_ destroy all your possessions, and you still have reservations?" Amy continued. The other four were heading into the treeline; Rose had woken up but they were so far managing to stop her from kicking up a fuss. Perhaps the midnight dip in the stormy ocean had sobered her up. "You know what? It doesn't matter. If you won't take them off, I'll just have to burn them off." And with that, Amy dropped Clara's lighter in the big sack of highly volatile sugar.


	210. Dead Men Tell No Tales

_Dead Men Tell No Tales_

 _Martha_

Amy had been right about one thing at least: the trees _were_ too wet from rain to burn. That hadn't stopped the campsite being engulfed by an exploding bag of sugar, however; the dried-up driftwood and bits of shipwreck caught fire very well. She, Donna, Clara and a semi-conscious Rose were already on their way towards the dark mountain by the time the flames got extreme, but they were far enough away by that point. The air stank of smoke, but the fire didn't exceed the boundaries of the campsite, the sugar and alcohol stashes burning too quickly. It was very strange smelling smoke, too – sickly sweet. Like choking on hot caramel.

"We should stop, wait for Amy to catch up," Martha said. Meeting 'towards the mountain' wasn't as specific a plan as it had seemed ten minutes ago, she soon realised, but they had to take care not to get separated. Lucky the three soldiers were too busy trying to save their belongings to chase them out, and they hadn't necessarily seen them leave. Too distracted by Amy and her lighter.

"That lighter was new," Clara muttered as they stopped, leaning against a tree.

"Maybe you should quit smoking. It's a sign," Donna said.

"If I'd quit smoking you wouldn't have even _had_ my lighter to use," she argued right back, then sighed. "Getting almost eaten by cannibal sailors is exactly the situation that pushed me to start again. Nothing takes the edge off near-death situations like tobacco. Except maybe drinking myself into a coma." She looked very pointedly at Rose, oblivious to the fact she'd almost been eaten, when she said that. Donna was holding Rose up, and then Rose looked up at Clara, squinted, and vomited into the grass. Donna let go of her, disgusted, leaving Martha to go to her aid. She'd seen worse in A &E on New Year's Eve, anyway.

"Just try and throw it up," she told Rose, helping her lean forwards. Clara came over to help with her hair, obviously no stranger to drunk women.

"I almost preferred it when she was singing," Clara said, "Now she's just… mindless. Jesus."

"On the bright side, there's nothing else for her to drink here."

"No, not even water," said Donna.

Amy came staggering through the trees, sweaty and panting and covered in ash from the fire. Nobody was in pursuit of her, though, so that was something. But they had to wait for Rose to finish puking to carry on.

"Couldn't get your lighter back, sorry," she apologised to Clara, "I think it's melted, or something."

"It's fine," Clara sighed, "Someday I know my wife's going to get me a very nice silver one."

"That's something," said Donna, "We definitely can't die if Clara's wife's going to give her presents in the future."

" _Not dying_ isn't much of a plan, though," said Martha, rubbing Rose's back. She gagged again and almost got some of her sick – which was entirely liquid, a mixture of rum and seawater – on Martha's shoes.

"No, listen, they said something after you got out of there," Amy began, "They said that no matter how much of their stuff I burned, there were things a million times more valuable on this island."

"So?"

" _So_ , this is the island. The Forgotten Island, or whatever they called it. Calico Jack and Blackbeard. And we're here."

"Meaning the _Queen Anne's Revenge_ is probably here too," Martha pointed out.

"And so is whatever mysterious force is stopping our powers from working. All we have to do is get our powers back and Rose or Donna could get us home. At the very least I could just order all the pirates to leave us alone," Amy said.

"Who made you the leader?" Donna questioned.

"Who cares?" Clara said, "None of us have a better plan, including you. And aren't you supposed to be half the Doctor, or something?"

"Amy came up with the whole plan to free you three," Martha said, "So let's not fight, okay? We're better than that. And she's right about the powers."

"How sure are you that this is 'the' island?" Donna continued.

"Well… it's _an_ island," Amy shrugged, "What else are we supposed to do? Sit here and hope for the best? Those soldiers are going to start looking for us as soon as they put out their fire."

"And your plan is to just go towards the mountain?"

"We'll get lost if we try to go anywhere else, walk in circles. We can _see_ the mountain. And if worse comes to worst, we'll climb it and light a beacon. If all the pirates in the Caribbean are trying to find this island, somebody will get here. We just convince them that we have money somewhere and that we'll pay them a fortune if they take us…" she didn't have an answer for what this mysterious destination would be, they couldn't exactly sail back to the TARDIS. Hopefully by that point though, someone on the TARDIS would realise the five of them were missing, and they'd launch a search operation. Martha was sure all the minds on the TARDIS – which included Oswin, most notably, as well as all their significant others – could find out where they'd got to if they put their heads together.

"Whatever, let's just go," Martha said, and the group began to walk, she and Clara relegated to leading the drunken Rose around like a mule.

"Surely the Tenth Doctor's looking for her about now?" Clara said as Rose stumbled through the darkness. The shadowy mountain was embossed against the moonlight and the inky sky; Amy was right, they certainly couldn't miss it.

"Yeah, but what's he gonna find?" said Donna, "Unless she wrote a note saying she was going to abduct the five of us to go on a random 'hen party' in the Caribbean in the 1700s, there aren't any clues. Can't just check the TARDIS records."

"Maybe the TARDIS can just… find her?" Martha suggested.

"But could it find her without her powers?" said Amy, "Without her powers, hasn't she basically lost connection to the time vortex?"

"What about artron energy?" Clara suggested, "We're all drenched in that stuff. The TARDIS can definitely track and lock onto it."

"There's artron energy all over the place," said Donna, "There's no way he could work out which area with traces of artron energy is where _we_ are, and he wouldn't go looking that way, anyway – the risk of crossing his own timeline, past or future, is too great. And if he doesn't _know_ that we don't have our powers… why _would_ he come looking for us this quickly? We've got a better chance of your sister deciding to look for us."

"Yeah," said Martha quickly, "Surely Oswin would be able to do something? She must have a way to track you."

"I wouldn't put it past her, but I don't know what's messing up the mind patch," said Clara. "Although…"

"What?" the others all prompted her.

"Well – there's this device she made me, for my birthday the other week-"

"Did you have a birthday?" Amy asked.

" _Yes_ , it's November 23rd."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-five – look, that's not important, what's important is she made this device that uses my blood to track and monitor the emotional states of all the Echoes. Maybe she could do something with that, though it doesn't activate for her. She's probably got some way to trick it, though, or build something similar… and I don't think _any_ technology could eliminate the emotional thing."

"What emotional thing?" Amy persisted.

"They've got an empathy bond," Martha explained.

"What? You and Oswin? You've _bonded_?"

"No, gross, I barely even know what that means."

"I think you know very well what it means," said Amy. Clara glared at her.

"It's not an incest thing, I have it with all the Echoes, it's just strongest with Oswin because I spend the most time around her. And if it transcends, you know, biology, to still affect her when she's a hologram – and it does work two-ways – well, she probably could find me. Or even build something to detect where Rose has gone, she must leave _some_ … residual energy trace, or whatever."

"Maybe if the Doctor digs out the timey-wimey detector…" Martha mused.

"Urgh," said Amy, "Look at us. We all sound like him."

"I feel like he'd definitely have more of an idea of what's going on, though," said Clara.

"Probably be too busy trying to shag one of us to actually think about- EURGH!" Amy shrieked. She'd walked slap-bang into some dark object, looking over her shoulder to address Clara – lumped at the back half-carrying Rose, with Martha – and not paying attention to exactly where she was going. She practically _leapt_ backwards away from it, but it took them all a few moments to realise _what_ had caused Amy to react with so much horror.

Grimly, though, Martha soon saw that it was yet another hanged corpse. Just like those ones in Nassau, only somehow even more brutalised than those ones. Its skin was purply and blotchy, the veins burst and unable to heal themselves. The head was the colour of beetroot and swollen, fat, black tongue lolling out of the mouth. Leaving the semi-conscious Rose in Clara's hands, Martha approached to examine the body, heavily flogged before its demise. It also had fingers missing and its shirt was ripped open, so that one word was clearly visible having been carved into its chest: _THIEF_. Its eyes had long-ago been pecked out by birds, already partially desiccated.

"I, uh, think we're definitely in the right place…" said Martha, "He's been dead for about two weeks, or thereabouts. It's hard to tell without a proper light, and in jungle conditions decomposition will be accelerated, with the heat and humidity." Predictably, Martha was the least squeamish around the body, hardly bothered by it at all – even by its smell. But it was lucky she did take the time to examine it closely, because otherwise she mayn't have spotted something hidden in the pocket of its torn-up coat. Carefully she withdrew the object and unfolded: a cloth-like sheet of paper, with writing and markings on it.

She turned to show it to them all.

"That looks like a treasure map," Amy said immediately. That had been Martha's first thought, too, a crudely-drawn rendition of the island they were on – including the horseshoe bay and ominous mountain – with one telling addition: a big X. "X marks the spot, after all. Although, I'm ninety-percent sure that no pirates ever actually left treasure maps leading to buried treasure marked with Xs like that."

"Apart from these ones, clearly," said Clara. "What are we going to do? Follow it? It's just sort of near the base of the mountain, it can't be that far away."

"I don't know, isn't it more likely we'll run into pirates again if we go looking for the same treasure?" Donna said.

"But _we've_ got the map," said Amy.

"How do we know it's still there? The body has 'thief' scratched into it," Clara pointed out, "Maybe he already took it, following the map, and whoever it belongs to caught him and did this?"

"He's a pirate, they're all thieves," said Amy, "Anyone could have done that. I say we follow the map to the X. Who knows, maybe there's a device buried there which is the very thing inhibiting our powers?" Martha couldn't lie, Amy had a point, but she also shared Clara's reservations about following an eerie map they'd found on a strung-up corpse. They really were caught between a rock and a hard place.

"I wanna find the treasure," Rose slurred behind them.

"She doesn't speak for all this time and _that's_ what she says?" Clara commented.

" _Treasuuuure_ ," Rose whined.

"Yes, alright, fine," Martha said.

"Maybe we could trade her with the pirates for our own freedom," said Amy.

"Trade her for our freedom!?"

"Like, if it comes down to it. Worst case scenario. And it is all _her_ fault we're even here." Martha shook her head, really hoping it _didn't_ come down to it.

They all stepped carefully around the body, continuing on almost the same route.

"We should really carry more survival tools," Martha decided.

"Speak for yourself, _I_ had a lighter," Clara pointed out.

"Don't any of us have, like, a compass? Or a Swiss army knife? Even a watch, or a waterproof torch?"

"In our defence," Donna began, "We didn't know she was going to teleport us out here."

"So, um," Clara said, attempting to change the subject as she hauled Rose through the undergrowth, "When's the baby due?" It took Martha a moment or two to realise Clara was talking to _her_. "Martha?"

"Oh, right. I don't know, I don't even know what the date is."

"Is December 10th," Rose mumbled.

"Then I guess it's due sometime in July or August."

"That'll be nice," said Clara, "Summer birthday."

"Bad weather to be heavily pregnant, though," Martha muttered. She was not looking forward to the later stages of pregnancy; she was already getting morning sickness on-and-off.

"Do you have any names yet?" asked Donna.

"I already asked her that," said Amy.

"She's naming it after me," Rose mumbled.

"I'm definitely not going to name it after you."

" _Rose Jones_ …"

"Have your own baby and name it after yourself," Martha snapped at her. 'Rose Jones' – there was no way _that_ was what the baby was being called. "Mickey wants to call it Ruth if it's a girl."

"Oh, you can't name a baby Ruth," said Clara, "That's like naming a baby 'Ethel', or 'Doreen.'"

"Or 'Clara'," Amy quipped.

"Ha, ha. What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's just a bit of an old lady name. Like Ruth."

"Is not," argued Clara. "It's not like _Amelia_ is the pinnacle of youth."

"Lots of people are called 'Amelia', it's very common," said Amy, "Just the other day, we met Amelia Earhart, didn't we?" Donna mumbled something affirming this.

"You what!?" Clara exclaimed.

"Did you actually?" Martha asked, "Where was she?"

"Crash-landed on a tropical island," Donna said, "Only the first of many tropical islands visited this week, apparently…"

"So – you rescued her?" Clara asked.

"No, she sort of… died," Donna explained, "Sacrificed herself to kill this massive, killer plant."

"Wow…" said Martha.

"I'm named after her," said Amy.

"So, you admit you're named after an old lady?" Clara challenged.

"This is why everybody thinks you're annoying."

"Give it a rest, she's barely said anything," Martha told her off.

"She's said enough." Clara rolled her eyes. Rose stopped walking and threw up again, making Clara jump away from her and leave her staggering on her own.

"Some warning would be nice!" Clara argued, watching Rose puke.

"This has got to be one of the lowest points of my entire life," said Martha.

"The lowest point of my life is actually very similar, I think," said Clara after Rose had just about finished, though she stayed leaning against a tree for a while longer, "Apart from getting eaten and shit out by a giant, alien worm, that was also quite bad…"

"I'm going to regret asking, but what's the lowest point of your life?" Donna asked.

"Oh, like I said, very similar. Also involves a girl throwing up on me. I think it's more… what she was _doing_ when she threw up."

"Which was…?"

"I'm not inclined to say."

"Then why bring it up?"

"Let's just say we were both drunk and she had her mouth in a very compromising location."

"Eurgh…" said Amy.

"I was right," said Donna, "I definitely do regret asking."

Clara shrugged, "To be honest, I think it was more embarrassing for her. And she did lend me the money to buy new bedsheets, so I can't complain."

"I think you definitely _can_ complain, if she threw up on your…" Martha said.

"That'd be cruel, though. She didn't do it on purpose."

"You are _way_ too forgiving. And you have too many gross sex stories."

"You're a doctor, you live for gross stories."

"I live for helping people."

"What's the grossest thing you've ever seen?" Clara challenged her, "Apart from that awful story about the person who cut off their own legs."

"Oh, thanks for reminding me about that…" Amy muttered.

"I don't know – I once saw an old man with dementia aggressively wank at all the nurses who came to help him."

"That's… not as fun as I thought…" said Clara.

"That's your future, mate," Amy told her, "Aggressively wanking at women while you piss through a tube."

"Thanks. What a great image to put in my head."

"You did ask for gross medical stories," Martha shrugged, "What were you expecting?"

"Stop talking about that, I think we're here," Amy automatically lowered her voice. They all paused in the trees as she, their self-designated 'leader', took the first brave steps out into a clearing. Donna approached next once Amy beckoned to the rest of them, leaving Martha, Clara and Rose to go last. And right there, made out of the fallen branches of various trees, was a gigantic X. "Wow. I don't even think we needed the map."

"This is ridiculous," said Donna, "A massive X? A treasure map?"

"Well, maybe everything history says is a myth about pirates has more of a basis in fact?" Clara suggested. Nobody answered her.

"Right, then. Who's going to help me dig?"

Ultimately, it was down to all of them – well, four of them, Rose was still out of action – to kneel down and start digging through the mud and dirt with their bare hands. It was not the sort of thing Martha saw in her future when she decided to go to medical school and become a doctor. There was a bit of an issue with the mud from the rainstorm, making it quite hard to actually scrape anything away that far, and they all wound up absolutely covered in filth in a matter of minutes. It was too exhausting to really hold a conversation, either, and Martha just found herself thinking about how easy it would be with their superpowers. Not that they'd need to go treasure hunting at all if they had their powers.

But finally their fingers scraped against something hard and wooden about a foot down. Well, she could hardly be surprised at it not being buried deeper when it literally had an 'X' over it and a map leading straight to its location. It was quite possibly the most unsecure treasure Martha had ever seen. Treasure it certainly was though, a treasure _chest_ no less, exactly like you'd see in films. They managed to pull it out after another few minutes of digging; it was heavy, but there were four of them, and it wasn't so large – two feet long and one foot wide. They heaved the chest out, dumping it in the mud next to the fresh hole and found it didn't even have a lock, just latches.

"…Should we just open it?" Clara asked, "What if it's a trap? We did find it very easily."

"What kind of trap?" Amy asked. Martha had been thinking the same thing; it was almost like that treasure _wanted_ to be found. "Couldn't be a bomb, I don't think, not in this era."

"It could have a… mounted gun in it, maybe?"

"A _mounted gun_?" Martha questioned.

"We'll just angle it into the trees when we open it then," said Amy. "We can't just _not_ open it."

"To hell with it," said Donna.

"No!" they all protested, but she didn't listen, she lifted both the latches and flipped open the treasure chest, the others all ducking out of the way of this mounted gun Clara had suggested. Perhaps predictably, however, it didn't contain a gun. What it contained was a very generous amount of gold; gold coins, jewellery, gem stones, some very genuine treasures. But there was something else most interesting indeed, which Amy went to pluck from the bed of treasure it lay upon.

"What is that?" Martha asked.

"It's… I think it's a… ticket reel?"

" _What_?"

"Look, it's tickets. They all say 'Admit One' on them," Amy said. And so they did, it really was a bright blue ticket reel, in there among the gold.

"To think the sea wasn't the end of ye scurvy dogs!" boomed a voice behind them. They all scrambled to their feet, Amy trying to hide her ticket reel, when a troop of leering, glowing ghost pirates stepped out from between the trees. And they were led by none other than the eerie Blackbeard. There were half a dozen of them, surrounding the girls, all with their swords drawn. "Trying to claim out treasure?"

"No, you can have the treasure," said Amy quickly, "Seriously, be our guest. We don't need the money, none of us, we're all, uh…"

"Household staff," Clara interrupted, "We're her maids and servants and whatnot," she indicated Rose, almost passed out against a tree on the ground, "She doesn't look it, but she's very rich. If you don't kill us, we'll tell you who her fiancé is. He'd pay any ransom to get her back."

"I did hear something of the like when I got that rat Calico Jack in my quarters. Before I cut his throat," said Blackbeard.

"Could you just not kill us? Please? We'll pay you, more than this treasure's worth."

"Aye, but the treasure isn't the most interesting thing in that there box."

"Oh, really?" asked Amy uneasily. Blackbeard pointed at one of his men with his sword and ordered him to go and search through the box. Standing just behind him they were able to watch as he rifled through the gold, dumping the coins and valuables out into the mud. To their surprise, however, he wasn't looking for the unusual ticket reel Amy had taken, there was something _else_ in there: a sheet of paper. But not any paper-

"Is that laminated!?" Clara exclaimed, "Laminators definitely don't exist yet." It _was_ laminated, nestled right in the base of the treasure chest. And it was also _another_ map, pointing them back towards a mountain and what looked like a cave entrance. It was only slightly less crude than the map they'd found on the hanged corpse.

"It is an object of great wonder," said Blackbeard.

"Could we, uh, see where it leads? Maybe? Please?" Amy asked, "We did, sort of, go to all the trouble of digging it up for you?" He laughed coldly at them and the rest of his ghostly crew joined in.

"The power this points towards is too much for the fragile mind of a woman. By all means, sign your own death warrants. If the ladies want to be our prisoners, they shall be our prisoners," he cackled. "Even if you survive the wonders of the Forgotten Isle, you certainly won't survive a voyage on the _Queen Anne's Revenge_." Neither had any of them apparently, Martha thought, seeing as they were all ghosts. "Avast! The treasure shall be ours!"


	211. It's a Horror Show, Come on Round

_It's a Horror Show, Come on Round_

 _Martha_

"I can't help but notice that you all seem to be very solid," said Amy, "You know, for ghosts. Almost like people who have covered themselves in weird, glowing paint. Or something."

"Yes, they're very solid," Martha muttered to her, " _As are their swords_."

"So maybe shut up?" Donna hissed. Amy had a very good point, they were certainly the most un-ghostly ghost pirates Martha had ever encountered in her limited experience, but she wasn't sure that pointing it out to them was going to do much good. Not when they were already being held prisoner, fully at the mercy of Blackbeard, one of history's most bloodthirsty and ruthless pirates. She'd actually prefer to be back in the prison hold of Calico Jack's ship – at least then Clara had _some_ sway with Anne Bonny, and Rackham himself had paid Amy quite a lot of attention. These pirates, on the other hand, were expressly interested in the allure of their promised treasure, and nothing else besides. It was all treasure, treasure, treasure with them. And Rose wasn't helping, not now she was slowly regaining her ability to talk.

"Her alcohol retention is remarkable," said Clara, "She's _still_ pissed."

"Did someone say piss? I need a piss…" Rose slurred. She staggered along at the back of the group with a flintlock dug into her back to stop her from running off, but Martha doubted she'd noticed it was there. As far as Rose was concerned, they were having a very fun adventure, they hadn't been kidnapped three times, almost drowned, or almost been cooked alive and eaten. And Martha's mind was still fully occupied with concern for the baby, and a growing desire for that to be her last outing on the TARDIS – perhaps ever. She hadn't wanted that kind of life for a long time, and slowly but surely the danger and fear were overtaking the mystique and wonder of travelling the stars.

"Not much further now, I wager," said Blackbeard, "I hope you're enjoying the last night sky any of you will ever see." Martha was suddenly struck by the very real possibility that she might get murdered that evening, without a resolution to any of the bizarre clues they'd found. It wasn't _just_ the 'ghost' pirates, but also the various inaccuracies Amy, the pirate fanatic, had been pointed out. And it seemed much too convenient for them all to wash up together on the coast of that same island, in the same bay, none of them drowning after the _William_ had been sunk. It hadn't been easy escaping the sailors on the beach, but finding that hidden treasure chest? With a ticket reel and a laminated map? _How_ did all of those things click together? Then again, perhaps they didn't. It could just be one of those things, or examples of refuse drifting through the time vortex. The corpses had all been real enough, after all.

"What happened to Calico Jack, then?" Clara asked their pirate entourage carefully.

"Dead, the lot of them. Their ship sunk to the depths," Blackbeard said.

"Now Clara'll never get her leg over Anne Bonny," said Amy.

"Hilarious, just make fun of a dead person, why don't you?" Clara snapped. Clara had a point, and Amy stopped talking. Their topics of conversation dwindled under scrutiny of their roguish captors; no longer could they really speculate about the Doctor or time travel or the strange objects they had discovered, including the laminated map Blackbeard was using. By the way he was limping, Martha would guess that he had a real-life peg leg, and she'd actually gotten quite used to watching certain amputees waddle around with their artificial appendages.

Following the map they finally descended on a narrow path cut through thick jungle trees, right towards the base of the looming mountain itself. Again, it was surprisingly easy to find, just like everything else had been. They merely walked down quite a blatant path towards a passageway, carved straight out of the rock. It didn't even have an actual door, just a rather artistic cave in the mountain face.

"Aye, here we are," he said, rolling his Rs in that typical pirate way. "And you maids can go first."

"Oh, really?" said Donna, "Are you sure? We'd hate to spoil your fun by getting to the treasure first."

"You're to make sure we're aware of any traps," Blackbeard said. So they were basically crash test dummies, for booby traps. Of _course_ there were booby traps. Why _wouldn't_ there be booby traps?

"Woo!" shouted Rose, "Let's go!" she stumbled forwards. Martha grabbed her on her way.

" _Don't_ go in there, are you mental?"

"Martha," Rose told her firmly, "There's a party in there," she leant in very close, meaning Martha got a waft of vomit and liquor in her face, "I'm going to the party."

"Oh, just let her," Amy dismissed Rose completely, "She obviously _wants_ to kill herself, or something." Rose couldn't even walk in a straight line as she approached the cave entrance. The pirates cocked their flintlocks.

"Go, the lot of ye," Blackbeard said, waving his gun.

"Rose, be careful," Clara said, going after Rose second of all. That prompted Martha to go next, leaving only Donna and Amy trying to worm their way out of entering the dark, creepy cave. Unfortunately, without their powers, they couldn't manage it. They weren't as enthused about the whole thing as Rose, nor were they as concerned about Rose's wellbeing as Clara and Martha, but they _were_ worried about not getting shot.

Still, Martha made sure not to overtake Clara or Rose at the group's head, and she also watched her step very carefully. She had the excuse of a baby to look after if anybody tried to question why she wasn't putting herself in the most immediate danger. Plus, since she was the doctor, if _she_ was the one who got injured it would be much harder to deal with.

"Could you walk a bit slower?" Clara asked Rose, who just staggered about messily, "In case of tripwires, or pressure plates."

"Yeah," Amy agreed, "The last thing we need is to get shot with poison darts, or for spikes to start coming down from the ceiling…"

"Have you been watching _Indiana Jones_ again?" Donna asked her.

"…Maybe." They tiptoed through the long, stone tunnel as it stretched on and on. Far behind them, the glowing pirates began to follow; it would be much too dark to see them if they weren't so vividly fluorescent, but there they were, miles back and out of earshot. "I still think they're too solid," said Amy, "One of them kicked me. Can ghosts kick people?"

"No," said Martha, "They usually just… wail, and stuff. Rose and I saw some the other day, they were being drawn to the woods by this… witch doctor. It's a long story, but they're never particularly coherent."

"So what's your point?" said Clara, "They're not ghosts?"

"They're following a laminated map," said Amy, "And I have this ticket reel, it all-" The ground rumbled underfoot. "Shite… Did one of you step on something?" They all checked for pressure plates they might have mistakenly triggered, but unanimously came up short. Nevertheless, the rumbling increased in intensity, and they finally heard shouts and screams behind them: the floor was collapsing. Only, it wasn't collapsing underneath _them_ , it had begun collapsing way back at the beginning of the tunnel and had just caught up with the pirates. All briefly frozen in place, they watched Blackbeard and his ghastly crew take the plunge one by one, the floor crumbling quicker than they could escape.

"Run, RUN!" Martha shouted, pushing those in front of her to get them to start moving. The running was par for the course though, and tested them all much less vigorously than the previously challenges they'd faced – like worming their way out of pirate captivity, or or burning down a camp of cannibal naval officers. All they had to do was keep moving, _fast_ , and they'd hopefully be okay. The only one struggling was Rose, who was still ridiculously, raging drunk, and had to be half-dragged through the quaking tunnel by Clara; at least she'd stopped calling her a pervert, though.

The pirates all disappeared into whatever abyss lay beneath the rigged floor, but the collapse continued advancing. Just how deep _was_ this tunnel, exactly? Where did it go? To a dead end? Were they really, truly doomed?

Apparently not, because there was a sudden right-turn and material of the ground changed; it went from unsteady to a much firmer rock, slightly uneven but hopefully more stable, and grey while the previous stone had been brown. They stopped to catch their breath and saw the falling ground catch up with them, but it dropped off immediately when the rock changed, in a perfect, straight line.

" _Finally_ …" Rose slurred, "Drink!"

"Drink?" Martha asked, "What do you mean, dr-? Oh my _god_ …" Rose threw herself against an object standing upright against the wall, an object with Martha very plainly recognised as-

"Is that a vending machine!?" Donna shouted. Yes, thought Martha, it was definitely a vending machine, with a big, flashy advertisement for a soft drink called "Grog" on the front of it – pirate-themed, of course. Rose started hitting it violently, and though her super-strength hadn't returned, she still hit it hard enough to trigger the internal mechanism. A can clattered down the chute and into the dispenser, though Rose lacked the coordination to actually get it. Martha, in the end, went to pull it out for her, finding it to be unpleasantly warm. The vending machine obviously wasn't working.

"This just gets weirder," said Amy, "A vending machine? Down here, in this cave, inside a mountain on a deserted island?" Rose cracked open the can and declared that whatever Grog was, it tasted like 'shit Dr. Pepper.' She kept drinking it, though, complaining about its status as non-alcoholic pop.

"Maybe the fluids will help sober her up?" Clara suggested, "It's a miracle she isn't dead, quite honestly."

"It's a miracle none of us are dead," said Donna.

"Except for all those pirates back there," said Amy, "They're probably dead. And the ones who got killed in the shipwreck. And if they _are_ ghosts – which they're totally not – then they're _definitely_ dead."

"Maybe vending machines were just… invented way before we thought they were…?" Martha suggested.

"Along with advertisements, commercialisation, and fizzy drinks?" Clara questioned her, "Knowing the history of vending machines is the kind of useless shit Thirteen would know…"

"Stop mooning over that woman," said Amy, "Just have some patience."

"Well, what would the Doctor do?" Martha asked, looking at Donna directly.

"Probably just keep going," Donna said. And he probably _would_ , too, since the passage continued. So, with Rose now temporarily satiated by her can of Grog, they moved on.

"What do you think's down here?" Martha asked.

"Vending machine warehouse?" Clara suggested.

"I'm starting to worry that the five of us have too much sarcasm," said Amy, "We can't _all_ be the sarcastic one."

"I guess we'll just have to fight it out, then," Clara said, "Extreme rules match."

"Ha, ha."

"Maybe it's a mine?" Martha said.

"And they're mining for what? Thin air?" asked Amy, "Cans of Grog? Laminated paper? It can't be a mine, there's no mining equipment."

They rounded another corner, but things somehow only got weirder; it was all questions and no answers. They were faced with a turnstile, operated by a ticket booth next to it, a ticket booth inhabited by a skeleton. It just stood there, perfectly upright, wearing a hat that made it look like a train conductor.

Then, in a very robot voice, it said, " _Tickets… please_ …" And, lo and behold, Amy was still in possession of the blue ticket reel they'd found in the treasure chest.

"Frankly, this whole thing is ridiculous," said Clara, putting her hands on her hips. "What, exactly, do we need tickets to enter?" Amy was already tearing five tickets off the reel though, handing them out. Rose was very adamant about not wanting a ticket, until Amy promised that there was alcohol of some description on the other side of the turnstile and she could only get it if she gave a ticket to the skeletal attendant. Donna approached first, very tentatively because the robot skeleton appeared to be armed with a very large and real-looking cutlass.

"I've, er, got a ticket here, mate?" she said, holding the ticket out towards the skeleton with her arm outstretched so that she could keep her distance.

" _Access… granted…_ "

"So I just put it in here, then…?" she held the ticket towards the slot on the side of the turnstile. The skeleton neither spoke nor moved, leaving Donna to just guess. The ticket was pulled in by an analogue mechanism and the turnstile clicked so that she could push it once, and then Donna had crossed the barrier. They all copied her, Martha having to help Rose force her ticket into the slot because she couldn't quite manage it on her own.

And yet, things were only set to get _even weirder_. The turnstile was not just a strange relic, but a precursor to one of the strangest things Martha had ever really seen. They left the long corridors and entered a vast cavern, the stalactite-covered ceiling hundreds of feet above them, like the entire mountain itself was hollow. And filling it was what she could only describe as a theme park. She could see roller coasters, a Ferris wheel, dodgems, a big plastic map – like an indoor, pirate-themed Disneyland. But it was completely empty, the attractions all desolate and rusting.

"No, but, this – this literally doesn't make any sense!" Martha complained, "Those bodies in Nassau, the dead body in the forest out there, were definitely _real_ corpses. We were on a _real_ ship that _really_ got shot to pieces and ended up in the _real_ ocean!"

"Maybe it's…" Clara began, "Well, things get pulled through time, don't they? Maybe… an entire island got pulled through time…? From the future? They did all say it just appeared out of nowhere." Martha couldn't lie, there were lots of clues that everything was fake, but also a myriad of evidence that the threats facing them were _real_. Clara's idea was the only reasonable explanation for this they'd heard so far, but _could_ an entire island really be pulled through time?

"The Daleks took nearly thirty planets out of space-time and dumped them in the Medusa Cascade," Donna said, "Maybe the same _could_ happen to an island. Atlantis disappeared, after all."

"Atlantis was a spaceship," Martha said, "Not an actual city. And there's still the issue of our powers _and_ Clara's mind-thing not working. Why would that happen with some stupid theme park brought back from the future?" Nobody had an answer to that question yet.

"I wanna go on the roller coaster," Rose said.

"I don't think it works," Clara told her.

"Where's the food?" she mumbled, staggering towards the nearest map. It had all the rides marked on it as well as a food court, which was relatively close to the entrance and to their right somewhere; at least it was in the opposite direction to the roller coasters, because Martha also doubted anything in there actually worked. Food _did_ sound good, though…

"There probably isn't any food," Donna said, but Rose was already wandering off towards the food court, leaving them all resigned to follow. It was almost creepier in there than being faced down by the _Queen Anne's Revenge_ , or kidnapped at gun-point by Anne Bonny and Mary Read, if they even _were_ Anne Bonny and Mary Read.

The restaurant in Rose's sights was built inside of a big, fake shipwreck, a sign on a large hole in the side – which served as the entrance – denoting it to be called The Galley. Not the most original name. Strangely, the ship seemed to be bigger on the inside; while not grand, the interior was certainly large, complete with a balcony level and a stage as well as dozens of completely empty, plastic tables, made to look like ship wheels with the seats made out of barrels.

"Not skimping on the aesthetic, are they?" Amy said.

Rose would have made a beeline for the kitchen, which was somewhere at the back, near an empty bar, if music hadn't begun to play from the direction of the stage. It was of poor quality, full of feedback and obviously coming out of speakers, but the curtain on-stage rose to reveal an entire band – of robot skeletons, just like the ticket master. Maybe it was a theme park built for robot skeletons? They moved jerkily with their instruments.

"Are they playing the theme from _Pirates of the Caribbean_?" Clara asked, frowning at the ensemble; the skeletons even had a saxophone and a cello, despite Martha being unable to hear a saxophone _or_ a cello in the actual music which, yes, did sound distinctly like the main theme from _Pirates of the Caribbean_ , with a few bum notes. "Eurgh, that's uncanny…" Rose applauded the musical skeletons while muttering to herself about how much she wanted some chicken nuggets.

"This is like those awful animatronics they have in America," said Amy, " _Hate_ those things. Don't know how people can relax with creepy, robot animals staring at them." Martha knew vaguely what she was talking about, but had never seen animatronics like that herself – aside from that very skeleton band.

"Hang on one bloody second," Donna began while the skeletons continued making their obnoxious sounds, " _You_ said they were giving us a lift to 'Pirate Land'! When we were locked in the brig!" She shouted this very angrily at Rose.

"Woo!" Rose exclaimed, enchanted by the skeletons, "Pirate Land!"

"Did you know about this!?" Martha demanded, "Did you bring us here _on purpose_!?" But Rose was in no fit state to answer. "Just what the hell is going on!?"

The skeleton music began to slow, as did their mechanical movements, making it even more painful to listen to. The recording was clearly completely broken, all the machines now malfunctioning; it was quite a sight. More of a sight, however, was the infuriated woman who appeared from off-stage with an umbrella.

"Blasted things!" she shouted, smacking one of them around the head with the umbrella, so hard that the head came loose and went flying, clattering one of the tables, "I'm _trying_ to create an _atmosphere_ and you lot are ruining it!"

"Oh, shit," said Clara.

"What?" Martha asked her. It seemed like Clara recognised this woman, who beat all the skeletons quite severely, making one of them drop its trumpet. They were well and truly broken. Annoyed, she straightened her hat, shook her head, and then posed while leaning on the umbrella with one hand.

"They really do know how to mess everything up, don't they? That's what I get for using unreliable technology. I was supposed to descend from the ceiling, there's a whole rig backstage, and everything, it's all very theatrical… I suppose that's all gone to pot now… anyway," she cleared her throat and stood up straight, indicating their surroundings with her umbrella, "Allow me to welcome you all… to Missy Land!"


	212. Call it Fate, Call it Karma

_Call it Fate, Call it Karma_

 _Martha_

"Fuck me," exclaimed Clara in horror.

"If you like," said the woman on the stage. Clara faltered.

"I didn't mean like _that_."

"Well, I'm always around, if you get bored of the yank. Or, actually, I don't think he's regenerated yet, has he? Admittedly, it's hard to keep track, especially when you never invite _me_ along on your shenanigans."

"I'm _so_ confused," Amy said, "Who is this?"

"I'm Clara's fiancée."

"What!? No you're not," said Clara annoyed, "She's the Master. Missy. The girl one."

"Oh, the one who… didn't you make us do an obstacle course, or something? Six months ago?" Amy asked, confused.

"And more importantly, tried to take over the entire world more than once, got themselves elected as the prime minister, and – oh yeah – _enslaved my whole family_ ," Martha said, furious.

"Now, that's not true, is it, Martha?" said the Master, with the air of scolding a child, "Your brother managed to escape, and so did you, for a bit."

"Didn't you die?" Martha questioned angrily, "I _saw_ you die, with my own eyes. How did you come back?"

"Ah, you wouldn't believe me if I told you," she shrugged, "But is this the thanks I get for organising a nice, fun, scavenger hunt for Rose's hen party? After Donna dropped the ball so badly with that whole murder mystery… it's easier than you'd think to send little _suggestions_ to her through the time vortex. Whispers. Especially because she was drunk already."

"Where's the chicken nuggets?" Rose asked.

"They're coming, the chef's… I don't know what the chef's doing, frankly," Missy complained, then said to Clara, "I don't _how_ you put up with her, she's so impetuous." Clara plainly had no idea who this chef was.

"So you're the one who's pissing about with our powers?" Clara questioned, "And my mind patch?"

"Would _I_ do a thing like that?" Missy asked faux-innocently, then grinned, "Alright, you caught me out, _yes_ , it was me. Although, really it was your _dear_ sister, she helped me create an _enormous_ inhibition field."

"What? Oswin wouldn't do that," Clara said seriously, "She wouldn't help you."

"She would, she's very easy to manipulate. I just had to kidnap and threaten to defrost that boyfriend of hers at some point in your future, can't remember when, and she did everything I asked," Missy shrugged, "Very susceptible to blackmail, that girl. Of course, you already know that. But didn't you have fun?"

"No!" Martha shouted at her, "We haven't had fun!"

"Really? Are you sure?" she began to get down from her stage, walking over to the steps. "Isn't it fun being challenged? Tested? Isn't that why you humans opt to do escape rooms? Or play sudoku? I've never understood why anyone would put themselves through that."

"So this whole thing was a set up?" Amy asked, "A historically inaccurate set up? All fake?"

"No. Not all of it. The ghost pirates were a bit of a rush job, I'll admit, but I suppose that's what I get for hiring out-of-work Shakespeare actors – you know they're terrible if _Shakespeare_ fired them, the man will employ _drunks_ to do his plays," Missy said, "And the entire island, yes, is an artificial job built mainly out of plastic. But I knew you wouldn't fool _that_ easily. This really _is_ 1718, after all, and that really _was_ Nassau, and a lot of them really _were_ pirates."

"But we weren't in any actual danger?"

"No, you were. Those sailors? Not mine, just washed up here, went a bit _Castaway_ , started eating the dead bodies of their crew mates – you know how the British Army can be. They just set up camp on the beach and I thought I'd just ignore them and they'd die eventually."

"You mean they might have actually killed and eaten us!?" Clara was horrified.

"Maybe. To be honest, I was very interested to find out," she was completely indifferent. "But, really? I got you a whole theme park! I mean, fine, maybe most – or all – of the rides don't work, and my only employees are that bastard fry cook and these ridiculous robot skeletons I was sold on a fake promise that they'd be an army fit to tackle the Roman legions – but it's a sound premise. There's real profit to be made here, I didn't _have_ to waste it on a bunch of ungrateful time travellers."

"Great, well," Donna began, "Now we're found out what your scheme was, can we leave, do you think?"

"Yes, of course!" she said, then paused, "Eventually!"

"'Eventually'?" Amy questioned.

"In a bit. Once we've had some fun. If you'd already _had_ fun on your adventure, well, you could have just gone right on your way, but since Martha was so insistent that you haven't had _any_ fun, I can't rightly let you leave. I won't have anybody say I'm a bad host."

"Didn't see you being a particularly good host when you _kidnapped and enslaved my family_ ," Martha reiterated.

"That was ages ago! Get over it, Jones. If the Doctor can forgive me, I'm sure you can. Anyway, it's just your luck that I've got lots of fun activities planned."

"Not another death-course…" said Amy.

"No," snapped Missy coldly, "What kind of monster do you take me for? I thought we could play a game. We could vote on who has the best arse, or something."

Clara laughed, "Well, that's easy," at the same time the other three (Rose still pining for chicken) asked, "Why would we do that?" This put Clara under great scrutiny from her crewmates.

"Go on, then," Donna challenged her as she began to falter.

"Well, I, uh… I mean, I'm not going to-"

"Have you been perving on us? Maybe Rose is right," said Amy. Martha wasn't sure she wanted to know Clara's opinion of their behinds.

"No! I just… I have eyes, I don't know, I see things."

"Could you try not to 'see things' in future?" Amy snapped.

"I'm still waiting," said Donna.

"Can we vote for ourselves?" Clara asked.

"Unbelievable…" muttered Martha.

"It's a valid question!"

"She's right," Missy said, "It's a valid question, to which the answer is _no_ , how conceited can one woman actually be?" Clara glared.

"Then Martha wins," Clara shrugged.

"I _what_?"

"I mean, if I had to go in order, then it's you, then Rose, then Donna, then Amy."

"What about me?" Missy asked.

"You're wearing a bustle, I can't see your arse properly. Sorry."

"I'll whip it off in a jiffy if you like."

"Hang on, why am I the lowest!?" Amy demanded, "Not that I care what you think – but why? How am I lower than Donna!?"

"What's that supposed to mean!?" Donna exclaimed.

"It's just – it's to do with, like, volume," said Clara.

"VOLUME!?" Donna shouted, and Martha was very grateful that she didn't have her power, "Are you trying to imply that I have a _fat arse_? Because I think you're talking out of _your_ arse, mate."

"No! I'd love to have a go on your arse!" Clara defended herself.

"God knows what that means," Martha shook her head.

"You can shut up," Amy snapped at her, "Little Miss Perfect-Bum."

"I'd really like to disinvolve myself from this entire conversation. How did we sink to this level?" Martha complained; this was almost worse than having to put up with Anne Bonny.

"At the end of the day," Clara said, "Everyone's a ten. Every woman."

"Wow, you really don't have any standards, do you?" Missy asked, scrutinising Clara like she was an exhibit in a museum. Clara shifted very uncomfortably. "Shall we rate tits next?"

"No," they all said at once.

"Nuggets…" Rose whinged, going and sitting at one of the tables since she wasn't capable of standing up anymore. Without warning, Missy thwacked one of the plastic tables loudly with her umbrella, making them jump.

"WHERE ARE THE NUGGETS!?" she yelled.

"THEY'RE _COMING!_ " someone yelled back from the kitchen. And here Martha had half thought her 'chef' was completely made up. Rose cheered and then slumped across the table.

"In the meantime, I have something to ask your opinion on, Clara," said Missy, "Something very important." She produced from somewhere – Martha hadn't a clue where, but Time Lords had a habit of doing things like that – a big, leather-bound book, which she held out towards Clara. Clara took it, though she didn't seem happy to do so, and flipped it open.

"…Are these stock photos?" she asked, squinting at them, while Missy peered over her shoulder, "They're pixelated and still have the watermarks on them. Why have you got these? In an album?" She turned it around to show the rest of the group. They were all pictures of smiling families or smiling people at a business meeting or smiling doctors messing around with a microscope.

"Clara. Clara, Clara, Clara, Clara," Missy said, smiling and shaking her head, " _Clara_. There are some things in this wonderful universe you will never understand." She took the album from Clara, glanced at one of the pictures, tittered, then lobbed it backwards over her shoulder. It crashed down onto a table and startled Rose out of her drunken slumber.

"Why are you only talking to her?" Amy questioned.

"The rest of you are being very hostile," she said, "I can't say I have the patience for it. I've got more photos, if you want to look at them?"

"No, thanks," said Amy.

"Oh, there we are," Missy said, pointing with her umbrella – almost hitting Clara in the face as she did so – at the kitchen, "Here's the lowly servant girl."

"Ashildr!?" Clara exclaimed.

"You can fuck off," the girl said angrily to Missy, carrying an actual _bucket_ of freshly-fried chicken nuggets. It took Martha a few moments, but she eventually placed Ashildr as the girl who'd stabbed Jenny and had been brought onto the TARDIS a few weeks ago by the Shadow. The teenage Viking Other Clara had apparently slept with – of course she remembered that part, because Rose and Oswin brought it up constantly when they made fun of Clara. Ashildr dropped the bucket onto the table in front of Rose, who cheered weakly and said something incoherent about Grog.

"Excuse me? I'm not paying you for that sort of profanity," Missy said. Ashildr stuck up her middle finger.

"You're not paying me at all."

"Why are you here if she's not paying you?" Martha asked. Missy cut across Ashildr before she could answer.

"Work experience," she said, "She's just reached that bit in school. Needs more things to put on her CV." Ashildr glared at her.

"It sounded a lot more fun than it's turned out to be," Ashildr said, "She told me she was planning on building a pirate-themed death park and I wanted to see how it turned out. I had no idea she was going to force me to _cook food_."

"You just fried some nuggets, it's hardly cooking," said Missy.

"Not true," said Ashildr, taking something wrapped in tinfoil out of her pocket, "I also made this sandwich."

"For me? You shouldn't have."

"It's _my_ sandwich," she snapped, jumping up to sit on the bar.

"How are the GCSEs going?"

"I was eighteen when I died," Ashildr argued as she unwrapped her sandwich, " _Eighteen_."

"Really? Isn't that a bit old? For Clara, I mean."

"Excuse me?" Clara argued, "Right, I don't know where this joke has come from, but I'm not a pedo, okay?"

"Are you sure?" Donna asked.

"Am I-? Yes, I'm sure!"

"You did sleep with an eighteen-year-old," Donna pointed out, "What's the legal age of consent?"

"Sixteen," said Clara. "It's _sixteen_."

"She's got it memorised," quipped Missy, "You know, just in case. 'She told me she was sixteen, officer, I swear,'" she mimicked Clara, making Clara sound about ten times more whiny than she already did (which was often quite whiny.)

"Can we just stop this?"

"Do you want to go back to the incest jokes?" Missy asked, then smirked, "How's your sister?"

"What? Since you kidnapped and blackmailed her?"

"Has she managed to kill herself yet?"

"Hilarious…" grumbled Clara, crossing her arms. Rose was stuffing her face with nuggets. It suddenly struck Martha just how hungry she was, seeing Rose with her nuggets and Ashildr with her sandwich. That morning seemed a million miles away now. "I would genuinely kill for some nicotine…"

"I've got some chewing tobacco?" Ashildr suggested.

"You know that stuff rots your gums?" Martha said.

"Yeah. It's hardcore."

"You are _such_ a teenager," Amy scoffed. Clara deliberated for a few seconds before crossing the room towards Ashildr.

"What are you doing?" Martha asked.

"Getting some chewing tobacco," she said.

"Just _quit_."

"Marth, it's an _addiction_. I can't just _quit_." Ashildr fished a small tub of chewing tobacco out of her pocket and held it out to Clara.

"You can keep that," she said, "I think it's making some of my teeth turn brown."

"I swear you didn't always smoke," Donna said while Clara picked out the tobacco from the tin.

"I get stressed."

"What do you have to be stressed about?" Amy asked incredulously.

"I don't know – this entire situation, maybe? Everything that's happened to me for six months? The whole thing was renewed because you lot put me and Oswin in a hallucinatory coma."

"You'd expect Oswin to be used to that sort of thing by now," Missy jibed. They all looked at her. "Sorry – did you forget I was here? You're just so funny arguing amongst yourselves. Aren't you supposed to be much more cohesive? You're very disorganised, always at each other's throats. Well, Clara's throat. I suppose she does have a nice throat."

"Right…" said Clara awkwardly, chewing, "That's… creepy…"

"Makes me want to throttle you. In a sexy way, like."

"Did the Time Lords ever have a sex offenders register?" Ashildr quipped.

"You shut up, you wee little brat," Missy told her off, "Get back in that kitchen and make some chicken nuggets for the rest of us."

"Chicken nuggets!" Rose shouted with her mouth full of said nuggets.

"No," said Ashildr, "I'm on break. Or, I quit, I don't know. Can you lot give me a lift?"

"A lift!?" Donna exclaimed, "Where? And with what?"

"I don't know, somewhere that isn't here, I'm bored of pirates," she shrugged, "Can I come to Rose's wedding?"

"No," said Donna, "I'm the best man, and since the bride is…"

" _Totally_ shitfaced," Amy supplied.

"Yeah, since the bride is shitfaced, I say no, you're not invited."

"Well. I can get Jenny to bake me a fancy cake whenever I like."

"Why would she bake you a cake? You stabbed her," said Martha.

"We're friends now," said Ashildr, "She has respect for me, because I defeated her in mortal combat. It makes us even because she stole my girlfriend." Ashildr winked at Clara when she said that.

"Aren't _you_ the one who gave her the nasty black eye she has at the moment?" Martha asked.

"Yeah!" Ashildr said proudly, "I've got a good right hook. And Jenny doesn't mind."

"Anyway, anyway, enough chit-chat, I've got presents," Missy interrupted again, "Which my trusty companion over there was instructed to bring out from the backroom." She looked expectantly at Ashildr.

"What? I said I'm on break."

"The _gifts_ , Skallagrim."

"The _sandwich_ , Mistress," she said, holding up her half-eaten sandwich, "Have some bloody patience, would you?"

"You just _cannot_ get the staff these days. How hard is to find a reliable henchperson to help do my dirty work? Clara, be a dear and fetch the gifts from the kitchen, please. It's a big hamper." Clara turned to go towards the kitchen.

"You're not doing it, are you?" Martha asked.

"I… she did say please…"

"She's literally a maniacal mass-murderer."

"Martha! It's all in the past! Have a chicken nugget!" Missy said, indicating the nuggets.

"I don't want a chicken nugget!"

"Christ, fine, I'll get the hamper," Ashildr said, climbing down from the bar surface, "But count me out of any future schemes of yours. Tormenting you lot is _not_ as fun as it sounds. And you're always in a bad mood, the lot of you. And Clara, if you touch my sandwich, I'll cut you. I know what you're like around unattended sandwiches." She slinked away back into the kitchen.

"…I wonder what kind of sandwich it is…" Clara mused, peering at it.

"Leave it alone," Amy told her.

"I still don't understand the point of this theme park," Martha said, "Especially when the rides don't work."

"Alright, fine," said Missy, "You've caught me out, it was part of some billionaire's dream to build his sick daughter a pirate theme park."

"And what? You nicked it?"

"He never finished it!" Missy protested, "She died, see – very insensitive of her, when you think about it. I mean, how bad is leukaemia? Really? Besides, he was paying a fortune in rent. I merely took it off his hands. I will, however, take responsibility for the _Queen Anne's Revenge_. What it is, see, is I helped out a little bit on _Pirates of the Caribbean_ – not that they'd give me the rights to the soundtrack, had to use some knock-off version for my skeletons there, all because of an incident involving somebody keying Hans Zimmer's car. My money's on that Keira Knightley, you can't trust her. Anyway, because of them not letting me have their soundtrack, I stole the _Flying Dutchman_ prop. Covered it in glow in the dark paint. And of course, I acquired the army of robot skeletons from the future. Maybe one day I'll whip them into shape and take over the universe, but I wouldn't bank on it. Ah-ha, here she is." Ashildr returned with a truly gigantic hamper.

"What's this in aid of, anyway?" Donna asked suspicious. A gift-basket from the Master was quite possibly the _most_ suspicious thing Martha could think of – it _screamed_ 'bomb scare.'

"Wedding presents for Rose and some things for Martha. For the sprog, wee little, er… can't remember its name now… don't even know the sex, to be honest, they're all small and bald, aren't they? And I didn't get to meet it for long, either, until you chased me out of the house. With guns. I remember thinking to myself, what a lovely family… hasn't happened to you yet, though, it's still growing if I recall correctly? Like mould, in a petri dish. _Culturing_."

"You've met the baby? _Mine_!?" Martha exclaimed.

"Yes, I remember distinctly because of the weird eye thing."

"Hang on, eye thing? What eye thing?" she asked seriously.

"You know, the…" Missy pointed at her own eye, "I don't know, it's weird. I'm sure you'll find out. But there's an eye patch in there somewhere, I got it from one of the old gift shops. Most of that stuff is from the gift shops, to be honest." Ashildr dumped the hamper down on the table next to Rose. "Hats, and whatnot."

"I do quite like pirate hats…" said Amy.

"Well, go ahead, Martha," Missy said, indicating the hamper.

"You expect me to open those presents? There's probably a bomb in there."

"Don't be ridiculous, the bomb isn't there, it's somewhere else entirely."

"There's a bomb!?" they all shouted.

"What? No! Of course not, why would there be a bomb? Who even brought up bombs? Martha – have you planted a bomb somewhere?"

"I could _kill_ you."

"With your bomb, probably," said Missy, "Everybody, back away from the pregnant lady. She's clearly armed and dangerous."

"She won't kill you," said Ashildr, "If she does, I'll just send a message to your TARDIS. And she wouldn't have told me about this scheme – _I_ wouldn't kill any of you."

"Except Jenny," said Donna.

"I thought she was responsible for the deaths of three million people," Ashildr said, "It was a misunderstanding. I like Jenny! If I had to pick one person to steal my girlfriend, it would be her. And she gave me a robot horse – but don't tell her, I think it's in her future still."

"If I was going to kill you it would be much more elaborate than hiring hundreds of fake pirates to sail the Caribbean to bring you to an island I stole from a bereaved father," Missy said dismissively, "Give me some credit. I haven't even got a real army this time, just these rubbish skeletons. I used to have legions of Cybermen under my command."

"How far the mighty have fallen," Ashildr quipped.

"Shut up, lackey."

"Fuck off."

" _I'll_ open the bloody presents," Amy ultimately volunteered, "You better let us leave, soon."

"Can't you ask someone to pick us up sooner? If you have a line to the TARDIS?" Clara questioned Ashildr.

"It's called a phone, you might have heard of them," said Ashildr. Clara glared at her. "I could, but I don't want to right now. I want to see what the presents are. So long as they're not explosive devices."

"If I was going to kill them with an explosive device, I'd put it in a much subtler place, like in an underground storage room while they were all gathered above for some kind of ambiguous soiree."

"I feel like that's been done before…" Ashildr mused.

"It's a hat," Amy announced after unwrapping the first present. She examined it and then put it on. "Do you think it suits me?"

" _I_ want a hat," Rose whined.

"Here," Amy said, giving her another present which was also, clearly, a pirate hat. Missy had been telling the truth about it being tat from the gift shops. Rose unwrapped it awkwardly and put it on her head, a piece of blue wrapping paper hanging down in front of her eyes.

"I thought the bridesmaids could wear them. How many bridesmaids are there, again?" Missy asked.

"None, apart from the maid of honour," said Donna.

"And how many groomsmen?"

"None, apart from the best man. Which is me, by the way. I'm the best man. The best of all the men."

"Ooh, a toy sword," Amy said, waving around a cutlass. She bent it with her finger. "Plastic."

"Give Martha one of her presents, go on," Missy ordered. Amy checked to see which one had her name written on it, and then tossed it in Martha's direction. It was soft and squishy when she caught it; she carefully unwrapped it and found it was a teddy bear, TARDIS blue – an odd colour for a bear.

"Right," said Martha, "Well, thanks." She was ninety percent sure it had some sort of surveillance device hidden in it. "I'm sure the baby will love it…" It was going nowhere near the baby.

"I'm sure it will, the little… creature. Anyway," Missy raised her arm to check the time on a watch, though she clearly wasn't wearing one, "I think this is about time I make my exit. There's nothing else interesting in the basket, really."

"You can't _leave_ ," Donn argued, "You haven't given us our powers back!"

"And you don't have a ship," Clara added, "Apart from pirate ships."

"Maybe I'll go to Tortuga, start a pirate crew of my own," Missy said, "But I really have to dash. You see, when I let Oswin go after she built me my inhibitor, of course I knew she was going to immediately rush to help you after determining exactly what date you went missing. Then all she has to do is send a message to somebody in the past who _isn't_ one of you five, and they'll show up in the TARDIS to investigate. It's unfortunately very tricky to TARDIS-proof an island like this, because of all the plastic."

"Sounds legit," muttered Ashildr, still eating her sandwich.

"But, really, this has been fun," Missy said, backing away from them and fumbling with her umbrella handle, "Marvellous thing about your sister, she's very good at designing portable, handheld technology. Haven't you seen that fancy-pants walking stick of hers?"

"Shit!" said Clara, "The inhibitor for our powers is in the umbrella!"

"Yes! Well done, I thought it was obvious when I said Oswin made it for me, but we all have brain farts sometimes, I suppose," Missy said, "Funnily enough, that's where my teleporter is, too," she flipped open the handle to reveal a complex interface of very small buttons. "Oh, and, give my compliments to the cook – I've always loved Gazpacho soup." She disappeared in a blue flash of light, gone off to who knew where.

"…If she took the inhibitor with her…" Amy began.

"Then our powers should come back, but it might take a few minutes," said Martha.

"…Are you sure you won't give me a lift?" said Ashildr, "It's just, if she's pissed off, I'm basically stranded here."

"Why were you helping her?" Clara questioned.

"I thought it would be a laugh. It gets boring being millions of years old," she said, relatively indifferent.

"You let her kidnap my sister!"

"I didn't know anything about that," said Ashildr, "I wouldn't want to get on the wrong side of your sister. I mean, first of all, she's hilarious-"

"Debatable," Donna muttered.

"Second of all, she can be incredibly dangerous when she puts her mind to it," said Ashildr, "I don't want her as my enemy. I have integrity."

"You have literally no integrity," said Clara.

"How dare you!"

"So… she brought us here… to give us… pirate hats and chicken nuggets… and now she's gone?" Amy asked.

"Who knows what she's up to," said Ashildr, "I once heard a story about her starting a drug dealing ring selling ketamine to middle-class parents in East London."

"That sounds very far-fetched," said Martha, "Why would she need to sell ketamine?"

"Something to do with a jetpack, I'm foggy on the details. Lift, though? She said the TARDIS was showing up any minute-" And Missy had been right. They heard the vworping echo through the Galley, the gaudiest fast food restaurant Martha had ever had the displeasure of stepping foot in. She'd never been happier than seeing the TARDIS at that moment, a beautiful indicator that she wasn't going to die stranded on a tropical island, drowned or stabbed or hanged or eaten alive by insane soldiers. It appeared in the centre of the room, thrummed to a halt, and the door creaked open. Jenny appeared in the entrance, wearing an apron with splotches of cake batter on the apron, her face, and her cast.

"I just had a very frantic phone call from Oswin from the future saying I have to come and rescue you five from being murdered by pirate skeletons?" Jenny said, unsurely.

"Chicken nuggets!" Rose shouted.

"Right… well, I'd love to hear an explanation for all this… but I'm in the middle of baking a big wedding cake, so… are they pirate hats?"

"Yes, and we'll be leaving them all behind," said Martha, "The Master gave us them. She orchestrated this whole thing. Said it was a hen party, for Rose."

"Why wasn't I invited!?"

"You're too useful," said Ashildr.

"What are _you_ doing here?"

"Just… hanging out… can I have a lift back to Zeniph Nega? I was in the middle of a game of skrips when she came to recruit me," said Ashildr.

"I… fine, but this cake won't bake itself. Why didn't you teleport away?"

"Because Rose is drunk out of her mind and Missy has an adrenaline inhibitor which affects hundreds of miles of the Caribbean Sea she apparently blackmailed Oswin to build for her," Clara explained.

"Well… come on, then," Jenny stepped aside, holding the door open.

"And me?" Ashildr asked.

"Yes, you, as long as you don't hit me again," Jenny said angrily, "Now hurry up. I don't want my batter to congeal."


End file.
